Prophecy and the Fundamentalist Quest

Book excerpt: This work traces the origins of apocalyptic prophecy in Christianity and Islam through in-depth examinations of several texts found within the Bible, the Quran, and the Hadith. The author contends that Christianity and Islam, often seen as two of the primary fundamentalist and proselytizing world faiths, remain pitted against each other in an ongoing struggle to impose their religious ideology on the rest of the world through either force or persuasion. The religious prophecies discussed in this book are largely focused on end-time or apocalyptic scenarios (such as the Book of Revelation from the Bible's New Testament, the prophesized hour of judgment in the Quran, and the Book of Tribulations in the Hadith). The final two chapters provide an analysis of current world politics, including the Iraq War, within the context of Christian and Islamic prophecy.