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MahdiWatch.org
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Home | About Me | Links to My Articles | Info on My Books | Contact Me
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Welcome to MahdiWatch.org! NEWSFLASH! COMMENTS LINK
BELOW EACH POST IS ENABLED! FEEL FREE TO BURY ME, PRAISE ME--OR JUST ISSUE A PERSONAL FATWA!
al-Mahdi is "the rightly-guided one" who, according to Islamic Hadiths (traditions),
will come before the end of time to make the entire world Muslim. Over the last 1400 years numerous claimants to the
mantle of the Mahdi have arisen in both Shi`i and Sunni circles. Modern belief in the coming of the Mahdi has
manifested most famously in the 1979 al-`Utaybi uprising of Sa`udi Arabia, and more recently in the ongoing
Mahdist movements (some violent) in Iraq, as well as in the frequently-expressed public prayers of former Iranian
President Ahmadinezhad bidding the Mahdi to return and, in the larger Sunni Islamic world, by claims that Usamah bin Ladin
might be the (occulted) Mahdi. Now in 2014 Mahdism is active in Syria, as the jihadist opposition group Jabhat al-Nusra
claims to be fighting to prepare the way for his coming; and in the new "Islamic State/caliphate" spanning
Syrian and Iraqi territory, as its leadership promotes the upcoming apocalyptic battle with the West at Dabiq, Syria. This site will track such Mahdi-related movements, aspirations, propaganda and beliefs in both Sunni and Shi`i
milieus, as well as other Muslim eschatological yearnings.
For a primer
on Mahdism, see my 2005 article, "What's Worse than Violent Jihadists?," at the History News Network: http://hnn.us/articles/13146.html; for more in-depth info, see the links here to my other writings, including my book on Mahdism.
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Friday, April 27, 2007
Reunited and It Feels So Good? Libyan and Iranian Plans for a 'New Empire of the Mahdi'
10:00 am edt
Carter Finally Off the Hook for the Botched Hostage Rescue Mission
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad, this past week, spoke at a rally commemorating the failed American attempt
to rescue the hostages being held in Iran in 1980, and claimed that "heavenly aides supported the Iranian nation and
clobbered the enemy in the desert." And all this time I thought those tragic deaths were due to bad planning, lack
of interservice coordination and communications, and inane micromanaging from the Carter White House. See the full article
at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,268463,00.html?sPage=fnc.world/iran
Monday, April 23, 2007
Moqtada al-Mahdi?
Heretofore I had thought that Moqtada al-Sadr, that Shi`i burr under the American saddle in southern Iraq, was readying his
Jaysh al-Mahdi (Army of the Mahdi) to be handed over to the Mahdi when the latter arrived. However, if a new report in "The
Economist" (April 14th, 2007) is correct, then al-Sadr's ego is quite a bit larger:
"Some [Iraqis] go so
far as to suggest that Mr Sadr is exploiting the cult-like devotion he inspires among his legion of mainly young and poor
Shia followers to evoke the image of the Shias' 'hidden imam' whose reappearance on earth is supposed to herald
an era of peace and justice. Indeed, it is not hard to find people in Mr Sadr's flock who say he is actually
the Imam al-Mahdi himself, the Shias' 12th and last leader, who was 'occultated' into thin air in 939 AD and is
due one day to reappear."
And not to beat a dead horse [see post below], but...remember, according
to the Baker/Hamilton Iraq Study Group report, we're supposed to be negotiating with al-Sadr.
10:12 am edt
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Ignorance of Mahdism is Anything BUT Blissful
At the first of this year I published a critique of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group Report ("Ignorance May be Bliss,
but it Makes for Bad Policy," http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=27847). One of my major criticisms of the report was its ignorance (or disregard) of the undeniably-growing eschatological
element in Iraqi and Iranian politics. As Babak Rahimi reported last week, I was right ("Two Types of Splinter
Groups Break from Moqtada al-Sadr," http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2373328). While one offshoot seems focused simply on being more anti-Sunni than even al-Sadr, the other--ultimately
more dangerous--branch follows in the tradition of "millenarian-mystical movements with anti-establishment
ideologies," able to "unleash a major attack on the Shiite orthodoxy in Najaf, creating new cultic and sectarian
movements in the Shiite community of Iraq that could lead to a new religious civil war." It is ironic, and depresssing,
but it seems that at this juncture George Bush's efforts to bring democracy to the heart of the Arab world are resulting in,
instead, the stoking of anti-Western Mahdist flames in Iraq. Special thanks to both Patrick Poole and Joel Richardson
for almost simultaneously alerting me to this latest info.
Friday, April 13, 2007
One Islam, under Allah?
7:38 pm edt
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| Jamkaran Mosque near Qom, Iran (during my trip there Aug. 2008) |
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