A personal theory and reflection by Suhaib Farooq Butt. This article explores possibilities; it is not a claim that the Quran teaches dimensional portals or that science has discovered one.
I have been thinking about the story of Yajuj and Majuj (Gog and Magog) in Islam for a long time. One question keeps returning to my mind: if their population is so enormous, and if they are somewhere behind the barrier constructed by Dhul-Qarnayn, why have we never found them? We have satellites, maps and technology capable of observing so much of the Earth. Yet we have not identified a civilization on the scale described in the Islamic narrations.
Then a strange idea struck me. What if Dhul-Qarnayn did not build a wall between two ordinary geographical territories? What if he blocked an already existing passage between our world and another reality?
I am not saying this is what happened. I am sharing the possibility I pictured in my mind, and why different parts of the story made me think about it.
What the Quran tells us about the barrier
In Surah Al-Kahf (18:83–99), Allah describes the journeys of Dhul-Qarnayn, who was given power and means on Earth. He eventually reached a passage between two mountains and encountered people who told him that Yajuj and Majuj were spreading corruption in the land. They requested a protective barrier. Dhul-Qarnayn used iron and molten copper to build it, and afterward Yajuj and Majuj could neither scale nor penetrate it.
I keep thinking about the location. Why would a barrier between only two mountains be enough? In an ordinary region, people might find another road, climb around an obstacle, or dig below it. The Quran tells us they could not pass over or penetrate the barrier, but it does not describe the entire surrounding geography. Perhaps the mountains formed an extraordinarily difficult natural boundary. But I wonder about another possibility.
Maybe the gap between the mountains was not a normal road leading to another village. Maybe it was the only accessible entrance to another world. The passage could be in a cave, inside a mountain, or at an opening no one today has recognized for what it is. The iron-and-copper wall would still be a real physical wall. The unusual part would be what existed on the other side of the opening.
The passage already existed; Dhul-Qarnayn only closed it
This is the central part of my idea. I do not think, in my hypothesis, that Dhul-Qarnayn created another dimension or built a machine that generated one. I imagine the connection was already there, and he simply sealed its entrance.
Imagine walking through a narrow opening between mountains. From one side, everything might look ordinary. But when you cross an invisible threshold, the landscape, climate and surroundings could be entirely different. The entrance itself might be as thin as a boundary, even if the wall erected beside it was thick and strong. We see this kind of passage in science-fiction stories. I am not using movies as proof; they simply help illustrate the picture in my mind.
I even considered whether the other side could exist in another time—perhaps their past is our future, or their future is our past. But that is not the idea I am most convinced by. My stronger possibility is that it is a separate reality with its own geography and history, connected to ours through a single passage.
Why didn’t they stop the wall from being built?
This question is important to me. The people who met Dhul-Qarnayn already knew about Yajuj and Majuj and the harm associated with them. If Yajuj and Majuj could enter the area, why did they not attack while the wall was being built? The Quran does not describe such an attack, although silence in the account does not prove one never happened.
I can imagine two possibilities. First, perhaps they visited our world only occasionally. Maybe they had enough food, water and resources where they lived. They came into neighboring settlements to raid, destroy or take things, but did not depend on those journeys for survival. In that case, the passage might have been closed during a period when they simply were not there.
Second, perhaps the dimensional threshold did not allow them to see what was happening on the other side. From their entrance, the passage may have appeared unchanged. Dhul-Qarnayn could have constructed the wall close to the opening on our side, without them being able to observe it from theirs. When they later tried to cross, they found the route blocked.
These are not details stated in the Quran. They are attempts to imagine how such a boundary might have worked.
Why would they visit our world but not settle here?
Some people might ask: if they could once come to Earth, why did they go back? Why not live here permanently?
But reaching a place and settling there are not the same thing. We explore caves, oceans and deserts, yet some environments are unsuitable for us without special equipment. Fish can live underwater where we cannot breathe naturally. Humans have sent astronauts to the Moon, but an expedition does not mean that everyone immediately moves there.
There may also be cultural or political reasons. People can remain deeply attached to their homeland. Leaders may restrict migration, just as governments today restrict access to certain places. Maybe Yajuj and Majuj were comfortable in their original world, had their own leaders and traditions, and saw our world as somewhere to visit—not somewhere to live. They might even have had methods or technology for short trips that were not suitable for permanent settlement.
I do not know which explanation, if any, is correct. The point is that temporary access does not necessarily imply a desire or ability to stay.
Could they be humans adapted to a different environment?
Another thought I had is that Yajuj and Majuj could be descendants of Adam (peace be upon him), as they are commonly understood in Islamic tradition, while differing in appearance or adaptation because they developed in different environmental conditions.
Human populations today show physical variation linked to ancestry, genetics and some environmental adaptations. That does not make one population more or less human or more or less evolved than another. In my hypothetical model, an entirely different climate, landscape, resource system or history might produce unfamiliar ways of living and perhaps different physical characteristics. I am not claiming they are aliens or a different species; I am keeping those questions open.
Maybe the geography of their world is so different from ours that certain obstacles are difficult for them. Perhaps the mountains around the passage were unfamiliar, or the material and shape of the barrier prevented them from crossing. But the actual Quranic wording is specifically about their inability to scale or penetrate the barrier, not about an inability to climb every mountain.
What changed after the passage was closed?
This leads to my next idea: their world may once have been comfortable, but their circumstances could have changed drastically over thousands of years.
Imagine a civilization with plenty of land, water and food. It occasionally crosses a passage to another world, but remains mostly at home. Then the entrance is sealed. Generations pass. The population increases, resources diminish, competition becomes intense, or the environment changes. Perhaps their population eventually begins declining. Perhaps it continues increasing. Either way, what was once enough may no longer be enough.
In this scenario, reopening the passage would become much more urgent than it had ever been before. They might remember or know that another world exists beyond the barrier, a place that could contain the resources they desperately want. Their repeated attempts to break through would then have a possible motive beyond destruction alone.
The reports of them digging at the barrier, returning to find it restored, and eventually invoking InshaAllah appear in Jami’ at-Tirmidhi 3153 and Sunan Ibn Majah 4080. Scholars have discussed the transmission and grading of these reports. In my theory, their efforts to cross could reflect a growing need to reach what lies beyond.
The enormous population and the lake
One reason I keep returning to this idea is the extraordinary number of Yajuj and Majuj described in the Islamic narrations. Sahih al-Bukhari 3348 speaks about their great numbers, although it does not give us a precise current population on Earth.
In Sahih Muslim 2937a, the first groups pass Lake Tiberias and drink its water, while those who come later find that the water is gone. I try to imagine the scale of a population moving in such numbers that a lake is emptied as they pass.
Could that mean they are arriving desperately thirsty from a place with limited water? Could it mean that, on their side, there is an enormous population competing for resources? Maybe. But I also recognize that the narration describes an event; it does not tell us their original water supply or that scarcity is their motivation. Extreme numbers alone could be part of the explanation.
Think of how nations today supply their armies with food and water. If this enormous population were rushing through a newly opened passage without a functioning supply system on our side, they might immediately consume whatever they encountered. That is another possibility I wonder about.
What happens when they finally enter?
The Quran says in Surah Al-Anbiya 21:96 that Yajuj and Majuj will be released and surge from every elevation. The hadith in Sahih Muslim 2937a describes Prophet Isa (peace be upon him) and the believers taking refuge at Mount Tur, the destruction of Yajuj and Majuj by Allah, and the overwhelming presence and stench of their remains before Allah sends birds to remove the bodies and rain to cleanse the Earth.
The image is difficult to imagine. How large must that multitude be? How much space would it occupy? And where could so many people have been living before their release?
If they were simply living in an ordinary accessible region of Earth, I would expect an enormous civilization to leave traces detectable by today’s technology. We have not found evidence of such a hidden civilization. That observation does not prove another dimension exists, and there are other interpretations of the account. But it is one reason my mind returned to a passage leading somewhere beyond our observable geography.
In my proposed model, the two worlds would not have to merge. When the iron-and-copper barrier is brought down at Allah’s appointed time, the original connection would simply be open again. That could allow immense numbers to cross through it into our world.
Why I think about unseen realities
Part of my thinking comes from the Islamic belief that not everything Allah created is visible to human beings. We believe in angels and jinn, and the Quran speaks of realities beyond our ordinary senses. For example, Surah Al-A’raf 7:27 speaks of Satan and his followers seeing people from where people cannot see them. A narration in Sunan Abi Dawud 4727 describes the immense dimensions of an angel bearing the Throne.
The Quran does not explain these things using modern terms such as frequency or dimensions. I sometimes wonder whether mechanisms beyond our understanding could be involved, but that is my speculation, not an explanation established by revelation or physics.
I also came across reports of people describing small beings or other seemingly separate worlds during psychedelic experiences. Research has recorded subjective entity encounters with substances such as DMT, but those experiences are not evidence that another world exists or that its inhabitants are Yajuj and Majuj. The reports simply prompted me to think about how strongly our perception might differ from reality.
Allah gave His messengers different signs and abilities by His permission. Dhul-Qarnayn, whom the Quran describes as being given means and authority, may have understood things about the place he reached that the Quran does not explain to us. But the Quran does not explicitly say he traveled into another dimension, nor does it establish that he conquered every part of the globe or that he was a prophet.
My conclusion: a passage, not a second Earth overlapping ours
Let me make my actual theory clear. I am not saying Yajuj and Majuj are secretly walking through our streets while remaining invisible, or that two versions of Earth occupy exactly the same space. My stronger idea is that they could inhabit a distinct reality or world, with its own geography and resources, and that somewhere between two mountains there was once a physical entrance connecting it to ours.
Yajuj and Majuj might have discovered and used that entrance long ago. They may have come occasionally to raid neighboring communities, then returned to a homeland they did not wish to abandon. Dhul-Qarnayn, by the means Allah gave him, could have blocked the entrance with the iron-and-copper barrier described in the Quran. The passage itself would still exist; only access to it would be sealed.
Over the generations, their circumstances may have changed. Population pressure, scarcity or other events could have transformed a once-comfortable world into one whose people desperately seek an exit. And when Allah’s appointed promise comes, the physical barrier will fall, letting them cross again.
Do I know that this is true? No. I have not discovered a gateway, and I am not presenting this as a scientific fact, a Quranic statement or a replacement for established Islamic interpretation. It is a personal attempt to think through several questions about the barrier, the mountains, the immense population, their actions before the barrier, and their eventual emergence.
Perhaps the reality is entirely different from anything I have imagined. Faith does not require me to claim certainty about a mechanism that Allah has not explained to us.
Continue the Gog and Magog (Yajuj and Majuj) series: Part 2: The Gateway and Dhul-Qarnayn’s Barrier · Part 3: Population and Resources · Part 4: Dajjal and Lake Tiberias
Allah knows best.
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