Answering Objections to Islam · Fulfilled Prophecies of Muhammad

The pen will prevail — literacy, trade and severed kinship

Handle with care. These clauses are qualitative, so concede up front that they are less falsifiable than the Byzantine prophecy. Rank your evidence honestly.

In short

• 1.Literacy in Mecca is estimated at around seventeen people; the Prophet himself was unlettered
• 2.'The pen will prevail' — mass literacy and print, which arrived centuries later
• 3.'A woman will help her husband in his trade' — women entering commerce at scale
• 4.'People will only greet those whom they know' — urban anonymity
• 5.'Ties of kinship will be severed' — the breakdown of extended-family obligation

The claim being examined

In a Mecca where perhaps seventeen people could write, the Prophet described a future of widespread writing, women in trade, severed family ties and false testimony.

The Islamic position

Four specific social changes bundled in one narration, every one of them contrary to the world he lived in.

Analysis

The strength here is compound improbability. Each clause on its own could be dismissed; together, in one narration, from a society with almost no writing and total dependence on clan and kin, they describe modern urban life with unusual economy. Present it as a bundle and let the accumulation do the work. The honest caveat is that the clauses are qualitative, so a sceptic can argue about degree — say so before they do.

From the Sunnah

Sources

Abu Zakariya, Forbidden Prophecies, Ch. 2 · Al-Albani, Silsilah as-Sahihah · Forbidden Prophecies, Ch. 2, pp. 69-72

More in Fulfilled Prophecies of Muhammad

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• Barefoot herdsmen competing in tall buildings
• Public sexual immorality against the tide of the age
• The Byzantine reversal within three to nine years
• The keys of Syria, Persia and Yemen at the Trench
• The land of the Arabs will return to meadows and rivers