Refuting Islam

Failed Prophecy?

Why Did Muhammad Predict the End of the World Within a Generation?

April 15, 2025

One of the most serious tests of a prophet’s authenticity is this: Do their prophecies come true?

In both the Bible and the Qur’an, a key metric for discerning false prophets is whether their predictions materialize. As Deuteronomy 18:22 puts it:

“When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken.”

By this standard, Muhammad faces a major theological crisis. In one of the most well-attested hadiths — found in Sahih Muslim 2953a, one of the most authoritative collections in Sunni Islam — the Prophet of Islam makes a clear and time-bound prediction about the Day of Judgment.

And it failed.

The Hadith in Question: A Dying Child and a Doomed Generation

Here’s the full narration from Sahih Muslim 2953a:

Jabir reported: A boy was born to a man among us, and he named him Muhammad. We said, “We will not call you by this name, and we will not honor your son with this name.” Then we brought him to the Prophet. We said, “A son was born to this man, and he named him Muhammad.”

The Messenger of Allah said:
“Give him the name Muhammad.”
Then the Prophet said:
“The Day of Judgment will not come until a man from my household appears whose name is like mine.”

Then, looking at the young boy, the Prophet said:
“If he lives, he will not reach old age before the Hour comes.”
— Sahih Muslim 2953a

Let that sink in.

Muhammad, the alleged final Prophet of God, pointed to a living child and declared that the world would end before he reached old age.

That child died. The world did not end.
And 1,400 years later, we’re still here.

1. The Core Problem: A Prophecy With a Deadline That Expired

This is not an ambiguous or symbolic prediction.

It is not vague or metaphorical.

Muhammad is on record predicting the end of the world within the lifespan of a contemporary child — a living member of his own community.

This child, by all accounts, died a natural death.

The Day of Judgment — Yawm al-Qiyamah — never came.

Which leads to the unavoidable conclusion:

Muhammad made a false prophecy.

And if Muhammad made a false prophecy, then according to the standards of Scripture and rational analysis, he is not a true prophet.

2. Apologetic Evasions: Can They Save the Prophecy?

In response to this glaring failure, Muslim scholars and apologists have scrambled to reinterpret or soften the hadith. But none of their attempts hold up under scrutiny.

❖ “The Prophet was only speaking figuratively.”

If this was metaphor, it is the worst kind of metaphor — one that gives a specific timeframe about the most consequential event in Islamic eschatology.

There is no indication in the text that Muhammad was being poetic or symbolic. He said, in plain Arabic:

“If he lives, he will not reach old age before the Hour comes.”

This is not a parable. It’s a prediction tied to a real person’s lifespan.

❖ “He said if he lives — maybe the child died young.”

Yes, the hadith uses the conditional “if he lives.” But that actually makes things worse:

Muhammad believed that if the child survived into old age, the end of the world would occur before that happened.

But the world has lasted for more than 14 centuries since then. Even if the child had lived to be 100, Judgment Day should have happened by the early 8th century.

It didn’t.

So even if the child had lived, Muhammad’s timeline still would have failed.

And what does it say about a prophet’s reliability when his best-case scenario is “maybe the child dies before I’m proven wrong”?

That’s not prophecy. That’s hedging.

❖ “Maybe it referred to a smaller ‘hour,’ like a local judgment.”

Some apologists argue that “the Hour” might refer to the destruction of a people, not the end of the world.

But this simply doesn’t match the consistent usage of “al-Sāʿah” (the Hour) in Islamic eschatology. Throughout the Qur’an and Hadith, “the Hour” always refers to:

The resurrection of the dead
The end of the world
The final judgment before Allah

There’s no evidence that Muhammad meant anything else in this hadith. Changing the definition post hoc is not exegesis — it’s damage control.

3. Muhammad Repeated This Mistake — Many Times

This is not a one-off blunder.

There are multiple hadiths in which Muhammad makes similar claims about the end coming within the lifetime of his companions:

➤ Sahih Bukhari 4956:

“The Hour will not be established until the buttocks of the women of Daws move while going around Dhu al-Khalasa.”

Here, Muhammad predicts the Hour in connection with specific tribal behaviors — all of which have come and gone.

➤ Sahih Muslim 2537a:

“This generation will not pass away until all these things take place.”

Time and again, Muhammad ties the end of the world to his own generation or immediate successors.

This pattern mirrors a well-known phenomenon in history: failed apocalyptic movements.

Like many doomsday cult leaders, Muhammad predicted an imminent end — possibly to motivate followers or consolidate power.

But like every false prophet before him, his clock ran out.

4. The Qur’an Is Silent — But Not In His Favor

Muslim apologists often try to shift the conversation by pointing out that the Qur’an says no one knows the Hour except Allah:

“They ask you about the Hour: when will it be? Say, its knowledge is only with my Lord.”
— Qur’an 7:187

But this makes things even worse.

If only Allah knows, why was Muhammad making guesses?
Why did he confidently say, “The Hour will come before this child reaches old age”?

Either:

Muhammad contradicted the Qur’an and pretended to know what only Allah knows,
or
The Qur’an is wrong, and Muhammad did know — but got it wrong anyway.

Both options fatally undermine the credibility of the Qur’an and the Prophet.

5. Conclusion: A Failed Prophecy That Shatters the Myth of Infallibility

Sahih Muslim 2953a isn’t just an obscure narration. It’s a crystal-clear example of a failed prediction from the man who claimed to speak on behalf of God.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. If Muhammad was wrong — about this or any other prophecy — then he fails the test of a true prophet.

The consequences are devastating for Islamic theology:

The truthfulness of Muhammad is shattered.
The infallibility of the Sunnah is debunked.
The reliability of Islam’s eschatology is exposed as baseless.

If a prophet cannot get the end of the world right — how can he be trusted with eternity?