2024/10/01 by Javad T. Hashmi · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Psychology · #Islamic Studies and History #Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence #Families in Therapy and Culture
paper · doi:10.1080/09596410.2025.2484082
openalex publication_date 2024/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/14
‘Forbear them and say, “Peace!” For soon they will know’, warns Q 43.89, ominously alluding to the imminent eschaton and the final judgement of the wicked. This article argues that the Meccan Qur’an adopts a biblical and Christ-like paradigm of eschatological pacifism, counselling Believers to practise patient endurance (ṣabr) in the face of pagan persecution (fitna), with the assurance that God’s judgement is near at hand. I suggest that the Arabic ṣabara (‘to patiently endure’, root: ṣ-b-r), upon which the Qur’an’s eschatological pacifism is based, is a calque of the New Testament hypomenō, plausibly mediated through the Syriac saybar (root: s-b-r). If correct, this would represent a fascinating ideational trajectory linking Jesus of Nazareth to Muḥammad of Mecca. The Meccan Qur’an’s eschatological pacifism provides a compelling counter-model to the thesis of militant-imperial eschatology recently advanced by Stephen Shoemaker in his 2018 monograph The Apocalypse of Empire: Imperial Eschatology in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, in which he provocatively compares Muḥammad’s movement to ISIS. In contrast, I argue that the Qur’an’s imminent eschatology, located primarily in the Meccan corpus, promotes not world conquest but quietism, manifesting in various pacifistic responses that resemble not ISIS but ʿĪsā.