The World Now: “A Documentary of the Immediate, Bitter Present”

By: Al-Rafie Bashir Al-Shafi’i
April 13, 2025 (Now)
We, the children of this very moment in history—living it with our own eyes, hearing it with our own ears, feeling it with every fibre of our being, our fears laid bare—are the ones best suited to document “The World Now.” We are its most authentic chroniclers, and for the world to come, we may lack the tools of expression we know today. The human mind itself may be supplanted by artificial intelligence, blurring all boundaries, erasing the markers of humanity, wisdom, and authenticity in a fog of digital darkness—unless God wills otherwise.
If we may bypass the rigid frameworks of traditional historiography—its principles, tools, and rules that only reconstruct the past—then let us instead document our present, interrogate its events, and discern their consequences. Here, I write an introduction to the contours of the world as it stands in this very second, hoping to awaken those of us still clinging to life on this earth, burning in the fires we’ve lit for one another. We collide violently, beyond the bounds of custom, decency, or humanity, behaving worse than the most savage beasts.
This is not a specialized account of the wars raging since 2001 to this day. Rather, it is an observation of what has become of the human conscience, intellect, and collective wisdom—save for those God has spared. It is a record of how our immediate material and ideological obsessions have led us to the lowest abyss of cruelty, where man’s injustice against his fellow man has reached unprecedented depths, armed with weapons of destruction never before seen.
This reckless scorching of the earth—burning all in its path, erasing goodness, nobility, and beauty—is a war that can only be described as the war of the end times. The signs of impending doom are clear: a wasteland of values, fire against fire, conflict breeding conflict, oppression crushing the weak who still cling to the last remnants of humanity. These are the markers of annihilation and nihilism, born from a civilization drowning in material luxury, decadence, and excess—unmatched by any society before us.
The human soul has grown arrogant, corrupted by its own inventions, abandoning its faith and morality for new gods of materialism and ideology. It has forgotten the Creator of the universe, leaving no room for goodness, justice, or peace in this vast world that mankind has shrunk into a suffocating prison.
The people of this pivotal era, with their diminished intellect and bankrupt humanity, believe that survival depends on alliances of brute force, the clatter of weapons, and worship at the altar of materialism—measured only in the eye of the dollar. They have forgotten God entirely, placing their trust in power, soulless alliances, and godless ethics.
A friend of mine, an ambassador from a brotherly nation, commented on my earlier piece, “Who Will Write the Iliad of Sudan?”, saying I had captured my homeland’s pain with necessary honesty and fitting compassion. But now, I take a step further—I mourn and pity the entire world, which has become a churning sea of malice, ignorance, and moral decay. I told him:
“We know you stand with us—in heart, in prayer, in action. We feel the solidarity of your people as deeply as they feel ours. Yet in this insane world, where even devils disown the cruelty of man, we can only repay you with prayers for protection. The West, once a beacon, has lost its mind—its humanity, its values—transforming into a land of zombies, Satan-worshippers, and savagery. In this era, living like beasts is now the best form of coexistence.
What was once halal is now haram. Nobility is mocked. Virtue is a flaw. Generosity and dignity are relics of the past. Justice is as rare as pure friendship. Most nations are led by madmen, drunk on bloodlust and greed. Debauchery and sin are their worship; atheism and ingratitude their creed.
The world is plummeting into an abyss unlike any before. Past civilizations—when one strayed, another rose with wisdom. The Persians grew tyrannical, and Rome turned rational. The followers of the Golden Calf fell, while Moses’ people prevailed. The Assyrians drowned in arrogance, but Zechariah (peace be upon him) and his people stood firm. The Jews grew oppressive, and the Muslims brought justice. But today? The West leads, and we follow—step for step, blindly—even into the lizard’s burrow.
O esteemed friend, the world now needs a rightly guided one—a Mahdi—not a prophet (for prophethood has ended), but a saviour to pull humanity from this darkness by God’s grace. We abandoned divine guidance for the dollar, competed for this fleeting world, and let arrogance blind us to the Creator—until some of us became more bloodthirsty than the very infidels who oppressed us.
We truly need the Mahdi and his divine system—the hope of a wounded world since Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Bay of Pigs, the Khmer Rouge, and the modern massacres that defy description. These atrocities—unprecedented in scale due to deadened consciences and advanced weapons—have stained Rwanda, the Central African Republic, and now Sudan, Gaza, and beyond. The world needs a true Mahdi to lift us from this killing pit, to shift our gaze from the eye of the dollar to contentment and sacrifice, from the cloak of atheism to the light of faith, from the narrowness of this world to the expanse of the Hereafter, from Satan’s embrace to the mercy of the Most Gracious.”
—Al-Rafie Bashir Al-Shafi’i
April 13, 2025

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