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[ by Charles Cameron ]

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Here’s an early indicator of jihadist strategic thinking from Sheikh Husain b. Mahmoud on the Ansar forums — Leah F calls him “a very influential figure, and not only in the virtual world” — via Aaron Zelin‘s fine collection & collation of jihadist source materials on his Jihadology blog (link to safe-for-download English version):

I call all the Mujahideen of the world and all their supporters, to prevent their tears from flowing and to keep their rage to themselves, so that it can act as a volcano which explodes at its proper time. We do not want sporadic operations of vengeance. Rather, we want special operations which are properly planned out, with wisdom and patience, so that it can bear its fruit, and make America forget the attacks on Washington and New York, and say goodbye to the good old days. This is an extremely important matter, as individual and random operations of vengeance usually have negative effects, and as crying and showing ones sadness brings joy to the enemies of Allah. It is incumbent upon the leaders of Jihad to rearrange their cards and announce a successor to Sheikh Usama, may Allah have mercy on him, and then start to plan the coming stages with experience, looking into what is in the greater interest of the Ummah.

To be read in the context of Leah Farrall‘s excellent piece Wanted: Charismatic Terror Mastermind – Some Travel Required in Foreign Affairs yesterday.

[ by Charles Cameron ]

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Dr. Timothy Furnish, the author of Holiest Wars: Islamic Mahdis, their Jihads and Osama bin Laden and a keen student of both Shi’ite and Sunni Mahdism, proposed on Twitter yesterday:

Without UBL’s body (or at least pix) claims will come soon that UBL merely “occulted” (like 12th Imam), not dead, and will return.

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It might be thought that occultation (ghayba) was a Shi’ite concept, extremely unlikely to be espoused by the Sunni (and indeed Salafist) followers of bin Laden.

What exactly is meant by the term “occultation”?

Gershom Scholem in his definitive study of the Jewish heretical messiah-claimant (and eventual Muslim convert) Sabbatai Sevi quotes Elias Bickerman‘s “study of the ideas of occultation in early Christianity and in the cult of the apotheosis of the Roman emperors”, in which the hero “by the grace of God, is liberated from death at the very moment of death, and is removed to Paradise, Heaven, or a distant land where he continues to live in the body.” (Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676, p. 923)

Scholem uses the term “occultation” to describe the belief of Sevi’s followers after his death in a way which illustrates comparable beliefs among both Christians and Shi’ite Muslims (p. 314):

In itself the doctrine of occultation could also point to Shi’ite Muslim influence. In the theology of the more radical Shi’ite groups the doctrine of the the occultation of the imam was widely accepted. But in the historical context of Sabbatai’s biography before his apostasy, such Shi’ite influence would seem highly improbable. The messiah — according to Sabbatai’s and Nathan’s teaching — will, then, not die, but will be translated to higher worlds. The idea would agree well with what we know of Sabbatai’s illuminations and the concomitant psychological experiences of exaltation and ascensions to the celestial lights. It is not impossible that conversations with Christians suggested to Sabbatai the very congenial idea of the messiah’s transfiguration.

And notes of this Jewish variant (p. 923):

The Sabbatian doctrine of occultation was not borrowed from other systems but — as happens more often in the history of religions — is the result of similar structures of faith.

More recently, some followers of the late Lubavitcher rebbe have proposed that he is “hidden” and will return… See, for instance:

Since the Third of Tammuz, we are no longer able to physically see the Rebbe King Moshiach. The Rebbe remains physically alive just as before, it is only to our eyes that he is concealed. Therefore, we call this a day of concealment, and many refer to this as the “last test.”
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— from the brochure “Chasidim Proclaim to the Lubavitcher Rebbe: Long Live our Master, our Teacher, our Rebbe King Moshiach Forever and Ever” as quoted by Rabbi Chaim Dov Keller

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That’s the sort of background I’d want to have, before dismissing Tim Furnish’s suggestion out of hand. The Qur’an, after all, states at 3.169:

Think not of those who are slain in Allah’s way as dead. Nay, they live, finding their sustenance in the presence of their Lord…

Having said that, it is also true that the Prophet himself treats the notion of his own return as a metaphysical “wish” rather than a realistic possibility, in the hadith attested in both Bukhari and Muslim:

I wish that I could be killed in the Path of Allah, then be brought back to life, then be killed, then be brought back to life, then be killed.

It will be instructive to watch how the narratives of bin Laden’s death and/or continuing life develop.

[ by Charles Cameron ]

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When an enemy dies, the world’s religions do not give us clear signals as to what we should feel – and perhaps this is for the best, since we feel what we feel in any case. Thus the Old Testament / Tanakh provides seeds of rejoicing for some:

O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.
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Psalm 137:6-9

and of restraint for others:

Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth.
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Proverbs 24.17

I have no great wish to persuade others to take up my own feelings about bin Laden’s death. For myself, I neither danced nor wept at the news…

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You might say my feelings are summed up nicely in this DoubleQuote:

I chose these two quotes partly because I think it is important to keep our religious traditions in mind on occasions such as this, partly because (as I say) they encapsulate between them my own feelings – and partly because I wanted to indicate that every tradition has its hidden surprises, and each one can be “read” in many different ways, by people whose needs and vocations are different.

My own basic emotion appears to be in line with the Judaic position expressed in the first quote of the pair — though I hear an echo of the “phat!” of the second, and can surely sympathize with those who rejoice while I am contemplative and turn inwards…

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Phat! is a mantram which connotes forcefulness. Lama Anagarika Govinda, in his Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism writes of “the onomatopoeic exclamation Phat, which, according to the context and the circumstances, serves as a protection from inimical influences, as well as for the removal of inner hindrances, or for the strengthening of the [practitioner’s] power of concentration, like a rallying-cry to call up the forces of the mind” – while Sir John Woodroffe, in Hymns to the Goddess, writes “Phat is the astra or weapon mantra.”

Susan Piver, who posted that “Phat!” as the epigraph to her Buddhist response to news of bin Laden’s death, followed it with a quote from the Tibetan master (and my old Oxford companion) Chogyam Trungpa:

In the Shambhala warrior tradition, we say you should only have to kill an enemy once every thousand years.

[ by Charles Cameron ]

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Okay, someone wasn’t reading his Sherlock Holmes…

Consider this a very minor contribution to the ongoing discussion of the benefits of a liberal arts education in connecting analytic dots (or avoiding those who connect them).

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Refs:

Wikipedia, Pattern Language (background), and Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language (one of the very great books).

[ by Charles Cameron ]
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Okay, you may groan and skip quickly to the next post or perhaps read with bemused interest every time I post here about Islamic eschatology — but in either case you might have hoped that the death of bin Laden would have no apocalyptic resonance whatsoever.

Sadly enough, Anjem Choudary — co-founder with Omar Bakri Muhammad of the UK’s Islamist group al-Muhajiroun – has a press release posted on his website today titled May Allah grant Sheikh Usama Martyrdom. It begins:

The announcement this morning of the death of Sheikh Usama Bin laden has been met with joy in the United States and by other enemies of Islam and Muslims. I would like remind everyone that someone much better and much more significant then Sheikh Usama Bin laden passed away in the past, namely the Messenger Muhammad (saw) and that this never stopped the Jihad nor the spread of Islam to the East and West. Indeed the Messenger Muhammad (saw) said that the day of judgement will not come until a group of Muslims conquer the White House.

The hadith in question comes from Sahih Muslim, Book 19, On Government (Kitab Al- Imara) 4483, and reads as follows:

Narrated Jabir ibn Samurah:
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It has been narrated on the authority of Amir ibn Sa’d ibn AbuWaqqas who said: I wrote (a letter) to Jabir ibn Samurah and sent it to him through my servant, Nafi’, asking him to inform me of something he had heard from the Messenger of Allah (peace_be_upon_him). He wrote to me (in reply): I heard the Messenger of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) say on Friday, the day on which al- Aslami was stoned to death (for committing adultery): The Islamic religion will continue until the Hour has been established, or you have been ruled by twelve Caliphs, all of them being from the Quraysh. I also heard him say: A small force of the Muslims will capture the white palace, the palace of the Persian Emperor or his descendants. I also heard him say: Before the Day of Judgment there will appear (a number of) imposters. You are to guard against them. I also heard him say: When God grants wealth to any one of you, he should first spend it on himself and his family (and then give it in charity to the poor). I heard him (also) say: I shall be your forerunner at the Cistern (expecting your arrival).

I suppose I should apologize, but “until the Hour has been established” and “Before the Day of Judgment” are both clear “end times” references.

A poster on SunniForum quotes this hadith from Muslim, one of the two hadith collections regarded as most reliable and given the epithet “sahih” (authentic), and follows it with another, citing Al-Tabarani, Al-Mu’jam al-Kabeer 2.198:

Jabir b. Samura said: I heard the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) say on Friday evening, the day on which Ma’ez al-Aslami was stoned to death (for committing adultery): A small force of the Muslims will capture the white house. I said: Kisra? he replied Kisra.

Be it noted that while “white palace” or “white house” would both be appropriate translations of the term used, Kisra clearly refers not to the house of the US President in Washington DC, but to the palace of Khosrau (Chosroes) I of Persia in Ctesiphon (now an impressive ruin in Iraq).

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I expect I found the Anjem Choudary press piece following a lead from Aaron Zelin, and if so I owe him double thanks – because he also pointed me to this quote from a member of the Ansar Forum:

al-Qaeda are the people of the Victorious Sect, which recognizes the last of the banner to the Mahdi

The victorious sect is the one sect of Islam out of very many that holds fast to the Prophet’s teaching, see the hadith collected here. As UCLA historian Jean Rosenfeld noted in a comment on the al-Sahwa blog:

Al-Qaida took the Salafi myth of the Saved Sect and the Victorious Group and applied it to themselves. This is in line with the need for converts to see themselves as heroes carrying out a transcendent purpose.The Saved Sect was turned into an eschatological myth by bin Ladin and his compatriots. It is a group of warriors who sacrifice themselves for the Din, the Land, and the people. The members of the Sect are a vanguard and they are few. Not only are they attacked by their opponents, but fellow Muslims may persecute them. Thus, if the group remains small and is regarded as practicing fitnah and is denounced, that only validates the group’s certitude that it is the Saved Sect. Only this sect — out of “72 sects” (note: this is probably a symbolic number meaning “many”) — will attain paradise at the end time.

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A couple more clear instances of end-times associations in the (Sunni) jihadist current…