The claim that "people will follow their desires" is not a cheap insult against humanity. Islam recognizes normal human needs: food, marriage, rest, beauty and enjoyment. The warning is about something deeper: when desire becomes the judge over truth, morality and revelation.

Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) repeatedly warned that after his generation, many people would be tested not only by poverty and persecution, but by comfort, appetite, public sin, cultural imitation and the temptation to reshape religion around what people already want. The force of this prophecy is not that sin would exist - sin has always existed - but that desire would increasingly become normalized, justified and even treated as a kind of god.

What is meant by following desire?

The Arabic word often used is hawa: inclination, passion, personal whim or desire. In the Quran, hawa is not condemned simply because a person wants something. It is condemned when desire becomes the highest authority - above Allah, above truth, above justice and above moral restraint.

"Have you seen the one who has taken as his god his own desire, and Allah has left him astray despite knowledge, and has sealed his hearing and his heart and placed over his sight a veil? Who then will guide him after Allah? Will you not be reminded?" - Quran 45:23

This is a profound description. A person may not bow before an idol of stone, yet still live as though the self is sacred: "What I feel is true; what I want is right; what restricts me is oppressive." The Quran presents this as a spiritual danger, not merely a social problem.

"If they do not respond to you, then know that they only follow their desires. And who is more astray than one who follows his desire without guidance from Allah?" - Quran 28:50

So the issue is not enjoyment itself. It is enjoyment without guidance; freedom without accountability; choice without worship.

The prophetic warning about wealth and appetite

One of the most striking features of the Prophet's warnings is that he did not only fear hardship for his community. He feared prosperity. This matters because the earliest Muslims were not a wealthy ruling class. They were persecuted in Makkah, forced to migrate, boycotted, attacked and often hungry. Yet the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) looked beyond immediate suffering and warned that opened wealth would bring its own danger.

"By Allah, poverty is not what I fear for you. Rather, I fear that the world will be opened up for you as it was opened up for those before you, so you will compete for it as they competed for it, and it will destroy you as it destroyed them." - Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim; sahih

This is not a vague statement that "people like money." It is a warning that material success can corrupt a religious community from within. The danger is not only possession, but competition: status, luxury, rivalry, envy and measuring human worth by worldly gain.

Historically, this became visible very quickly. Within decades of the Prophet's death, Muslim lands expanded, wealth flowed into cities, political competition intensified and later generations had to struggle with luxury, factionalism and worldly ambition. Muslim scholars throughout history did not hide this; they wrote extensively about hubb al-dunya - excessive love of worldly life - as a disease of the heart.

In our own time, the warning is even easier to recognize. Entire economies are built on stimulating desire: buy more, display more, consume more, indulge more, compare more. The human being is addressed primarily as a consumer, not as a servant of God. The prophecy is not that every individual would become corrupt, but that the pull of worldly competition would become a dominant trial.

Public immorality and intoxication

The Prophet (PBUH) also foretold that certain sins tied to appetite would become widespread. In a sahih hadith, Anas ibn Malik reported that the Prophet (PBUH) mentioned signs of the Hour:

"From the signs of the Hour are that knowledge will be taken away, ignorance will become widespread, wine will be drunk, and unlawful sexual intercourse will become widespread." - Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim; sahih

Again, the point is not that alcohol or sexual immorality never existed before. They plainly did. The point is their public spread and normalization. In Islamic language, there is a major difference between a person who sins, feels shame, repents and struggles - and a culture that turns the sin into identity, entertainment, commerce or ideology.

Modern societies provide an unusually clear example. Intoxication is not merely an individual weakness; it is an industry. Sexual desire is not merely a private temptation; it is commercialized through advertising, film, pornography and digital platforms designed to monetize attention and appetite. Even many religious communities are pressured to reinterpret inherited moral teachings in order to fit the dominant desires of the age.

A fair reader may say: "But ancient Rome, pre-Islamic Arabia and many other civilizations also had alcohol and sexual immorality. So how is this a fulfilled prophecy?" This is a strong objection. The answer is that the hadith should not be inflated into a claim that no earlier society had these sins, or that our age is mathematically the worst in every respect. Rather, the prophecy identifies recurring end-time patterns: weakening knowledge, rising ignorance, widespread intoxication and public sexual immorality. These patterns are not hard to see, and they are especially striking when combined with the Prophet's other warnings about wealth, imitation and trading religion for worldly gain.

Selling religion for worldly gain

Another sahih narration describes a time of severe moral confusion, when people would exchange religious commitment for worldly benefit:

"Hasten to do good deeds before trials come like pieces of a dark night: a man will be a believer in the morning and a disbeliever by evening, or a believer in the evening and a disbeliever by morning, selling his religion for some portion of the world." - Sahih Muslim; sahih

This is a powerful description of desire overpowering conviction. The image is not merely of someone making an intellectual mistake. It is of a person treating faith as negotiable when money, status, safety, pleasure or social acceptance is offered.

This prophecy speaks to many settings: rulers who manipulate religion for power, public figures who abandon principle for popularity, scholars or preachers who soften truth to please patrons, and ordinary people who know what is right but fear losing career, relationship or reputation. The hadith also humbles believers. It is not a weapon to use only against "others." Every person has a price unless Allah protects them.

Cultural imitation and the authority of the age

The Prophet (PBUH) also foretold that Muslims would imitate earlier communities in detailed ways:

"You will surely follow the ways of those before you, handspan by handspan and cubit by cubit, until even if they entered the hole of a lizard, you would follow them." The companions asked, "O Messenger of Allah, the Jews and the Christians?" He said, "Who else?" - Sahih al-Bukhari 7320 and Sahih Muslim 2669; sahih

This hadith is sometimes misused to reject every beneficial thing learned from others. That is not correct. Islam does not forbid medicine, technology, administration or useful knowledge because non-Muslims developed them. The warning is about uncritical moral and religious imitation: absorbing the assumptions of other communities even when they conflict with revelation.

One of the strongest forms of following desire is when a community no longer asks, "What does Allah love?" but instead asks, "What do advanced, fashionable or powerful societies currently approve?" Moral confidence is outsourced. Revelation is placed on trial before the culture of the moment.

This has happened repeatedly in Muslim history and is visible today. Some people feel embarrassed by Islamic teachings on modesty, sexuality, family, worship or lawful and unlawful consumption, not because they have studied the evidence carefully, but because the surrounding culture has made those teachings feel unfashionable. The prophecy is fulfilled not merely when Muslims learn from others, but when they follow desire-driven norms even into morally narrow and humiliating places - "the hole of a lizard," as the hadith vividly puts it.

The strongest counter-argument

The sceptic may argue: "This is too general. Every religious tradition says people will become immoral. Humans have always followed desires. You are reading modern life back into old texts."

This objection deserves a serious answer. If the only claim were "people will sin," it would not be a meaningful prophecy. Islam's case is more modest and more cumulative. The Prophet (PBUH) identified a cluster of developments: prosperity becoming a danger, competition for worldly life, widespread drinking, widespread sexual immorality, religious instability during trials, and uncritical imitation of earlier communities. These warnings came from a man whose immediate followers were being trained in prayer, charity, fasting, modesty and sacrifice - not from a cynic watching a consumer society.

We should also avoid exaggeration. Not every modern person is immoral. Not every earlier generation was pure. Many people today sincerely struggle against desire, and many non-Muslims show admirable discipline, family loyalty and honesty. Fulfilled prophecy in Islam does not require caricaturing humanity. It asks whether the Prophet's warnings describe real trajectories with unusual clarity. A thoughtful observer can see that they do.

The Islamic cure

Islam does not merely diagnose the problem; it offers a cure. The cure is not self-hatred, monasticism or pretending not to have desires. It is ordering desire under worship. Food becomes gratitude. Marriage becomes chastity. Wealth becomes charity. Ambition becomes service. Beauty becomes remembrance of the Creator.

The Quran repeatedly links guidance with resisting the tyranny of the self:

"As for the one who feared standing before his Lord and restrained the soul from desire, Paradise will be his refuge." - Quran 79:40-41

This is the opposite of modern despair. Islam does not say, "You are your desires, so obey them." Nor does it say, "You have desires, so you are worthless." It says: you are a servant of Allah, honored with reason, revelation and moral responsibility. Your desires can be disciplined, purified and directed toward what is good.

Conclusion

The prophecy that people would follow their desires is fulfilled in a recognizable and sobering way: in the worship of the self, the commercialization of appetite, the normalization of intoxication and sexual immorality, the competition for worldly status, and the willingness to bend religion for comfort or approval.

Its purpose is not to make believers arrogant. It is to make them awake. The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) warned of these trials so that people would not be deceived by them. In an age that often treats desire as sacred, Islam calls the human being back to something higher: guidance from the One who created the heart and knows how it can be saved.