Page 56 - Signs Of The Last Day

destruction never before seen. Indeed, the great cities targeted are

most affected by this destruction. The incomparable destruction of
the Second World War is an example of this. With the use of the
atom bomb in world’s greatest war, Hiroshima and Nagasaki
were completely destroyed. As a result of heavy bombing,

European capitals and other important cities suffered a great
amount of damage. The Encyclopedia Britannica describes the dam-

age caused to European cities by World War II:
The resulting devastation had turned much of Europe into a
moonscape: cities laid waste or consumed by fire storms, the
countryside charred and blackened, roads pitted with shell

holes or bomb craters, railways out of action, bridges de-
stroyed or truncated, harbors filled with sunken, listing
ships. “Berlin,” said General Lucius D. Clay, the deputy mil-
itary governor in the U.S. zone of postwar Germany, “was
like a city of the dead.” 4

In short, the unprecedented destruction caused by the Second
World War conforms entirely to that described in the hadith of the
Prophet (saas).

Another cause of the destruction of major cities is natural dis-
asters. It is a statistical fact that the age in which we live has seen
an increase in both the number and the seriousness of natural dis-

asters. In the last ten years, disasters caused by climactic changes
are a novel phenomenon. A dangerous and unwanted by-product
of industry is global warming. Industry is gradually disturbing

the balance in the world’s atmosphere, giving rise to climactic
changes. The year of 1998 was the hottest on earth since records
have been kept. According to the information of the American
5
National Climate Data Center, the greatest number of weather-re-

Signs of the Last Day

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