Many Christians also await the Second Coming of Jesus, so this might sound to them like good news. But Islamic literature seems to suggest that Jesus will return to abolish Christianity and confirm the truth of Islam. A much-quoted hadith, to which the Dabiq headline was alluding, says, “The Son of Mary will soon descend among you as a just ruler; he will break the cross and kill the swine.” The usual interpretation of this prophecy is that when Jesus comes back, he will put an end to his own worship, symbolized by the cross, and re-establish the dietary laws that Christianity abandoned but Jews and Muslims still observe.

Not every Muslim believes such apocalyptic prophecies, most of which don’t exist in the Quran. Most of those who believe in them would also not have any sympathy for the ferocious, brutal Islamic State. Yet Islamic apocalypticism is still a powerful force. According to a 2012 poll by the Pew Research Center, half of Muslims or more in nine Muslim-majority countries believe that the coming of the Mahdi is “imminent,” and could happen in their lifetime. The Islamic State just goes further by claiming that it is bringing the prophecies to life.

Even aside from jihadist violence, Islamic apocalypticism often has negative consequences. When recent history and current events are seen as best explained by prophecies, it becomes difficult to analyze them. Take, for example, the main quandary of the Muslim world for the past two centuries: Why have we moved so far backward compared with the West? The apocalyptic narrative, revived since the 1980s by popular Islamic writers such as the Egyptian Said Ayyub and many of his followers, states that this happened because of the forces of “Dajjal” — Islam’s version of the Antichrist.

If the Dajjal is to blame for the Muslim world’s bleak situation, then only divinely guided saviors can find a way out. This belief discourages pursuing the real solutions to the gap between the Islamic world and the West: science, economic development and liberal democracy.

Muslims — and perhaps other apocalyptic believers as well — should see that obsession with prophecies might cost them not just rationality, but also a very fundamental value of their own faith: humility. Because to assert that we are at the end of times means that we are quite special. We are not merely one of the countless generations that God has created. We are the chosen few, at the apex of history. It is really not piety that underlies this conviction; it is vanity.