Allah (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) said: “At the end of time, Dhū al-Suwayqatayn will appear at the Kaaba”—the narrator said, “I believe he said”—“and he will demolish it.” (1)
If it is objected that these hadiths conflict with Allah’s words, “Do they not see that We have made a secure sanctuary?” [al-Ankabūt: 67], and that Allah held back the elephant from Mecca and did not allow its army to demolish the Kaaba—even though it had not yet become the qibla—then why would He give the Abyssinians power over it after it had become the Muslims’ qibla?!
The answer is: “The destruction of the Kaaba will occur at the end of time, shortly before the Hour, when no one remains on earth who says, ‘Allah, Allah.’ Hence, in the aforementioned narration of Imam Ahmad from Saīd ibn Simān, the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) said: ‘It will never be rebuilt thereafter.’ It is therefore a secure sanctuary so long as its own people do not violate its sanctity.
There is nothing in the verse to indicate that the security mentioned therein will be perpetual.
Fighting has occurred in Mecca many times. The gravest instance was what the Qarmatians (2) did in the fourth century AH, when they killed Muslims in the circumambulation area,