Among the fulfilled prophecies of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is a striking warning: many Muslims would come to imitate the religious and social patterns of earlier communities. This was not given as a compliment, nor as a call to hostility toward others. It was a sober diagnosis of a future weakness within the Muslim community itself.
The point is not that every similarity with another civilization is blameworthy. Islam never forbade learning useful skills, benefiting from worldly expertise, or dealing justly with non-Muslims. The prophecy concerns a deeper kind of imitation: adopting the same spiritual diseases, moral fashions, and religious distortions that previous nations fell into.
The prophecy itself
The Messenger of Allah (PBUH) said: "You will surely follow the ways of those before you, handspan by handspan and cubit by cubit, to the point that if they entered the hole of a lizard, you would follow them." We said: "O Messenger of Allah, the Jews and the Christians?" He said: "Who else?"
Hadith grading: Sahih. Narrated in Sahih al-Bukhari, 3456, and Sahih Muslim, 2669.
The wording is vivid. The Prophet (PBUH) did not merely say that Muslims would be influenced by surrounding cultures. He described an almost obsessive following - "handspan by handspan and cubit by cubit" - even into something as absurd as a lizard's hole. The image conveys imitation that becomes irrational: people following a path not because it is true, beautiful, or beneficial, but because it is prestigious, fashionable, or inherited from dominant societies.
The Companions immediately understood the reference to "those before you" as the Jews and Christians, especially because the Qur'an frequently addresses earlier scriptural communities and warns Muslims not to repeat their mistakes. The Prophet (PBUH) confirmed this understanding by saying, "Who else?"
What kind of imitation is being condemned?
Sunni scholars have generally understood this hadith as a warning against blameworthy imitation, especially in matters of belief, worship, moral norms, and religious identity. It does not mean that Muslims may never resemble other peoples in neutral or beneficial worldly matters.
For example, the Prophet (PBUH) himself used non-Arab tools, engaged in treaties with non-Muslims, accepted worldly expertise, and allowed Muslims to benefit from what was useful. Islam spread into Persian, Byzantine, African, Indian, Turkic, and Malay cultures without requiring everyone to eat the same food, wear the same local clothing, or build in the same architectural style.
The condemned imitation is more serious. It includes things such as:
- treating revelation as something to be reshaped whenever social pressure changes;
- turning scholars, saints, leaders, or institutions into unquestionable authorities above God's guidance;
- reducing religion to empty identity while abandoning its moral demands;
- normalizing sins because powerful societies normalize them;
- dividing into sectarian hostility after clear guidance has come;
- seeking honor through copying others while feeling ashamed of Islam.
This is why the Qur'an repeatedly warns the Muslim community by pointing to earlier communities. The warning is not meant to create arrogance, but humility: "Do not assume you are immune."
"Has the time not come for those who believe that their hearts should humble themselves to the remembrance of Allah and what has come down of the truth, and that they should not be like those who were given the Scripture before, for whom the time was prolonged, so their hearts hardened; and many of them are defiantly disobedient?"
How history bears it out
When the Prophet (PBUH) said this, the Muslim community was small, disciplined, and formed around revelation. It had not yet become a vast civilization ruling over lands formerly dominated by Christian, Jewish, Persian, and other traditions. Yet he predicted that future Muslims would not only interact with previous communities, but would follow their patterns with startling closeness.
History gives many examples. Some Muslims, in different times and places, adopted theological speculation that weakened submission to revelation. Some communities exaggerated regarding righteous figures, graves, relics, or spiritual intermediaries in ways resembling earlier religious excesses. Some rulers and elites imitated the luxury, court culture, and moral looseness of surrounding empires. In modern times, large sections of the Muslim world have often imported intellectual fashions from dominant civilizations - sometimes beneficial in science and administration, but sometimes harmful when they redefine faith, family, modesty, worship, and morality according to changing human desires.
One does not need to claim that every Muslim society has copied every Christian or Jewish practice. That would be false and unfair. The prophecy is broader and more realistic: the ummah would repeatedly fall into the same types of mistakes that earlier religious communities fell into. The fulfillment is visible not in one single event, but in a long recurring pattern.
Not a call to contempt for Jews or Christians
A careful reader may ask: does this hadith encourage contempt toward Jews and Christians? The answer is no. Islam commands justice and good conduct toward people of other faiths who are not hostile. The Qur'an recognizes that among the People of the Book are sincere worshippers, while also correcting what Islam regards as theological errors and historical deviations.
The hadith is primarily a criticism of Muslims. The Prophet (PBUH) is warning his own community: "You will do this." The shame is not that other nations exist, or that Muslims interact with them. The shame is that Muslims may receive revelation, preserve the Qur'an, know the Sunnah, and still repeat the avoidable mistakes of those before them.
Nor does the hadith mean Muslims should reject everything associated with non-Muslim societies. Medicine, engineering, mathematics, language learning, fair systems of administration, and beneficial research are not blameworthy simply because others developed them. The early Muslims translated and studied useful knowledge from other civilizations while remaining anchored in Islamic belief and worship. The issue is not learning; the issue is losing oneself.
The strongest counterargument
A sceptic might say: "This is not a miracle. Every later religious community borrows from earlier ones. Sociologically, it is obvious that Muslims living near Jews and Christians would imitate them. The hadith is too general to count as prophecy."
This objection deserves a fair hearing. Human societies do influence each other, and the hadith is not a mathematical prediction with dates, names, and percentages. We should not overstate the argument as though this report alone forces belief upon every sceptic.
Still, the prophecy has real weight for several reasons.
First, it is authentically transmitted in the two most rigorously accepted hadith collections, Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. So the discussion is not based on a weak or legendary report invented after the fact.
Second, the statement is not merely that Muslims would interact with others. It predicts a deep and sometimes humiliating imitation - "handspan by handspan" - despite Muslims possessing a distinct revelation, law, prayer direction, scripture, and communal identity. A confident founder of a new religious community could easily have predicted the opposite: that his followers would remain permanently distinct and spiritually superior. Instead, the Prophet (PBUH) warned that they would repeat earlier failures.
Third, the hadith identifies a pattern the Qur'an itself treats as spiritually dangerous: communities begin with revelation, then over time many hearts harden, religious forms remain while obedience weakens, and people reshape divine guidance to fit worldly desires. This has not been a rare exception in Muslim history; it has been a recurring struggle across centuries.
Fourth, the prophecy is morally uncomfortable. It does not flatter Muslims. False claimants to prophecy usually build the self-image of their followers. Here, the Prophet (PBUH) exposes a future weakness of his own ummah in severe terms. That honesty is itself significant.
Why this matters today
The hadith is especially relevant in an age of global media, cultural pressure, and intellectual dependency. Many Muslims today are not tempted to imitate Judaism or Christianity in a formal religious sense. Rather, they may imitate the broader trajectory of earlier religious communities: making revelation secondary to social approval.
When modesty is abandoned because it is mocked, when prayer is neglected because life has become too busy, when family ethics are rewritten to match the latest ideology, when belief is treated as private decoration rather than submission to God - these are not just modern issues. They are examples of an old pattern. The names change, but the spiritual disease remains.
The prophecy also protects Muslims from two extremes. One extreme is blind imitation: assuming that whatever is dominant, modern, Western, Eastern, academic, or elite must be true. The other extreme is paranoid rejection: assuming that anything from outside Muslim culture must be forbidden. Islam calls for discernment. The believer asks: Is this true? Is it just? Is it pleasing to Allah? Does it preserve faith and dignity, or does it dissolve them?
A sign and a warning
As a fulfilled prophecy, this hadith is not meant to entertain us. It is meant to wake us up. The Prophet (PBUH) accurately described a future condition in which Muslims would often follow earlier communities in their errors, even when those errors were irrational and destructive.
The miracle is not only that he foresaw it. The mercy is that he warned us before it happened.
For a thoughtful sceptic, this report is one piece in a larger cumulative case for the truth of Islam: an authentic prophetic statement, morally unflattering to its own audience, describing a recurring historical reality with remarkable precision. For a Muslim, it is also a mirror. The question is not only, "Has this prophecy been fulfilled?" It is, "Am I fulfilling it in my own life?"
The way out is not isolation from the world, nor hatred of other peoples. The way out is returning to Allah with knowledge, confidence, humility, and obedience - learning what is beneficial wherever it is found, while refusing to trade divine guidance for imitation.