Muhammad’s Striking Prophecy: The Flame of Accelerated Time
In a striking prophecy, Prophet Muhammad foretells that the perception of time will accelerate as the end times approach: "The Hour will not be established until time passes rapidly, such that a year is like a month, a month is like a week, a week is like a day, a day is like an hour, and an hour is like the flicker of a flame." (Sunan al-Tirmidhī, Hadith 2332) Although Muhammad (ﷺ) did not explicitly mention technology, the effect he described—time passing increasingly rapidly—aligns closely with what we now recognize in modern times: technology has made time feel progressively faster. While perspicacious ancient thinkers such as Seneca and Saint Augustine drew attention to the subjective nature of time (Seneca, 2004; Augustine, 1991), it is only recently that philosophers have explored how technology accelerates our perception of time. Notably, modern philosophers like Martin Heidegger and Bernard Stiegler distinguish between “originary” time and “artificial” time. The form...