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[ by Charles Cameron — Hugo Chavez was not only a friend of the Twelfth Imam to Ahmadinejad, but a disincarnate great spirit to Spiritualists & a near-savior to many Catholics ]
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altares de santos with Hugo Chavez, image credit likely Reuters

A short while back in Chavez and the Second Coming? I reported on Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s fulsome tribute to the late president of Venezuela Argentina, Hugo Chavez, of whom he said, “I have no doubt that he will return alongside Jesus Christ and the Mahdi to establish peace and justice in the world.”

Well, there’s more…

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The seventh World Spiritualist Congress brought some 1,500 delegates from 24 countries to Havana, Cuba a week ago. The Voice of Russia reported:

The central personality of this mystical congress was the former president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. “He is a great spiritualist who has disincarnated,” Enrique Alemany, president of the Spiritualist Federation of Havana, said.

Okay, that’s Shiite Islam and global spiritualism taken care of. How about Catholicism, South American style, with an intriguing mention of the recent papal election?

From yesterday’s National Post, under the title ‘I saw him as a kind of God’: In death, Hugo Chavez reaches divine status among Venezuelan followers:

Chavez’s die-hard followers considered him a living legend on a par with independence-era hero Simon Bolivar well before his March 5 death from cancer. In the mere three weeks since, however, Chavez has ascended to divine status in this deeply Catholic country as the government and Chavistas build a religious mythology around him ahead of April 14 elections to pick a new leader.

Chavez’s hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, has led the way, repeatedly calling the late president “the redeemer Christ of the Americas” and describing Chavistas, including himself, as “apostles.”

Maduro went even further after Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis earlier this month. Maduro said Chavez had advised Jesus Christ in heaven that it was time for a South American pope.

That comes as Maduro’s government loops ads on state TV comparing Chavez to sainted heroes such as Bolivar and puts up countless banners around the capital emblazoned with Chavez’s image and the message “From his hands sprouts the rain of life.”

“President Chavez is in heaven,” Maduro told a March 16 rally in the poor Caracas neighborhood of Catia. “I don’t have any doubt that if any man who walked this earth did what was needed so that Christ the redeemer would give him a seat at his side, it was our redeemer liberator of the 21st century, the comandante Hugo Chavez.”

Chavistas such as Munoz have filled Venezuela with murals, posters and other artwork showing Chavez in holy poses surrounded by crosses, rosary beads and other religious symbolism.

One poster on sale in downtown Caracas depicts Chavez holding a shining gold cross in his hands beside a quote from the Book of Joshua: “Comrade, be not afraid. Neither be dismayed, for I Will be with you each instant.” The original scripture says “Lord thy God,” and not “I,” will accompany humanity each instant.

And if Ahmadinejad expected that Chavez would return with Christ at the Second Coming, it’s worth noting that Chavez was also present — at least in a crèche from Caracas last year — at Christ’s nativity.

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With hat-tips to Ben Zeller, Jean-Francois Mayer and the crew at the New Religious Movements mailing list.

Chag Sameach, Christos Aneste, Happy Holidays…

[ by Charles Cameron — the final, astounding, Messianic-Mahdist word goes to Hugo Chavez! caught on video! ]
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We now know, thanks to VOA and the Atlantic, this much:

The death of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has prompted eulogies from around the world, but few of the messages have been as eccentric as the second-coming predicted by Iran’s president.

And as if returning to Earth alone was not enough, President Mahmud Ahmadinejad says Chavez will do so alongside some esteemed company.

“I have no doubt that he [Chavez] will return alongside Jesus Christ and the Mahdi [the Hidden Imam] to establish peace and justice in the world,” Ahmadinejad wrote in an emotional condolence message posted on his personal website. The Mahdi is a revered figure among Shi’ite Muslims, many of whom believe he will return to save humanity.

Not surprisingly, as reported by Reuters, these remarks drew rebukes from some senior Iranian clergy:

“The terms Mr Ahmadinejad used to describe the Venezuelan president are not appropriate for us,” the semi-official Mehr news agency quoted Ghorbanali Dorri Najafabadi, a cleric and a senior member of the Assembly of Experts, as saying.

“One can naturally send a diplomatic letter without getting into religious discussions,” hardline Friday prayer leader Ahmad Khatami was quoted as saying by Iranian media, adding that he believed Ahmadinejad’s decision to do so was wrong.

According to the parliamentary news agency ICANA, lawmaker Mohammad Taqi Rahbar said on Thursday Ahmadinejad’s comments were “certainly wrong and exaggerated”.

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Dr Timothy Furnish attributes this sort of blurring of theological categories to what he terms “ecumenical messianism” — for some quick context see his comments on the Lutheran Witness site. I’d suggest that is not just a fleeting idea but an area we should look into in some depth, if only because I myself was struck by an earlier incarnation of much the same idea, as expressed by the late Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, who is quoted as having said:

The Mahdi is not an embodiment of the Islamic belief but he is also the symbol of an aspiration cherished by mankind irrespective of its divergent religious doctrines. He is also the crystallization of an instructive inspiration through which all people, regardless of their religious affiliations, have learnt to await a day when heavenly missions, with all their implications, will achieve their final goal and the tiring march of humanity across history will culminate satisfactory in peace and tranquility. This consciousness of the expected future has not been confined to those who believe in the supernatural phenomenon but has also been reflected in the ideologies and cult which totally deny the existence of what is imperceptible. For example, the dialectical materialism which interprets history on the basis of contradiction believes that a day will come when all contradictions will disappear and complete peace and tranquility will prevail.

In light of that quote, Ahmadinejad‘s interest in Hugo Chavez seems a little less far-fetched.

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Okay, I’m no expert, but I do try to keep more or less on top of the swirling currents of contemporary Mahdism, which is from my POV understudied — and when studied in haste, often misunderstood — but I swear I never saw this one coming.

A further hat tip to Tim Furnish, then, for pointing us to this Iranian news report of a speech by Hugo Chavez himself in Masshad… the holy city in Iran where Imam Reza was martyred, indeed whose very name, mah-shahd, means “place of martyrdom”.. way back in 2009.

The Messiah [Jesus] and the Mahdi are not dead, they are alive and well and will soon return to spread justice over all the world. This afternoon Imam Khameini told us that as long as we two Presidents are united in our hearts and minds, as long as we pursue the same humanistic deeds together, and as long as we continue seeking justice, the Mahdi and the Messiah will emerge very soon. Therefore, we must struggle so that his holiness the Mahdi and the Messiah emerge to spread justice all over the world.

Dr Furnish’s Iranian source is Mehr News. I wonder if the Venezuelan press thrashed about it much, or whether they thought it was just diplo small talk?

I poked around the web a bit, and this looks to be a tape of a similar interview:

Whoah!

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has taken criticism for Chicago’s skyrocketing homicide rate which stands this year at a shocking 19.4 per 100,000 residents. This is roughly triple the murder rate in New York City, is worse than in perennially crime-ridden Oakland and is within shouting distance of  war-torn Afghanistan and Mexico, which are fighting vicious insurgencies. Even for Chicago, the current level of street violence is unusually brazen.

Chicago has always taken an ambivalent attitude toward it’s enormous, 100,000 strong, network of rival street gangs. Traditionally, part of the social fabric of Chicago’s ethnically divided wards, Chicago’s street gangs were far better organized and more ruthlessly disciplined than street gangs elsewhere, which allowed them a limited entree into participation in local politics. The Chicago Outfit from Al Capone’s day on controlled the votes in the old 1st Ward, ran several near suburbs like Cicero and recruited especially brutal sociopaths from the Forty-Two gang; the legendary Mayor Richard J. Daley in his youth had been a thug for the Hamburg Athletic Club, the Democratic Party’s election-time enforcers in the 11th Ward. In more recent decades, the Black P. Stone Nation/El Rukns were Federal grantees and a number of powerful street gangs today use the Black United Voters of Chicago as a front group and cut-out to make deals with local politicians and swing aldermanic races.

However disturbing the status quo may have been in Chicago, it is potentially changing for the worse. Much worse.

DEA BOSS: MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS ARE SO DEEPLY EMBEDDED IN CHICAGO, WE HAVE TO OPERATE LIKE WE‘RE ’ON THE BORDER’ 

The city may be nearly 2,000 miles from Mexico, but the country’s drug cartels are so deeply embedded in Chicago that local and federal law enforcement are forced to operate as if they are “on the border,” according to Jack Riley, special agent in charge for the Chicago Field Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Because of Chicago’s location in the heart of the United States, its large Mexican population and its abundance of street gang activity, drug cartels have designated the city as one of its main hubs of operation in America, Riley told TheBlaze in an exclusive interview. Inevitably, the increasing presence of cartels has also contributed to the Windy City’s skyrocketing violent crime rates, the DEA boss revealed.

“My opinion is, right now, a number of the Mexican cartels are probably the most organized, well-funded, vicious criminal organizations that we’ve ever seen,” said Riley.

Right now, at least three major Mexican cartels are fighting for control of billions of dollars worth of marijuana, cocaine and heroin in Chicago. That includes the ruthless Zetas and the powerful Sinaloa cartel, run by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, arguably the most wanted man in North America, and perhaps the entire world….

….“If I pitted the Italian organized crime groups against for instance, ‘Chapo’ Guzman and the Sinaloa Cartel, it wouldn’t be a fight,” he told TheBlaze. “In my opinion, Chapo Guzman is the new Al Capone or Scarface to Chicago. His ability to corrupt, his ability to enforce his sanctions and to really do with an endless supply of revenue is in my opinion far greater than older Italian organized crime.”

….The drug trafficking organizations are based in Mexico but, he explained, they have operatives in various cities across the nation. In Chicago, local gangs are used by cartels as a means to get their products onto the streets without putting their operations at risk, all the while raking in massive profits from drug sales. Cartels move every drug you can think of, including cocaine, marijuana, heroin and methamphetamines.

Overall, police records indicate Chicago’s murder rate is up 31 percent from 2011. Further, Mayor Rahm Emanuel in August requested federal assistance to combat violence and drugs. The Chicago Sun-Times reported on Aug. 31 that at least 82 people were injured or killed in shootings within a one week period, 10 in one night alone. Additionally, as of Aug. 23, there had been 351 shooting deaths so far in 2012….

Read the rest here.

The vast profit margin in illegal drug sales and the formidable manpower of Chicago street gangs have led the Mexican cartels to make a strategic choice to stay in the background, as hegemonic partners with local gangbanger street crews and not make the kind of flamboyantly ghoulish “narcocultas” attacks or DIY militarization typical of the Mexican criminal insurgency.  Sharing profits and letting locals run the major risks with law enforcement is a cartel strategy to avoid antagonizing the Federal government into treating their drug operations as ” international terrorism” with the draconian response that would imply, here, inside Mexico and further abroad. The same reason the cartels do not try to kill large numbers of American tourists or assassinate prominent Americans in Mexico, which they could easily do.

However, the cartels could shift from transnational organized crime activities to exporting narco-insurgency to America under a number of scenarios:

•  Cartel vs. Cartel – a cartel losing to rivals in Mexico breaks the informal rule against high profile attacks inside the US by striking it’s enemies here, inviting a cycle of severe retaliation and drawing in local allies – Mexican Mafia, MS-13 etc.
• Federal Squeeze – law enforcement gets really serious about systemically destroying a particular cartel, rooting out it’s illicit money stashed in the US banking system and legal investments and jailing everyone in sight under RICO and extraditing everyone else from Mexico. The narcos will employ “silver or lead” tactics to intimidate and co-opt local officials and whole communities and then escalate into symbolic terrorism.
• US Intervention – American assistance to the government of Mexico against the cartels tips the balance in Mexico’s civil war to what the cartels see as an existential threat ( i.e. drone targeted killings) and the narcos respond with furious attacks against American soft targets intending to create high body count events.

There is nothing magical about the US-Mexican border that prevents the ghastly violence in Mexico from occurring here – it is a rational calculation by cartel leaders that such behavior is not worth the risk of a stand-up fight with the US military and intelligence agencies – the cartels are only just holding their own against the lesser capabilities of the government of Mexico However, if cornered and desperate, the cartels are capable of rapidly escalating the violence in specific American communities to 2006 -2007 Iraq insurgency levels – in places like Chicago. It could happen faster than anyone believes possible.

The political effect of this will be a riptide – and none of it to the good.

[ by Charles Cameron — Sunni and Shia, Mecca and Qom, Saudi and Iran and the balances between them, with special attention to Mecca — and sideways comparisons with Las Vegas and Somoza’s Nicaragua ]
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Consider this map:

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It was ZenMeister who pointed me today, via Notes from Thermopylae, to Stephen Crittenden and his Global Mail piece, The Clash Within Civilisations: How The Sunni-Shiite Divide Cleaves The Middle East, from which the map above is taken. Crittenden writes:

There is a dangerous 2,000-kilometre fault line running through the Middle East between Beirut and Bahrain via Damascus and Baghdad, which marks the present line of demarcation between the two main branches of Islam, Sunni and Shiite.

The 1,300-year-old schism between Sunnis and Shiites was caused not by a theological dispute (those came later), but by rival clans in Muhammad’s tribe, the Quraysh, squabbling over the succession after his death in 632 AD.

Mostly the “Sunni-Shia Line” lies dormant, and ordinary Sunnis and Shiites live out their separate lives, side-by-side in relative harmony. In Lebanon and Iraq it has not been uncommon for Sunnis and Shiites to intermarry. But the Line is still always there, just below the surface, and it has recently re-emerged as the most significant factor reshaping geopolitical relationships in the Middle East, a region where religion and politics are always inextricably intertwined.

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Suppose it, at least for now. And in that context, consider as a counterweight to all the talk about Iran, two fascinating pieces by the Pakistani novelist Maniza Naqvi.

Naqvi’s piece The Remit of Fear in 3 Quarks Daily today is worth reading — you may be interested in any one or more of her various critiques of the House of Saud:

I fear the perverse purchase of petrodollars from Saudi Arabia: the twin ideologies of Salafism and Islamophobia. …

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I fear to imagine a county which produces no art, film, theater, song or dance. Yet such is the country created by the State of Saudi Arabia. I fear the reasons which cause 16 million citizens most of whom are not Saud in Saudi Arabia to remain silently compliant. The bulk of this population is under the age of 25 and disempowered and is ruled absolutely by old men who do not tolerate dissent or diversity of opinion. I fear the mindset that treats women as blots and clots to be erased or managed.

There’s plenty of food for thought there, not least about Pakistan:

I fear that the people unlearned and illiterate impressed by influence and the purchasing power of Saudi Arabia might be confused and unable to distinguish the House of Saud as being apart from the origin and the authors of Islam. I fear that this may be the case for Pakistan where matters are so far gone that if the father of the Nation, Mohammad Ali Jinnah were alive today he would not be able to go about freely for fear of being shot to death for being a Shi’a.

My own interest, as usual, draws me to the religious drivers at work and their impact:

I fear that after thirty years of petrodollar bonanzas and propaganda, Muslims are unable to delink Islam from the House of Saud. There are 5000 Saud and in comparison there are 1.2 billion Muslims all over the world. A majority of whom, for a myriad of reasons including illiteracy, poverty and sudden wealth are unable to resist or protest against the Saudi influence upon them. I fear that the populations of the world are unable to resist, protest and fight against the privatization of all that is their sacred to them: their lands where they grow their food, to the places where they congregate and live, to their own thoughts and even their bodies.

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But you should read too her linked critique of the remaking of Mecca, The Architects of the War on Islam, from August 6th:

This is addressed to Muslims who think that Islam is under attack: They are right. Just take a look at the images of the House that Abraham built, the Ka’aba and see how progresses that ancient attack. Just look at the transformation of the environs of the Ka’aba and the Haram Shareef into a garish resort rivaling Las Vegas or Atlantic City.

Just look, at the transformation of the sacred environs of the Haram Shareef into a shopping mall and Disney world–to understand the war on Islam and who is responsible for waging it. Just look at this and see how Islam has been trafficked as though it were a bonded slave, dressed up in bells and baubles to be whipped and sold in the marketplace.

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Note finally her remarks, in today’s piece, on fear and silence:

Much is at stake if people are not silent. Much is at stake if people remain silent.

[ … ]

I fear that Haj and the Ka’aba, a central principal of Islam, sacred to 1.2 billion people have been privatized, by an estimated 5000 people belonging to one family. Why? How is the privatization of the Ka’aba different from the wholesale seizure and privatization of the commons and public lands and spaces all over the world? I fear that the Ka’aba and the Haram Shareef which is sacred to 1.2 billion people has been privatized and occupied by the members of one family and that this is the same as what is happening to the entire world and its public goods and commons and public space which have been eroded and literally stolen from the people.

And now you can see, too, why I am reminded of Somoza and his farm, Nicaragua:

With this profound difference: that the Ka’aba is the Qibla, the point of orientation to which all Muslim prayer turns, as others orient their prayers towards Jerusalem.

[ by Charles Cameron — my new job, solutions-oriented thinking / writing about urban poverty in 6 cities ]
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Mapping Kibera, Nairobi

Yesterday was my first day at work on my new job with Urb.Im:

The urb.im network is a global community working for just and inclusive cities. It connects practitioners in six cities and throughout the world to establish an international community of practice and learning, sharing ideas and experiences in order to innovate, replicate, and scale working solutions to the problem of urban poverty. urb.im is a project of Dallant Networks and the Ford Foundation.

The six cities we’re focusing on are Mumbai, Rio, Lagos, Mexico DF, Nairobi and Jakarta — and we are strongly solutions-oriented.

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I imagine there will be considerable overlap between the diverse interests of those who follow Zenpundit and the specific cities and issues I’ll be working with at Urb.Im — so this is both a news bulletin about my new employment (suggesting I’ll now be focusing my attention on a new problem and solution set), and an invite to ZP readers to steer me towards relevant materials (eg via hipbonegamer on Twitter), and to join in the discussions at Urb.Im as appropriate.

One of my ambitions is to get some significant cross-website conversations going, so that the widest array of bright minds and good hearts gets together to spark new ideas and possibilities, and put existing resources on the map for all interested parties…

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And speaking of mapping…

The illustration above is of a map of schools in Kibera, Nairobi, one of the largest informal settlements in the world — mapping both problem areas and available solutions is a key element in the kind of work we’ll be doing. For more details on mapping Kibera, see this Urb.Im page, and to download and enlarge the Kibera education-map image, go here.