My lunch with a jihadi 2: enter the Mahdi
We piled into the black Peugeot and returned to the road. For a while, we didn’t speak. We were tired of our own voices. There was just the noise of the broken wiper in front of me, stuttering across the windshield. Above us, the overcast sky lost its light. Below, Akçakale camp spread in all directions, as gray as a second sky. Something heavy and sad came over Abu Hassar and the heaviness of that thing came over me. He and I had spent the day somewhere else, in a different time. Now he’d go back to the camp and I’d go back to the road.
But we weren’t there yet. With about a mile left to go, Abu Hassar put his hand on my shoulder. “So you will come visit when the war is over?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said. “If it’s safe for someone like me.”
“It would have to be. You would never pass for a Muslim,” said Abu Hassar. He pointed at me and spoke to Abed: “He is such a Christian, he even looks like Jesus!”
I took a look at myself in the rearview mirror. I hadn’t shaved in a couple weeks. My face was a bit gaunt, my kinked hair a bit unkempt. “Maybe I look like Einstein?” I answered.
As we pulled over by his brother’s shop, Abu Hassar and I were still laughing.
“If I look like Jesus,” I said, “you look like the Prophet Muhammad.”
Abu Hassar shook his head. “No, I don’t look like the Prophet, peace be upon him.” He opened his door and a cold breeze filled our car. I could feel the rain outside hitting my neck. Abu Hassar grabbed my shoulder with his thick and powerful hands. He pushed his face close to mine. Again he was grinning.
“I look like the Mahdi.”
That comment, “He and I had spent the day somewhere else, in a different time” is particularly interesting from psychological, anthropological and theological angles.
Page 2 of 2 | Previous page
Tim Furnish:
January 22nd, 2014 at 7:31 pm
Fascinating, as a famous Vulcan would say.
.
But not surprising–if I may be so bold as to adduce my long blogpost from last September on the Islamic eschatological content of the Syrian fitna: http://www.mahdiwatch.org/2013.09.01_arch.html#1378502364220
carl:
January 23rd, 2014 at 5:36 pm
Mr. Ackerman’s comment about bringing his family to visit Abu Haasar in the just and peaceful Islamic state after the Mahdi comes establishes Mr. Ackerman, in my eyes at least, as a first class twit, a first class PC twit. As Mr. Furnish points out in his writing, the Mahdi isn’t supposed to be a Kumbaya kind of guy, more a convert or we’ll slit your child’s throat kind of guy. Mr. Ackerman seems believe otherwise.
Charles Cameron:
January 23rd, 2014 at 6:19 pm
LOL. There are actually different versions of the Mahdi, as there are different versions of the Second Coming in Christianity. I believe the Mahdi expected by Harun Yahya is peaceable, while the Christ expected by Tim LeHaye
will slaughter (eg) Buddhistswill be accompanied by the instant deaths of all unblievers, if the final book in the Left Behind series is anything to go by..
I really need to go and check the details of the LaHaye book, since my memory re Buddhists may be faulty. Here in the meantime is the opening para from a review on BeliefNet:
.
carl:
January 23rd, 2014 at 6:53 pm
Charles:
I often provoke LOL. I would go on the road and make some money at comedy clubs but the LOL doesn’t often come when I want it to.
Which version of the Mahdi is the important thing, and since Abu Hassar is a takfiri killer I don’t think it likely that his version will be the type to encouraged dialog.
Charles Cameron:
January 23rd, 2014 at 7:21 pm
More LOL.
.
Yes, I agree. I think there was some joshing going on there, and I’m not sure quite what his level of (Mahdist) sincerity is, since he seems to wear it lightly towards the end. But I’m pretty clear he isn’t a Harun Yahya type!
T. Greer:
January 23rd, 2014 at 10:19 pm
Were I in Mr. Ackerman’s shoes I would have said the exact same thing, regardless what I believed about the Mahdi. It was a prudent thing to do.
.
PC is pretending violent Mahdists don’t exist over wine and crackers with your fellow colleagues from Berkley or NYU. There are few similarities between those fax-dialouges with multiculturalists and having a real conversation with an actual Mahdist in his country. There one must play by different rules.
carl:
January 23rd, 2014 at 11:38 pm
T. Greer:
Yea but that is not what Mr. Ackerman said. He didn’t say ‘I said these things to keep me out of trouble.’ and during that particular exchange he could have said nothing at all. And it was not in Abu Hassar’s country, it was in Turkey. That whole ‘Two Iraq veterans talk about the war’ bit reeks of PC. Mr. Ackerman was a Marine captain and Abu Hassar handled suicide bombers, to somehow equate the ‘service’ of each is quintessentially Politically Correct.
Charles Cameron:
January 24th, 2014 at 3:01 am
Oh, and BTW —
.
I was just rereading the piece, and the violence of the coming of this particular Mahdi is not in question, not only because Abu Hassaris a jihadist but because he says quite clearly in the dialog: “he will have a vision. In that vision, God will tell him how to destroy His enemies and bring peace to all peoples. That man is the Mahdi.”
carl:
January 24th, 2014 at 7:13 pm
I had to add this. Abu Hassar apparently was an AQI suicide bomber handler. I can’t think of anybody on the face of this earth who could be a more pure reification of evil and depravity than an AQI suicide bomber handler. Some others could get that low maybe, but none lower.