to Allah—Mighty and Majestic—at the end of time, when people will have abandoned it completely: they will neither recite the Qur’an nor act upon it.

A comparable case is the Sacred Kaʿba. Allah protected it when Abraha set out to destroy it, advancing with a huge elephant and a large army. Allah shielded His House from him and revealed an entire surah about the incident: “Have you not seen how your Lord dealt with the people of the Elephant? Did He not make their scheme go astray? He sent against them flocks of birds, striking them with stones of baked clay, and He made them like eaten straw” (Qur’an 105:1-5). The birds came in separate groups (abābīl); each bird carried in its beak and between its claws a stone of baked clay. By Allah’s command they hurled those stones at the soldiers so that a stone would strike a man on the top of his head and exit through his backside—Allah’s refuge is sought—until He made them like devoured straw, the scattered remnants of crops eaten and trampled by livestock.

Yet at the end of time, when people violate the sanctity of this House, fill it with sins, and treat it with utter disrespect, Allah will unleash upon it a man from Abyssinia—short and bow-legged—who will dismantle it stone by stone. He will arrive with troops and, as he removes each stone, he will hand it to one soldier, who will pass it to the next, until its stones are carried all the way from Mecca to the sea and the Kaʿba is razed to the ground.

Reflect on this: at first Allah protected the Kaʿba from those unbelievers because He knew that He would raise from its precincts a Messenger who would lead humanity from error, oppression, and idolatry to guidance, justice, and pure monotheism. But at the end of time, when people trample upon that sanctity, it will be removed from its place, and, in His wisdom, Allah will empower someone to demolish it.