I read your article on “The second-coming of Jesus PBUH”. However, I was not quite satisfied because of the following evidence held against your view:
And (Jesus) shall be a Sign (for the coming of) the Hour (of Judgment): therefore have no doubt about the (Hour), but follow ye Me: this is a Straight Way.
(Surah Al Zukhruf 43:61)
Hudhaifa b. Usaid Ghifari reported: Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) came to us all of a sudden as we were (busy in a discussion). He said: What do you discuss about? They (the Companions) said. We are discussing about the Last Hour. Thereupon he said: It will not cone until you see ten signs before and (in this connection) he made a mention of the smoke, Dajjal, the beast, the rising of the sun from the west, the descent of Jesus son of Mary (Allah be pleased with him), the Gog and Magog, and land-slidings in three places, one in the east, one in the west and one in Arabia at the end of which fire would burn forth from the Yemen, and would drive people to the place of their assembly.
[Sahih Muslim, Kitab ul Fitan wa Ashrat As Sa’ah]
Isa ibn Maryam will descend in the east of Damascus at the white minaret, donned in two Saffron coloured garments, his hands on the wings of two angels. If he lowers his head, it will drip and when he raises it, those drops will fall down like shining pearls.
[Jami Tirmidhi Hadith 2247, Classifed as Sahih by Allama Albani]
Can you refute to this?
Answer
There is no reason why you should accept my opinion on the return of Jesus alaihissalaan, if it doesn’t satisfy you. However, it would be good if you understand the opinion with its arguments before rejecting it.
Maulana Maududi has correctly explained that if surah Zukhruf’s verse 61 was referring to the alleged return of Jesus Christ, then what relevance did it have for the critical kuffar whose skepticism was being addressed in the relevant passage. The kuffar were claiming that the life hereafter was not going to happen; and the Quran according to you responded by saying that Jesus’s return before the judgement day would be a sign of it; so you — the kuffar of the prophet’s time — “should not have any doubts about it” (43:61). If that is the kind of explanation we start offering for Quranic passages because some people of the earlier times claimed that the Prophet, alaihissalaam, said something about this passage, then it’s not going to be a fair understanding of the book.
Are we expected to understand hadith in the light of the Quran or vice versa? And what if there is an apparent conflict between the two sources? The Quran mentions many things that suggest that Jesus was not going to return. We should therefore worry about how to interpret ahadith that are suggesting that Jesus would return instead of changing the clear meanings of Quran because of those ahadith.