While this recourse to prophecy retreated in Islamic thought over the centuries, its institutions preserved and sought to synthesize these disparate traditions. Early Islamic authorities sometimes referred to prophecies about the end of days, known as eschatology, whether as political predictions or as interpretive insights invoked to understand cataclysmic events. The original Islamic texts have some descriptions of the apocalypse, but lack a comprehensive or consistent narrative on the subject. There is no Islamic equivalent to the New Testament Book of Revelation. This essay considers the origins and dynamics of this movement and concludes with a brief suggestion about how best to counter it. In both the Sunni and Shia domains, millenarianism is gaining in relevance, substance, and structure.

While still limited and contained, the potential of such visions to metastasize and explode into conflict is considerable. Millenarianism, or “end of days” messianic speculation, is thriving and evolving - and being weaponized by both Sunni and Shia radical movements – as evidenced by the Islamic State on one side, and Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies on the other.

Islamic calendar 2017 shia