May 07, 2025
Ghazwa e Hind
A major confrontation with India appears inevitable. It may very well include a nuclear round. Most Muslims, at some point, have come across the Hadith in which the Prophet ﷺ foretold a Muslim army entering India, establishing justice, and capturing its rulers in chains. The narration adds that once this mission is fulfilled, ‘Eesa ibn Maryam عليه السلام will descend among them in the land of Shām. One of the chains of this Hadith is quite strong, and many scholars consider it part of the timeline that preludes the final phase of human history. It’s not something one can opt out of. It’s something fated.
But why India—of all places? Why is this specific civilisational confrontation foretold to precede the return of the Messiah? The answer begins not with contemporary geopolitics but with the ancient, universal arc of Prophetic missions: how divine guidance was dispersed globally, how it was later corrupted, and how the end of time promises its final rectification. To understand what is approaching, we must understand four broad civilisational arcs as they appear through the Qur’anic lens:
- The Judaic Arc — the outcome of rejecting, corrupting, and open rebelling against Prophetic revelation and God’s sovereignty.
- The Hindu (Gangetic-Yamuna) Arc — the epitome of transcendent but polytheistic and philosophically corrupted stubborn rebellious deviation.
- The Rational Arc — the philosophical societies (e.g., Europe, West) that sought truth but deviated less gravely.
- The Christian Arc — rooted in monotheism but confused by imperial doctrine of trinity, still retaining echoes of Tawheed.
Of these, Judaism and Hinduism became the heaviest contributors to global corruption in the eschatological sense. They denied divine unity, structured life around human elevation or caste-based divinity, and in doing so, fostered societal fascism, spiritual exploitation, and metaphysical falsehood. When man becomes the axis of his own reality, power justifies itself, and the world inevitably tilts toward chaos. This isn’t coincidental. It’s part of a spiritual law embedded in the cosmos. These traditions—by openly rebelling against God or philosophically distorting His Oneness—will, inevitably, face a decisive reckoning before the earth is rectified again.
History, if studied through the Qur’an, calls for such a resolution. The Qur’an explicitly states that God sent warners to every nation. Quran says:
- Surah Fatir (35:24): "…And there never was a nation but a warner had passed among them." (…وَإِن مِّنْ أُمَّةٍ إِلَّا خَلَا فِيهَا نَذِيرٌ)
- Surah An-Nahl (16:36): “And We certainly sent into every nation a messenger, [saying], ‘Worship Allah and avoid Taghut (false deities)…” (وَلَقَدْ بَعَثْنَا فِي كُلِّ أُمَّةٍ رَّسُولًا أَنِ اعْبُدُوا اللَّهَ وَاجْتَنِبُوا الطَّاغُوتَ…)
- Surah Yunus (10:47): “And for every nation is a messenger…” (وَلِكُلِّ أُمَّةٍ رَّسُولٌ…)
The Prophets mentioned by name in the Qur’an are only twenty-five. Muslim tradition holds that 124,000 were sent. The sequence of known Prophets begins from Adam, moving through Nuh, Ibrahim, Musa, ‘Eesa عليهما السلام and culminating in Prophet ﷺ. Most of these are rooted in the Near Eastern civilisational belt from where the humanity originated: The Fertile Crescent including Mesopotamia, Egypt, Levant, Arabia. When the world was populated mainly around these centres, divine guidance was visibly concentrated there. But as humanity spread to the Indus Valley, China, East Asia, the Americas, Oceania, and beyond, it follows logically that Prophetic missions were simultaneously dispersed, fulfilling the Divine Promise that no nation would be left without a Warner.
Similarly, in Quran, there are prophets that are not there in other historical references like Bible. For example, the Arab Prophets, Hud and Saleh عليهما السلام, that were sent to The Lost Arabs around 2450 – 2080 BC before even Haz. Ibrahim عليه السلام. This is a crucial frame in our civilisational consciousness; when Hud and Saleh عليهما السلام were confronting the doomed tribes of ‘Ad and Thamud in Arabia — long before Musa عليه السلام stood before Pharaoh — monumental civilisations were simultaneously rising in distant lands. Five thousand years ago, as Ibrahim AS engaged with the Chaldeans, the Harappan civilisation thrived along the Indus, the Erlitou culture emerged in ancient China, and Mesoamerican societies like the Olmec — predecessors to the Maya and Aztecs — laid their early foundations. These weren’t peripheral outposts. They were vast, intricate human societies — building cities, developing writing forms, shaping metaphysical worldviews.
Is it plausible that while Nineveh had Yunus (Jonah) عليه السلام, Teotihuacan had none? That Egypt received Musa عليه السلام, but the Gangetic plains — equally dense, hierarchical, and religious — were left devoid of revelation? The Qur’anic logic suggests otherwise. If guidance was universal, then these civilisations must have received their Prophets, too. That the records may have been lost, corrupted, or buried beneath layers of myth and philosophy does not negate their origin. Just as the Mosaic message became overlaid with rabbinic law and the Gospel was rewritten by Pauline theology, so too did the Vedic hymns, Daoist metaphysics, and Andean spiritualities deviate from their primordial roots in Tawheed — the oneness of God. Now consider Zulqarnain, mentioned in the Qur’an—a righteous king empowered by God who journeyed to the farthest reaches of the known world and built a great barrier to protect humanity. The strongest evidence—as noted by Maulana Mawdudi—suggests that Zulqarnain was Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid Empire, whose just rule and policies of religious tolerance align with the Qur’anic depiction. Cyrus belonged to the same civilisational branch as the early Iranians and Indo-Aryans, further indicating that prophetic influence extended deep into Central and South Asia even before historical records were firmly established.
If Cyrus was not a prophet or messenger himself, he may well have been a Wali (saint), Khalifa (righteous ruler), or sage operating within a prophetic tradition. Now, reflect on our conventional understanding of the Achaemenid Empire and Cyrus the Great, and juxtapose it with the Qur’an’s historical method for ʻIbrah (عِبْرَة).
This is important, ‘cause by mapping this understanding, we find that while the Prophets known from the Qur’an are clustered around the Near East, inferred Prophets must have arisen contemporaneously among the Indus Valley civilisation, the early Chinese dynasties, the Austronesian migrations, the ancient Americas, and the Aboriginal cultures of Australia. Wherever a society exhibits traces of monotheism, ethical codes transcending mere tribal instincts, or metaphysical doctrines hinting at the One, there must have been, at some point, a Prophetic origin — however corrupted it became over millennia.
India, in particular, fits this pattern. The early Indus Valley civilisation likely received Prophetic guidance during its flourishing around 3000–1700 BC. Over centuries, the pure guidance was lost, crystallizing into ritualistic Vedic traditions, and later branching into heterodox Śramaṇa movements (Buddhism, Jainism) and the classical Darśanas (philosophical schools). By the medieval period, devotional sects (bhakti movements) emerged, seeking to reform the lost spiritual message, but the theological corruption of shirk (associating others with God) remained entrenched. The spiritual history of India, thus, mirrors in its own unique arc the general pattern of divine guidance, corruption, and attempts at revival. To better understand it, consider we’re just 1400 years apart from Rasool Allah ﷺ and through our tradition of Mujaddadins, we know how corruption and deviations creep in. Indian tradition could be almost 5,000 years apart from its Prophetic origins!
Within these trajectories, it must also be acknowledged that prophetic traditions themselves have variants. Some prophetic traditions were kept true and pure by Allah SWT, others — like Balaam mentioned in Islamic and Judaic sources — deviated despite being recipients of knowledge. False prophets also arose, such as Mani in Persia, whose movement displayed some characteristics of Prophethood like the miracle of colours and symbols but actually was syncretism and falsehood. The Prophetic imprint left in the early Indian, Iranian, and Chinese traditions is overwhelming: a tale of preserved truths, corrupted myths, and later philosophical overgrowth.
While many traditions preserved vestiges of guidance without escalating into open rebellion against God, it is particularly in the Judaic and Hindu arcs that systemic, institutional rebellion took hold. The Judaic messianic expectation is rooted precisely in the belief that the Messiah will rectify this divergence — by conquering the world, purifying the faith, and establishing one universal way. Notably, within Judaism, sects such as the Neturei Karta (see Samaritan as well) openly reject Zionism and long for a Messiah who will abolish the current corruption. The Judaic civilisation represents the strongest arc: a nation chosen for divine guidance but one that systematically corrupted its revelation, killed its prophets, and eventually became the very symbol of rebellion against God’s sovereignty. Their errors led to unfathomable corruption: political Zionism, financial usury, desecration of sacred trusts. Similarly, the Gangetic-Yamuna Hindu tradition represents an arc in footsteps of Judaism: one where prophetic guidance was lost to idolatry and intricate transcendental philosophies that deviated from Tawheed. This produced a system of societal fascism and exploitation, a logical consequence when Divine Unity is denied and man becomes the axis of his own reality. Similar to Judaic traditions, this tradition had great reformers like Adi Shankaracharya who attempted to revive a form of transcendental unity at a time not far removed from the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. Yet, these movements ultimately remained unable to extricate themselves fully from idolatrous frameworks.
This analysis also leads to an important distinction regarding Christianity. Unlike the Judaic and Hindu traditions, early Christianity — particularly through the Nazarenes, Ebionites, and later Arians — preserved strong monotheistic traditions. They denied the divinity of Jesus and adhered to the pure Tawheed. It was only through Roman imperial coercion that the doctrine of Trinity was formalised and enforced. Later, even among post-Nicene Christians, the Unitarian movement and various monotheistic reform efforts testify to an underlying continuity of pure belief. In fact, four US presidents were unitarian in creed, the last being 27th president William H. Taft, who was president between 1909 – 13, and he was the president of the Unitarian Church in 1917 and died in 1930. Today, that tradition is in shambles on the alter of perennialism. The Qur’an addresses Christians precisely on this basis: calling them to “come to a common word between us and you: that we worship none but God.” It is not surprising that historical precedents exist where Christian authorities peacefully reconciled with Muslims, recognising the continuity rather than rupture between their faiths — as in the case of patriarch of Jerusalem and Haz. Umar ibn Khattab رضی اللہ عنہا. Therefore, the Christian world will have a more intellectual close in the end times. Although, we have narrative traditions that tell us of a major confrontation between Christain world and Islamic world in the end times, most probably, an outcome from the continuation of Jewish-capture of Christian faith, until they open their eyes.
The non-religious European traditions that later arose from late Antiquity represent yet another layer. Rooted in philosophical quests for truth and its rebirth during the frustration with corrupt religious institutions, these traditions reflect an inclination toward pure rational inquiry. Muslim thinkers have speculated on Aristotle as being a sage — possibly operating within a prophetic shadow — whose miracles were intellectual: revealing the nature of reality through rationality appropriate to his people. This aligns with Islamic understanding that miracles are tailored to their audiences, and rational insight can indeed serve as a miracle where the dominant faculty is reason, much like how Prophet Ibrahim (peace be upon him) used reasoned reflection to engage with and demolish idolatry.
That said, whether it was Aristotle himself, Hermes Trismegistus, Xenophanes, Socrates, or proponents of Neoplatonism who were connected to a prophetic tradition remains a debate for another time.
Anyway, the reconciliation of Muslim scholars’ positions on this varies: while Al-Farabi, Ibn-Sina, and Ibn Rushd elevated Aristotelian rationalism, Al-Ghazali and Ibn Taymiyyah maintained that unaided human reason remains vulnerable without divine revelation. Nevertheless, the consensus remains that pure rationality, when uncorrupted, leads back toward divine truth — a principle deeply embedded in Islamic epistemology. Thus, both religious Christianity and European rationality require engagement: Christianity by unveiling its suppressed monotheistic core, and European rationality by demonstrating the congruence of reason and revelation. Both are seen in Islamic tradition as pathways still open to rectification.
By contrast, Judaic and Hindu traditions have, by and large, cemented their divergence into systemic rebellion — whether through conscious rejection of Prophets or through philosophical deviations into polytheism and human deification. Their rectification, therefore, according to the signs of the end times, will not be through gentle engagement alone but through decisive divine intervention.
That is why the final events before the return of ‘Eesa عليه السلام involve two confrontations: one against Jewish rebellion, and the other in India. The Hadith is clear. India must be subdued. Justice must be reestablished. Not because of politics, but because of prophecy. The mission of the Ummah will not be complete until these corrupted arcs are resolved. And when that is done—when India falls and the rebellion is crushed—the Messiah will descend in Shām. And the world, for a final time, will be purified for truth.
How far off we’re from this chapter of History? Only our actions and Allah SWT knows.