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[ by Charles Cameron — different styles of online communication, main topic: Istanbul in three Islamic videos ]
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There’s passionate and visceral communication, and there’s communication that’s more scholarly, dispassionate and calm. Let’s begin and end with calm.

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Visceral communication is essential for getting people out of a theater on fire, but a 30% application of scholarly distance and calm may be prerequisite for avoiding panic — and scholarly communication may be important for conveying in detail the high-dimensionality of a complex topic, but a drop of visceral may ease the salient points into more general circulation.

In an earlier, text heavy post — Damascus, Dearborn, Rome, Vienna? — I belabored you with details as to just how much ambiguity and fog surrounds the use of place names in scriptural and prophetic contexts. Here I’d like to give you a visceral sense of what some prophetic voices are doing with those place names.

One of the easiest ways to move from scholarly to visceral is to switch from text quotation to video clip, so that’s what I’ll do here — but my first video clip will be relatively calm and scholarly as video clips go, the next one more visceral and exhortatory, while the third and final clip will use all the tricks of the feature movie trade to provide a Tolkien-heroic account of the Muslim siege and taking of then-Christian Constantinople in 1453.

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First, a very short clip from Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya, widely known in the Islamic world for his lavishly illustrated books, CDs and DVDs presenting an Islamic version of creationism, the Mahdist end times — which he sees as entirely peaceable — and more besides.

In this clip, he’s talking about Istanbul, and he means that very city, even if it has sometimes been called Byzantium or Constantinople — or even on occasion, Rome.
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My second clip is far longer, and presents an interview with Sheikh Imran Nazar Hosein, Islamic scholar, sometime Trinidadian diplomat and sometimes fiery YouTube preacher, whom I have quoted previously in Al-Awlaki and the former and latter rains and elsewhere.

Hosein discusses the prophecies of the conquest of Constantinople by Muslim forces as part of the background for a grand sweep overview of what he terms the first and second Arab Springs — which he locates a century apart and views as both engineered by an Anglo-American alliance to advance a Zionist agenda — and contemporary events in Bahrain, Saudi, Syria, Iran, Israel, and Russia:
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It’s an hour-long interview, perhaps you didn’t watch the whole way through. Hosein concludes this interview, centered in Islamic prophecy about Constantinople, with a Saudi-American alliance facing off against an Iranian-Russian alliance in service to very long term Zionist interests, making the video a window not only on the Sheikh’s own worldview but also on how widely perceptions of the world situation can diverge:

I want the viewing audience to know that a situation is evolving in the world before our eyes, and we must understand it, that the two major powers in the world are now moving in a collision course, that collision course between these two major powers, the American-led alliance and the Russian-led alliance, is going to lead to nuclear warfare of such a magnitude that there is only one word that we can look for in the vocabulary to fit it, and that’s called Armageddon, that is, millions and millions and millions are going to die, most of them probably in North America and Europe, Europe of the East and Europe of the West — and what is left of the world after that, the Zionists hope that they can cope with it, and they can somehow survive and come out on top and Israel will rule the world, the rump that is left after the two giants engage in a war of mutual destruction, That is what we are facing now…

Is that what you thought scholarly Islamists were thinking? By what paths did a highly educated and world traveled man come to that conclusion?

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My third clip speaks for itself. It is a trailer for an upcoming motion picture about the siege of Constantinople, presented as heroic spectacle with improbable but striking feats of arms, beautiful but not excessively modestly dressed women, obligatory mass choruses of Allahu Akbar, and at least one reference to the Antichrist.
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I can’t wait to see it — but I expect to do so with mixed emotions. Perhaps they will stir up a decent blog post or two.

What emotions will they stir in those who identify with the heroic Mehmet II, and how much of an echo will those emotions find in the world around us? Long shot — any Turkey-NATO impact?

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To return to a calmer clime:

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Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul. I have prayed in the Sultan Ahmed — click image above to glimpse its beauty — I have relaxed deliciously at a nearby hammam.

The history of Istanbul could be the rich study of many lifetimes, its promise — for better or worse or a little of both — may have been variously prophesied or predicted, but remains to be seen.

[ by Charles Cameron — Turkey, Perry, Cheney, also Havel, Dylan and the Stones ]
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I’m always interested when someone, left or right, uses a juxtaposition of quotes or soundbites to show parallelisms or oppositions between opinions, and today the blogger at Emptywheel did just that with a quote from Rick Perry at last night’s Republican debate and another one from Dick Cheney‘s memoir.

Here’s the result, presented in my own characteristic DoubleQuote format:

I guess my questions here would be about the specific phrasings, “ruled by what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists” (Perry) and “an Islamist government” (Cheney). Are the two statements virtually identical, somewhat similar – or are there significant nuances separating them?

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While we’re at it, here’s another DQ — this one struck me while reading a piece about Vaclav Havel today.

Interesting, too, that the Havel piece was fronted by that pic of Havel talking with Mick and Keith…

[ by Charles Cameron — prophecy, Warren Jeffs, FLDS, Zion in the US, the future, mapped ]

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Well, there you have it: a map of where Warren Jeffs, the imprisoned president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), prophesies there will be major problems soon, if his life sentence for child sexual assault isn’t quickly rescinded.

I’ll bet our meteorologists, intel folks and policy-makers wish they had this kind of insight into just where and what will happen next.

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Let’s take a closer look.

That’s Africa, the Middle East and a good bit of Asia and Australasia, with not a whole lot going on to be honest.  Turkey?

Turkey helps Israel

“Let Turkey aid Israel in day of great attack against my Israel, lest you also fall and become a subject nation. Amen.”

Iran?

Iran warning

“Let the nation of Iran cease all aggressive power against neighboring lands and peoples, lest you become a nation no more; only to be of subjugation to a foreign power, to no longer be of aggression”

And that’s it for the ever-contentious Middle East.

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And there’s good reason for that.  The Middle East isn’t where Zion is.

Take a look at the US  now, and see how much more dire the prophetic warnings are here…

An earthquake and tidal wave in Seattle, a “melting fire of such powers to cleanse my land of all evil” in Idaho, a tsunami off the East coast (Californians should be relieved) in which “great and noticeable cities on the coast shall be swept off the land ” — and more.

And that’s because the center of gravity shifts to the US when (a) Christ appears here as well as in Israel, according to the Book of Mormon, and (b) Joseph Smith receives his revelations and founds the Mormon church here.

And if that’s not enough, here are two especially significant events to be on the lookout for:

An attack on Washington, the destruction of Phoenix, and volcanoes across Arizona and Utah…

…which points us to the sites especially sacred to the FLDS — and indeed other churches in the tradition of Joseph Smith:

So that’s the hub of this whole thing, what the Temple Mount / Noble Sanctuary is to potent prophetic and apocalyptic influences in the Middle East: New Jerusalem in  Missouri.

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So that’s your update on our future prospects as Warren Jeffs sees them.

The map was kindly provided by Lindsay Whitehurst on her Salt Lake Tribune blog, and can be found here.  Three of Jeff’s recent prophecies, containing materials used in these maps, have been made public by the Utah Attorney General’s office, and can be downloaded here and here.

Coming up shortly: Apocalyptic Updates II: Iran, the Mahdi and the Vilayat

There’s been some new analysis of the Ahmadinejad / Khamenei split at MEMRI that makes it clear that Ahmadinejad’s Mahdist claims are very much at the root of the issue, so that we have what is essentially a Mahdist vs Velayat standoff on the theological level, and a clerical elite vs populist standoff on the political.  Watch this space…

[ by Charles Cameron — Mahdism, pacific and militant, Sunni and Shi’ite ]

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So here are a couple more DVDs for your collection…

The Awlaki “End of Time” DVD that I mentioned earlier today has an obvious apocalyptic aspect, but here are a couple of DVDs with specific reference to the Mahdi.  Harun Yahya (aka Adnan Oktar) has a massive publication-machine behind him, and much of his effort is directed to his islamic version of creationism.  It is interesting that his (Sunni) Mahdi, in contrast to al-Awlaki’s, is a peace-bringer.

The Iranian movie, on the other hand, may well be a move on the part of Ahmadinejad in his current efforts to use popular Mahdist sentiment to win power for the presidency and diminish the authority of the scholars in Qom — with a sop thrown to Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Authority, in the form of a role for him (along with Ahmadinejad himself) in the projected soon-return of the Mahdi from occultation.
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If so, the move would appear at this point to have backfired — perhaps because the movie was leaked ahead of time — with the Supreme Authority and mullahs of Qom lining up against Ahmadinejad.
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By way of commentary:
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Were the Mahdi to appear, he would be “rightly guided” by definition — infallible — and only those on whom he showed his favor would hold any religious sway among his followers. It is this disquieting thought which made, e.g., the religious authorities (hawza) of Najaf so upset about a Mahdist uprising a few years back… the Returning One axiomatically trumps all those previously holding positions of spiritual authority.

They Just Don’t Make Caliphates Like They Used To….

SWJ Blog featured a lengthy (30 page) essay by Dr. Tony Corn on….well….many things. Corn begins with caliphates and then sort of takes off much like a blown up balloon abruptly released by a child prior to tying a knot in the end.

The Clash of the Caliphates: Understanding the Real War of Ideas by Dr. Tony Corn

….For one thing, within the global umma, there appears to be as many conceptions of the ideal Caliphate as there are Muslims. This grass-roots longing for a symbol of unity should be heard with the proverbial Freudian -third ear,?? and seen for what it really is, i.e., a symptom rather than a disease. For another, by agreeing to establish diplomatic relations with the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), America and Europe have, in essence, already granted the OIC the status of a Quasi-Caliphate.

More important still, it is time for Western policy-makers to realize that the ideological rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran that has been going on since 1979 constitutes nothing less than a Clash of the Caliphates. Through a soft power strategy blurring the distinction between -public diplomacy?? and -political warfare,?? -humanitarian aid?? and -religious propaganda,?? the two states have been the main drivers of the re-Islamization process throughout the Muslim world. The one-upmanship dynamic generated by the rivalry between these two fundamentalist regimes is the main reason why, from the Balkans to Pakistan, the re-Islamization of the global umma has taken a radical, rather than moderate, dimension.

Ok, “caliphates” as a metaphor/analogy for geopolitical rivalry of Muslim states works but it is not really what Islamists or normal Muslims would mean by the term. It is a very odd usage. I’m not overly bothered by that because I tend to like analogies but Corn’s device here is apt to make the heads of area studies and Islamic history scholars explode. The whole essay is in this meandering, idiosyncratic, vein.

Now that is not to suggest that you should not read the piece. Dr. Corn held my attention all the way through and he has a number of excellent observations on many, loosely related, subjects. For example, after discussing the pernicious effects of Saudi donations and Edward Said’s agitprop theory of “Orientalism” on the intellectual objectivity of academia, Corn writes:

…The combined effect of the House of Saud and the House of Said is the first reason why the Ivory Tower has done such a poor job identifying the nature of Muslim Exceptionalism. A more indirect, yet more insidious, reason is that, unlike in the early days of the Cold War, American academics across the board today are trained in social sciences rather than educated in the humanities. For social scientists, Explanation (erklaren) and -theory-building?? take precedence over Understanding (verstehen) and -policy-making. The victory of the -numerates over the -literates in the 1970s has produced a generation of scholars who show a certain virtuosity when it comes to -research design, but display an amazing lack, not just of historical literacy, but of -historical empathy as well. Not to make too fine a point: the Long War is being waged by a generation of policy-makers who, however articulate, never learned anything about history in their college years

Corn is spot on here. Not only is it spot on, it is likely to get much worse. After a brief qualitative “bump” from Iraq-Afghan war  language trained vets, diplos, analysts and spooks peters out, we will have the Gen Y kids with K-12 educations scrubbed free of history, foreign languages and science graduating from college with communication and marketing degrees and entering government service. Hang on to your hat when that happens.

What Corn really requires to vault his essays to the next level are the services of an experienced editor because less would be more. The man is erudite and insightful. He writes forcefully and raises a number of points that are important and with which I agree. Corn, commendably, also makes more of an effort to connect the dots than most. But maybe, if you have an essay that references David Kilcullen, Trotsky, neo-Ottomanism, lawfare, Sam Huntington, neo-COIN, Nasser, Vatican II, the Comintern, the Hapsburgs, Ataturk, public diplomacy, al- Qaradawi, social media, Fascism, Marc Lynch, Youtube, network theory, the UN, hybrid wars and the Protestant Reformation, it might be time to up the Ritalin dosage a notch. Jesus, there’s either a book proposal or four different articles in that kitchen sink of an op-ed!

Read it and take what is useful.