Since His custom has always been thus, certainly at the time of greatest corruption at the end of time He will send a luminous person as both the greatest interpreter of the Law, and the supreme renewer, and ruler, and Mahdi, and guide, and spiritual pole, and that person will be from the Prophet’s (UWBP) Family. Almighty God fills and empties the world between the heavens and earth with clouds, and in an instant stills the storms of the sea, and in an hour in spring creates samples of the summer and in an hour in summer creates a winter storm. Such an All-Powerful One of Glory can also scatter the darkness covering the World of Islam by means of the Mahdi. He has promised this and certainly He will carry out His promise.
If considered from the point of view of divine power, it is most easy. And if thought of from the point of view of causes and divine wisdom, it is again so reasonable and necessary that thinkers have asserted that even if it had not been narrated from the Bringer of Sure News (UWBP), it still should be thus. And it will be. It is like this: All praise be to God, the prayer, “O God, grant blessings to our master Muhammad and to the Family of our master Muhammad, as you granted blessings to Abraham and to the Family of Abraham, in all the world; indeed You are worthy of all praise, exalted!,” which is repeated by the Muslim community five times every day in all the obligatory prayers, has self-evidently been accepted. For like the Family of Abraham (Upon whom be peace), the members of Muhammad’s (Upon whom be blessings and peace) Family stand as commanders at the heads of all blessed chains of spiritual authorities in the assemblies of all the regions of the world in all centuries.1 They are so numerous that together they form a mighty army. If they took on physical form and with their solidarity were formed into a division, if they awakened the religion of Islam and bound it together in unity and established a sort of sacred nationhood, the army of no other nation could withstand them. Thus, that numerous, powerful army is the Family of the Muhammad (Upon whom be blessings and peace), the Mahdi’s most select army.
Yes, today in the world there is no family distinguished by such high honour and elevated qualities and nobility in its descendants, in unbroken succession and well-documented genealogy, which is as powerful and
Just one of them is Sayyid Ahmad al-Sanusi, who commands millions of followers. Another is Sayyid Idrês, who commands more than one hundred thousand. Another Sayyid, Sayyid Yahya, commands hundreds of thousands of men. And so on. Just as among the members of this tribe of Sayyids there are numerous outward commanders, so too there are the champions of spiritual heroes, like Sayyid ‘Abd al-Qadir Gilani, Sayyid Abu’l-Hasan al-Shazali, and Sayyid Ahmad Badawi.