I would like to direct attention to Ahadīth which inform us that very few in the End Times would be rightly-guided: e.g., one sect in 73 would enter into heaven; 1 in 1000 would enter into heaven while all of the rest would enter into the hell-fire.
We need to find the measuring rod (Furqān) with which to be able to measure faith in the End Times in order to distinguish (to the extent that we have the capacity to do so) the Ahl al-Jannah from the rest. That measuring rod must perforce be located in a context that belongs to the Signs of the Last Day.
Among the most momentous of Signs of the Last Day are those which relate to Dajjāl the false Messiah, Gog and Magog and the return of Jesus (‘alaihi al-Salām). The very heart of these Signs is located in the Holy Land. (See my book entitled Jerusalem in the Qur’an).
The Holy Land (in particular) would witness in the End Times such oppression that a man would pass by a grave and roll on the grave and say “I wish I were in the grave rather than the dead man!” That oppression has already arrived in the Holy Land. The End Times are already here.
To locate the rightly-guide Jama’ah (Sufi or otherwise) and the rightly guided Shaikh/Ameer/Imām, we must use the measuring rod which measures the response to that oppression.
- Those who respond with their hands to put an end to that oppression, would belong to the first and best category.
- Those who respond with their tongues (pen etc) would belong to the second-best category. [It is impossible for anyone belonging to the first or second category to reside in the lands of the oppressors and to survive. See my essay entitled Obama’s Afghan Surge Pakistan’s Moment of Truth and Death of the US Dollar].
- Those who respond with their hearts alone would be the people with the weakest faith of all.
- Those who are blind to events unfolding in the Holy Land and do not respond in any way at all, are a people with a status equivalent to cattle (even if one million of them were to assemble in downtown Chicago to hold an Ijtima’ah).
- Those individuals or client States who support the oppressors (i.e., the Anglo-American-Indo-Israeli alliance that is now ruling the world and waging war on Islam and Muslims) by waging war on their behalf in Somalia, Yemen, North West Pakistan etc., or who send their sons to fight with the oppressors in Iraq and Afghanistan, would be a people who would have essentially left Islam and who now belong to the Jama’ah of the oppressors.