Rabeb Touihri
Traveling Through Time: Islam and the Cinematic Imagination
Tinta regada
10 – mayo de 2026
Our fascination with time travel reflects a deeper philosophical and theological question: is time a mode of human perception?
When we think of time travel, most of us picture Hollywood: cyborgs from the future, superheroes jumping across timelines, or astronauts trapped in time loops. My own fascination began as a child with The Girl from Tomorrow, a TV series about a girl from the year 3000 stranded in the 1990s. I enjoyed watching it with my sister, and to this day, I have never seen the series in English (we watched a dubbed version in Arabic). Later came The Terminator sequel, Men in Black III, Timeless, and Avengers: Endgame, among others—stories that thrilled me with the idea that time isn’t fixed; history itself can bend. However, as a Muslim, I realized something striking: our tradition has been discussing time travel for centuries—we just never referred to it by that name.
Take the Isrā’ and Miʿrāj. In one miraculous night, the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) traveled from Mecca to Jerusalem. He ascended through the heavens, meeting prophets and witnessing realities far beyond human comprehension. In modern terms, while this reads like space travel and interdimensional exploration, for Muslims, it is not science fiction—it is reality, part of which is a journey beyond the limits of ordinary time and space. The Quran gives other examples. The Companions of the Cave slept for centuries, yet they felt as if only a day had passed, as if no time had passed at all (Quran 18:9–26). A man experienced death for a hundred years and then was revived, bewildered about how long he had been gone (Quran 2:259), and perhaps most profoundly, Jesus (Issa, PBUH) was not crucified but raised. He will return at the end of time. Where is he now? In another realm, another dimension, suspended in divine time until the appointed hour.
Muslims read these stories as miracles—signs of God’s limitless power. As someone who grew up watching science fiction, what struck me is how these miracles mirror what audiences find compelling in films and series about time travel. Even more fascinating is how the Quran describes time itself. Einstein’s theory of relativity showed that time is not absolute—it bends, stretches, and slows depending on speed and gravity. The Quran anticipated this centuries earlier: “…A day with your Lord is like a thousand years of what you count” (Quran 22:47). “The angels and the Spirit ascend to Him in a Day, the measure of which is fifty thousand years” (Quran 70:4). In other words, time is relative, as it is experienced differently depending on one’s perception. What Einstein proved mathematically, and what Christopher Nolan illustrated in Interstellar—when astronauts spend only hours on a planet while decades pass for those waiting above—Islam had already invited us to contemplate spiritually. What viewers admired in the heartbreaking passage of time in Interstellar echoes what the Quran describes: our perception of time is not the final measure. Divine texts describe dimensions we cannot see.
Hollywood explores these themes through different lenses. The Terminator grapples with the paradox of whether destiny can be altered or if it is predetermined. Timeless explores the fragility of history, illustrating how small changes in the past reverberate into the present. Men in Black III, for example, relates time travel to childhood memories, history, and legacy, revealing unspoken truths through journeys to the past. Furthermore, one of my favorite movies, Avengers: Endgame, utilizes quantum mechanics and multiverse theory to enable superheroes to rewrite their futures by revisiting their own pasts. Islam, however, situates time travel as a realm of divine decree. In our faith, the future, present, and past are contained in God’s knowledge, and for this, we use the phrase Insha Allah (Ojalà in Spanish)—“if God wills”—when speaking about future events. It’s a recognition that we do not control time; we live within it, but its unfolding is God’s will. The concept was so key to understanding life and time, it was adopted into Spanish. By saying ‘Insha’Allah, and ojalá, we recognize both our human intention and our human limitations. We plan, but another force determines. In a sense, it is the Muslim’s everyday reminder that the future is not entirely ours to grasp or bend—much like the paradoxes of time travel reveal in science fiction. Miracles like the Miʿrāj are not “science experiments” but divine signs. If we are not the authors of time—since God is—the themes overlap: fate and free will, the paradox of destiny, the longing to revisit what is lost, the hope of a second chance.
Islam also gives us ways to think about experiences like déjà vu—the sudden feeling that we have lived a moment before. While science explains it as a memory glitch, from an Islamic perspective, it reminds us of Qadar, the divine decree: that every event has already been written and we are simply moving through what God has destined. Some scholars even link it to the soul’s pre-earthly knowledge, the moment when all human souls testified to God before creation. Perhaps déjà vu is the soul’s faint remembrance, a reminder that our journey through time is not random, but already inscribed in the eternal knowledge of God.
For me, this overlap is not just an intellectual exercise—it’s deeply personal. Growing up, I saw time travel as thrilling fiction. As I explored my faith, I realized we already hold profound truths about time’s relativity. We may not call it “time travel,” but Islam has always invited glimpses beyond the linear. And now, when I watch Interstellar or Endgame, I don’t merely experience entertainment—I sense echoes of much older spiritual traditions of immense depth. Perhaps that’s the real power of these connections. They show us that what excites audiences in cinema—destiny, paradox, return, cosmic journeys—are yet essential parts of older texts, inscribed in scripture, resurfacing in modern stories. Time travel, whether in revelation or in film, reflects the same human yearning: to understand the mysteries of time, history, the unseen, and wisdom.
