Who is the Dajjal: a one-eyed giant, or a deceiving group?

Mention the Dajjal and a frightening picture comes to mind. A giant of a man, blind in one eye, with “kafir” written on his forehead, carrying fire and water, racing around the world with the speed of the wind. Many people are still waiting for the day this monster will come out of some island.

But let us begin with one question: where did the Holy Prophet Muhammad (sa) see the Dajjal?

The scene was a dream

Hazrat Abdullah ibn Umar (ra) reported that the Holy Prophet (sa) said:

In the same dream he then saw someone else: a reddish, heavy-bodied man with curly hair, blind in his right eye. When he asked, he was told, this is the Dajjal.

Notice that the hadith begins with “I was asleep”. This is a dream, the true dream of a prophet. And the language of dreams is the language of symbols. The Holy Prophet (sa) himself saw in another dream that he was migrating to a land full of date palms. He thought it was Yamamah or Hajar, but it later turned out to be Madinah (Sahih Bukhari, Kitab al-Manaqib, Hadith 3622). In the same dream he saw a sword break, which meant the hardship of the day of Uhud.

If a sword seen in a dream was not a sword but the outcome of a battle, then a Dajjal seen in a dream may also be not a literal monster but the symbol of a large reality.

The Dajjal in the Quran

The word “Dajjal” does not appear in the Quran. But the Holy Prophet (sa) himself showed where in the Quran the protection from him lies. Hazrat Abu al-Darda (ra) reported that the Holy Prophet (sa) said: “Whoever memorises the first ten verses of Surah Al-Kahf will be protected from the Dajjal” (Sahih Muslim, Kitab Salat al-Musafirin, Hadith 809).

The question is, does memorising alone protect? The Quran is not an amulet. Open those ten verses and you find a warning against one particular belief:

The verses that protect from the Dajjal warn those who say that Allah has a son. In other words, the trial of the Dajjal is the lie of making a man into God, a lie spread far and wide by a huge group.

The Holy Prophet (sa) said that there was no prophet who did not warn his people about this “one-eyed liar” (Sahih Bukhari, Kitab al-Fitan, Hadith 7131). So this is the greatest trial in human history. And which lie does the Quran call the most terrible? In Surah Maryam Allah says that because they ascribe a son to the Gracious God, “The heavens might well-nigh burst thereat, and the earth cleave asunder, and the mountains fall down in pieces” (Surah Maryam 19:91-92).

The Promised Messiah (as) drew his conclusion from exactly this: the greatest Dajjal is the group that makes a man into God, because Allah in His own Word has called this lie so grave that the heavens are close to bursting (Anjam-e-Atham, Ruhani Khazain vol. 11, pp. 46-48).

The Dajjal is not one man but a group

In Arabic dictionaries, too, the word “dajjal” is used for a group: arch-deceivers who coat falsehood with a layer of truth. The Promised Messiah (as) wrote that Dajjal is not the name of one individual; according to the dictionary it is a group of people who present themselves as trustworthy and righteous while their words carry deception. He identified it with that section of Christian missionaries who spread a distorted teaching (Kitabul Bariyyah, Ruhani Khazain vol. 13, pp. 243-244, footnote).

In a sermon, the Fifth Khalifa of the Messiah (aba), quoting the Promised Messiah (as), said that the attack on faith that came from mistaken Christian doctrine is what the hadith call the attack of the Dajjal; and in the face of it, the chief task of the Promised Messiah is to bring faith back to life.

Now match the symbols in the hadith. The Dajjal is blind in the right eye: sharp-sighted in worldly matters but blind in matters of faith. The Promised Messiah (as) wrote that these are people who have only the eye of the world and are deprived of the eye of faith (Izala-e-Auham, Ruhani Khazain vol. 3, pp. 141-143, footnote). In the long hadith of Hazrat Nawwas ibn Sam‘an (ra), the Dajjal moves across the earth fast, “like rain driven by the wind” (Sahih Muslim, Kitab al-Fitan, Hadith 2937). Look at the nations that criss-cross the globe today in aircraft and ships, and this picture no longer seems strange.

How the Messiah will defeat the Dajjal

Sahih Muslim says that when the Dajjal, the enemy of Allah, sees Jesus son of Mary, he “will melt as salt melts in water” (Sahih Muslim, Kitab al-Fitan, Hadith 2897). Salt does not melt from the blow of a sword; it melts on contact with water.

The Promised Messiah (as) wrote that the Messiah killing the Dajjal does not mean killing with a gun or a sword; it means putting an end to all the deceptive innovations in religion. He would break the glory of the cross with the weapon of conclusive argument. That is exactly what he did: he showed from the Quran and from history that Jesus (as) did not die on the cross but died a natural death. With that, the main foundation of the belief that Jesus (as) is God collapses.

Questions people ask

The hadith describe the Dajjal’s appearance in such detail; isn’t he still one person?

The description of his appearance comes from a scene in a dream. In dreams one person is often shown, and the meaning is a nation or a group. Just as the cows seen in a dream were the group of believers martyred at Uhud. Besides, think about one simple question. Sahih Muslim has a report from Tamim al-Dari (ra) in which a man chained on an island is called the Dajjal (Sahih Muslim, Kitab al-Fitan, Hadith 2942). Yet near the end of his life the Holy Prophet (sa) said one night that of all those on the face of the earth that night, none would remain alive when a hundred years had passed (Sahih Bukhari, Kitab al-Ilm, Hadith 116). The two cannot be reconciled literally. Only when we take the symbolic meaning do the reports agree with each other.

How can the Dajjal circle the Ka‘bah? Will he become a Muslim?

In the dream recorded by Bukhari, both the son of Mary and the Dajjal were circling the Ka‘bah. Taken literally, we would have to accept that the Dajjal will enter Makkah and circle the Ka‘bah like a Muslim, which clashes with other hadith. The Promised Messiah (as) gave a beautiful explanation: at night a watchman walks around a house, and so does a thief. The watchman’s aim is to protect the house; the thief’s aim is to break in. The Dajjal would circle the centre of Islam looking for a chance to destroy it, and the Promised Messiah would circle it to protect it and to catch the thief (Ayyamus Sulh, Ruhani Khazain vol. 14, pp. 274-275).

Isn’t calling Christians the Dajjal a form of hatred?

No. This is not about hating ordinary Christian people. It is about a doctrine and its organised propagation: making a man into God, and spreading that teaching among Muslims through deception. In nineteenth-century India exactly this kind of campaign was under way. The Promised Messiah (as) answered it not with the sword but with books, arguments and prayer. And the motto of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is the same: love for all, hatred for none.