Can Muslims look forward to the millennium and be a part of its anticipation as in the Western world?

The Muslims cannot anticipate the millennium anymore than they can anticipate Christmas. Christmas is a reality and is a part of the system, part of our jobs, as we have vacations at that time, so we are aware of it and we know what time of the year it is but we don’t look forward to it in the sense that we would be a part of Christmas. We don’t look forward to the millennium either. The word millennium comes from a Latin word millenarius which means a thousand.[1] This comes from revelation, where the dragon interpreted to be Satan, is described as being bound in chains and thrown into the abyss, the bottomless pit, and Christians would be resurrected and would reign the earth along with Christ. Satan would be thrown into the abyss for those 1000 years, and when he was in the abyss, the rule of Christ and Christians would take place. When the 1000 years were over, Satan would be released, he would start to create a little bit of confusion and then the end of the world would come, the major resurrection would take place, etc.[2]

Their system of belief is the root of the development of the fundamentalist movement among the Christians. You will find that the fundamentalist movement which believes in the infallibility of the Bible is extremely active in trying to convert Muslims internationally. Its root is in this millenarian belief. Also, all of the various sects which arose, the modern Christian sects, Jehovah’s Witness, the Seventh-Day Adventist, the Mormons, all of them came out of the millenarian belief, i.e. waiting for the advent of Christ. Historically, the crusades had its roots in this concept of the millennium. It is significant for us to reflect that the crusades were an attack on the Muslim world, and Muslims were portrayed as the anti-Christ. They were going to liberate the holy land. A similar attitude has developed among leading thinkers and politicians in our times which match the same types of thoughts and feelings.

We have Prof. Samuel P Huntington from Harvard University, leading political science advisor to the Presidents of America, stating in his book The Clash of Civilizations that, “The problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism, it is Islam,[3] a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and obsessed with the inferiority of their power. The problem for Islam is not the CIA or the Department of Defense, it is the West, a different civilization convinced of the superiority of their culture and also convinced that it is their duty to use the power which is in their means to impose that culture internationally.”

So we have with this new millennium coming up- an attitude where the Western world, with its western civilization, focuses on the Muslim world as being the enemy. It was the anti-Christ in the time of the crusades, and today it is just the enemy of Western civilization. This is the reality. This is what the millennium has in store for Muslims. It is a concerted, systemized and organized attack on the Muslim world and on Islam.

References: 

[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/millennium

[2] The Book of Revelations 20, Verse 4

[3] http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/02/samuel-huntington-81-political-scientist-scholar/