当贪婪使人们把他人的财富视为可以侵犯时,把他人的生命也视为可以侵犯便只是下一步。因此,先知ﷺ说:“你们当防范不公正,因为不公正在复活日将化为重重黑暗。你们当防范贪婪,因为贪婪毁灭了在你们之前的人;它驱使他们流彼此的血,侵犯彼此的神圣。”324 过去一个世纪里,现代战争中的暴行、循环往复的种族灭绝、滥用权力的警务以及普遍的无端暴力,都是人类历史上任何时代都无可比拟的,而且都可追溯到自私的利益。只有真主知道,这是否就是那一预言的应验,抑或只是先知ﷺ所预言的更加残酷的无端暴力时代的前兆。

When greed causes people to see other people’s wealth as violable, seeing their lives that way is simply the next step. Thus, the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said, “Beware of oppression, for oppression will result in darknesses on the Day of Judgment. And beware of greed, for greed is what destroyed those before you; it drove them to spill each other’s blood and violate each other’s sanctity.” 324 The past century has seen atrocities in modern warfare, cycles of genocide, abusive policing, and senseless violence at large, that are incomparable anywhere in human history and all traceable to selfish interests. Only Allah knows whether this is that prophecy manifesting, or simply a precursor to eras of even worse senseless violence which the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم also foretold.

艾卜·胡莱赖传述：安拉的使者ﷺ说："以掌握我灵魂者发誓，这个世界不会终结，直到有一天，杀人者不知道自己为何杀人，被杀者也不知道自己为何被杀。"有人问："这会怎样发生呢？"他说："是混乱（al-Harj）。"325 在另一段圣训中，他说："在知识被夺走、地震频繁、时间缩短、动乱涌现、骚乱增多——也就是杀戮，大量的杀戮——之前，末日不会来临。"326 至于知识的稀缺，人们可以自问：一般的"信徒"对自己的宗教了解多少？当人们在网上搜索基本事实时，又要穿越怎样的混乱？个性化算法会证实我们每个人的偏见，掩埋不受欢迎的真相，并让我们受制于有针对性的营销活动。至于时间的缩短，当今无处不在的娱乐和消费主义，使"时光飞逝"，人们的时间都消耗在那些被精心设计来分散注意力的小工具和设备之中。

Abū Hurayrah  narrates that the Messenger of Allah صلى الله عليه وسلم said, “By the One in whose hand is my soul, this world will not end until a day comes when the killer has no idea why he killed, nor the killed why he was killed.” It was said, “How will that be?” He said, “Chaos.”325 In another hadith, “The Hour will not commence until knowledge is removed, earthquakes become frequent, time narrows, turmoil surfaces, and anarchy increases—namely killing, lots of killing.”326 As for knowledge becoming scarce, one can ask themselves what the average “believer” knows about their religion, and what mayhem people often have to navigate on the internet when searching for basic facts, due to personalized algorithms which confirm each of our biases, bury unwelcome truths, and subject us to targeted marketing campaigns. As for the narrowing of time, today’s ubiquity of entertainment and consumerism has “time flying” between the gadgets and devices that are engineered to distract.

至于这些屠杀，二十世纪即便不算上近来仍在持续的拉丁美洲、新殖民主义下的非洲、巴尔干、中东和中国所发生的噩梦，依然是人类历史上最血腥的世纪；仅第一次世界大战就夺去了6500万人的生命，第二次世界大战又夺去了7200万人的生命。

As for the carnage, again, the twentieth century has been the bloodiest in human history even without the recent and ongoing nightmares in Latin America, neocolonial Africa, the Balkans, Middle East, and China; World War I alone claimed the lives of 65 million people and World War II another 72 million.