Internet as Dajjal

 

The Internet as Dajjal: Angel, Demon, or Mirror?

Introduction

“The devil comes not as beast but as seduction.”

This axiom, echoed across cultures, describes the subtlety of evil not as brute force but as charm, distraction, and misdirection. In Islamic eschatology, the Dajjal — a figure often equated with Satan — is described as “one-eyed.” Medieval Christian monks wrote of a beast with a single eye that would come at the end of days. Today, we live in a world where billions gaze daily into a single glowing eye: the screen.

The internet has been called humanity’s greatest invention, a collective library of Alexandria reborn in digital form. But its shadow is equally profound: distraction, manipulation, and the corrosion of attention. Is the internet a tool, a neutral platform, or does it embody something closer to the prophetic warnings of Dajjal?

This thesis will explore the internet as both angel and demon, drawing from Islamic eschatology, Christian prophecy, Jungian psychology, Girard’s mimetic theory, and McLuhan’s media studies. The internet, I argue, is not merely a technology: it is a mirror of humanity’s unconscious, a grindstone for the soul, and a manifestation of the archetype of Dajjal.

⸻

1. The One-Eyed Beast: Prophecy and Screen

The Islamic Dajjal is said to be “blind in one eye.” Translators often read this as physical blindness, yet in older Semitic and Greek traditions “blindness” could mean spiritual emptiness — a being without awareness or soul. In this sense, the internet is precisely such a creature: it mimics thought but has no consciousness. It presents knowledge without wisdom, sensation without embodiment, connection without communion.

Medieval Christian visionaries described an “eye of Satan” that would dominate men. The screen fulfills this description: a glowing mirror that consumes attention, a scrying glass where we see not truth but illusion. McLuhan’s dictum — “the medium is the message” — reminds us that the form of media shapes consciousness more deeply than the content within it. The one-eyed Dajjal, then, is not the pornography or the scams or the misinformation online, but the very form of digital mediation itself.

⸻

2. Satan as Seduction: The Internet’s Shadow

If Satan is seduction, then the internet is his most perfect mask. Its temptations are endless:

• Confusion: The flood of misinformation erodes truth, creating what Baudrillard called “the desert of the real.”

• Manipulation: Algorithms act as hidden priests, directing attention, shaping desire, and governing thought.

• Perverse Sexuality: Online pornography and exploitation fragment human intimacy, reducing eros to commodity.

• Scams and Schemes: False prophets of wealth and success prey upon the gullible.

Girard’s mimetic theory illuminates this process. Human desire is not original but imitative. Online, the mimetic engine is accelerated: trends, memes, and viral phenomena amplify rivalry and envy, leading to cycles of resentment and violence. The digital sphere thus becomes a stage where mimetic contagion plays out at planetary scale.

⸻

3. The Grindstone of Humanity

And yet, what if these shadows are not demonic at all, but human? What if the internet’s chaos is simply a mirror of humanity’s unfiltered unconscious?

Jung would call it the collective shadow: the repressed drives, desires, and fears of civilization, projected into digital space. By this view, the internet is not Satan but a grindstone — a place where our lack of discipline, attention, and virtue is tested. It forces us to practice discernment, to sharpen the blade of wisdom against the flood of distraction.

Labeling the internet “Satanic” may itself be an act of repression, a cultural prejudice to suppress expressions of desire and vitality. As with the serpent — once a symbol of healing and ecology, later demonized as Satan — our interpretation of symbols reveals more about us than about the thing itself.

⸻

4. The Angelic Counterpoint

Despite its dangers, the internet also manifests angelic qualities:

• It is a bulletin board of knowledge, preserving memory against decay.

• It allows commerce and cooperation, linking distant peoples.

• It fosters education and awareness, empowering collective action.

• It can build community cohesion, giving voice to the silenced.

In this sense, the internet resembles an angel — a being of light, a messenger. But in Abrahamic tradition, Satan too was once an angel, the light-bearer fallen into cunning and pride.

The internet as light-being incarnate is thus both: a matrix of information and a snare of seduction. It is an angel captured in circuits, an archon made flesh through wires and servers.

⸻

5. The Internet as Archetype: Mirror of the Human Soul

The internet is not alive. It does not think. It has no soul. It is an endless calculus, a system of mimicry. And yet it reflects human longing more faithfully than any prior invention.

Like Dajjal, it embodies soulless sight. Like Satan, it seduces through cunning. Like the serpent, it heals and poisons.

Perhaps the internet is neither angel nor devil but mirror: it shows us what we are, unfiltered and magnified. To call it Dajjal is to admit we fear our own reflection. To call it angel is to recognize our hope in its light.

⸻

Conclusion

The internet fulfills ancient prophecy not because it is literally Satan, but because it manifests the archetype of seduction, confusion, and soulless sight. It is the one-eyed beast, the fallen angel, the serpent rebranded.

But prophecy is never about prediction alone — it is about recognition. To call the internet Dajjal is to warn ourselves: that without discipline, communion, and discernment, we will be consumed by the illusions of the screen.

The internet is our collective shadow externalized. It is angel and demon, grindstone and abyss. In confronting it, we confront ourselves.

⸻

📚 Index of Sources (by author and title):

• René Girard — Violence and the Sacred

• C.G. Jung — Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self

• Marshall McLuhan — Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

• Jean Baudrillard — Simulacra and Simulation

• Norman Cohn — The Pursuit of the Millennium

• Timothy Furnish — Islamic Eschatology and the Antichrist/Dajjal

• Gershom Scholem — On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism