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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 — Ansar al-Din destruction of shrines in Timbuktu expands to include elimination of mosque door and haram eschatological belief ]
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@tweetsintheME This was the Door of al-Qiyama (aka “all hell will break loose if you open it door”). Guess it has. twitter.com/vatyma/status/…

— vatyma (@vatyma) July 2, 2012

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Various positions can be taken, with significantly different emphases, concerning the destruction of the shrines and mausoleums of Timbuctu.

There is the military assessment:

The international community fears the vast desert area will become a new haven for terrorist activity and the Islamists have threatened any country that joins a possible military intervention force in Mali.

The legal opinion:

International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda on Sunday warned that the destruction could amount to a war crime. “My message to those involved in these criminal acts is clear: stop the destruction of the religious buildings now,” Bensouda told AFP in an interview in Dakar. “This is a war crime which my office has authority to fully investigate.”

The attacks come just days after UNESCO declared Timbuktu an endangered world heritage site, so there is the cultural preservation argument:

United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon deplored the destruction of tombs, with his spokesman Martin Nesirky quoting him as saying: “Such attacks against cultural heritage sites are totally unjustified.”

There is the condemnation from much of the Islamic world:

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation condemned the destruction, saying in a statement the sites were “part of the rich Islamic heritage of Mali and should not be allowed to be destroyed by … bigoted extremist elements.”

and:

Algeria condemned the destruction of tombs which “constitute a homage and a recognition by the local people to the saints and scholars who contributed to the flourishing of Islam in the region and to the spread of the values of tolerance and spirituality.”

And then there is the reason given by the Ansar al-Din themselves:

“God is unique. All of this is haram (forbidden in Islam). We are all Muslims. UNESCO is what?” spokesman Sanda Ould Boumama said on Saturday. He said the group was acting in the name of God and would “destroy every mausoleum in the city. All of them, without exception”.

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Here’s how the locals saw the destruction of one specific door into the Mosque of Sidi Yahia in Timbuktu:

Islamist militants in northern Mali on Monday destroyed the ‘sacred’ door of one of Timbuktu’s three ancient mosques after smashing seven tombs of muslim saints over the weekend, witnesses said. “The Islamists have just destroyed the door to the entrance of the Sidi Yahya mosque… they tore the sacred door off which we never open,” said a resident of the town. A former tour guide in the once-popular tourist destination said: “They came with pick-axes, they cried ‘Allah’ and broke the door. It is very serious. Some of the people watching began crying.”

Another man, a relative of a local imam (religious leader), said he had spoken to Islamist group Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith) who have gone on a rampage destroying cultural treasures after occupying the town for three months. “Some said that the day this door is opened it will be the end of the world and they wanted to show that it is not the end of the world.” The door on the south end of the mosque has been closed for centuries due to local beliefs that to open it will bring misfortune.

All quotes above from various versions of Serge Daniel’s AFP reporting, see eg: Islamists smash Timbuktu relics, plant mines in north Mali.

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Did you catch that?

Some said that the day this door is opened it will be the end of the world and they wanted to show that it is not the end of the world.

There’s irony for you: the Ansar destroyed the ancient door to demonstrate that it wouldn’t bring on the Yawm al-Qiyamah, the Day of Judgment and Resurrection — they’re demythologizing the legend that has it that it will open only on the Day — in the stilted translation offered by Google:

The Abu Turab; who is a member of Ansar al-Din, he emphasized that what happened is the kind of “Aspects of the elimination of superstition and heresy, and the excuse they may reach a trap,” adding: “We have heard our ears that there is a door in the courtyard of the Mosque of Sidi Yahia old if open The Resurrection, and verified what we learned from it that he canceled the door in the courtyard of the mosque is the door has been canceled accumulation Vtm filled soil on it.

Indeed, the photo in the tweet at the head of this post — which is subtitled The process of opening the door of the Holy Sepulchre in Tinbactu — actually downloads under the title “bab alqyama” — door of the Day of Resurrection.

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Belief in the Last Day, the Yawm al-Qiyamah, is mandatory of Muslims in accordance with the revelation of Qur’an 4.136:

O ye who believe! Believe in Allah and His Messenger, and the scripture which He hath sent to His Messenger and the scripture which He sent to those before (him). Any who denieth Allah, His angels, His Books, His Messengers, and the Day of Judgment, hath gone far, far astray.

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Here’s an image of one of the beautiful doors from the same mosque:

photo credit: Jean-Luc Dighaye, EurAstro visit to Mali

I am not clear whether this is a photo of the same door which was destroyed, however, and would appreciate any further info.

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You might like to drink a cool glass of water at this point, to cleanse your palate…

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Here’s my preferred quote on opening doors into sacred space:

When you have grown still on purpose while everything around you is asking for chaos, you will find the doors between every room of the interior castle thrown open, the path home to your true love unobstructed after all.

St. Teresa of Avila

h/t kathe izzo, who tweeted this today for reasons unconnected with Timbuctu as far as i can tell…

[ by Charles Cameron — Egyptian presidency, Mahdist candidate, Center for Millennial Studies, Christ candidate ]
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Source.
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I ran across this reasonably remarkable web image while following a link from the tail end of Tim Furnish‘s comments on the Egyptian presidential election, and can’t really comment on the candidate himself, either as Mahdi-claimant or as (failed) aspirant to the Presidency.

I am, however, put in mind of my days with the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, and a fellow I met at one of their conferences there called Chris King. But I’ll let another friend of mine from those days make the introduction — here’s Damian Thompson, writing in the Daily Telegraph a while back:

I spent the evening of December 31, 1999, climbing up the Mount of Olives, only to be confronted by a wild-haired messiah figure in a patchwork robe walking down the slope. That was surprising enough, but my jaw really dropped open when he said: “Hi, Damian.” Turned out we’d met a few weeks earlier, at a conference organised by the Center for Millennial Studies in Boston. The “messiah” was a Kiwi maths lecturer called Chris King, which he explained also meant “Christ the King”, though only in a complex esoteric way. (He was a lovely guy, actually.)

Chris King was, as Damian reports, both a likeable guy and an academic, and what I found most appealing about his self-presentation — beyond the very fact of his turning up to attend a conference on Millennial Studies — was that his view, essentially a gnostic one, was that we are all Christs in potentia, if we would but realize it… wait for it…

and his consequent request that his claim to messianic status should be peer-reviewed!

[ by Charles Cameron — some recent game references with seriously playful intent ]
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Two things, really.

If you read the Jerusalem Post, you’ll likely have seen that:

Iran, Russia, China and Syria will hold the Middle East’s largest ever war game, Iranian news outlets reported quoting unnamed sources.

According to the report, 90,000 troops, 400 warplanes and 1,000 tanks from the four countries will take part in land and sea exercises. The war games will feature Russian atomic submarines, according to Iranian media, as well as warships, aircraft carriers and mine-clearing destroyers. Semi-official Iranian FARS news agency stated that the exercise was being planned in coordination with Egypt, which recently acceded to grant the passage of 12 Chinese warships through the Suez Canal. The report stated that the Chinese naval convoy is due to dock in Syrian harbors within the next two weeks.

That’s pretty much on the materiel side of things, IMO.

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On the other hand, if you read Joel Rosenberg, you’ll have seen all that and more — and then this:

The story is particularly intriguing — and disturbing — in light of Bible prophecies in Ezekiel 38-39 that indicate a Russian-Iranian military alliance will develop in the “last days” to attack the nation of Israel. In my first nonfiction book, Epicenter, and in my novel, The Ezekiel Option, I describe these prophecies in detail. While it remains too early to know for certain if the “War of Gog and Magog” prophecies are going to be fulfilled in the near future, geopolitical trends in recent years and even in recent months have been curiously consistent with the ancient Biblical text. A militaristic Czar — Vladimir Putin — has risen to power in Russia. Putin is the only Russian leader in history to visit Israel (7 years ago), and is preparing to visit again on June 25, trying to make the Israelis feel comfortable with him. Yet Russia has been selling billions of dollars in arms to Iran and other nations described in the prophecies. Russia is currently sending naval ships and forces to Syria. Israelis are living more securely in the land, and are more prosperous, than ever in their modern history, also consistent with the prophecies.

Followed without a paragraph break by:

To learn more about the prophecies of Ezekiel 38-39, please click here.

And the headline?

That’s more morale than materiel, I’d say!

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So that’s Thing One, as Dr Seuss might put it. But what about Thing Two?

The big, apocalyptic war games are for big fellows like Gog, Magog and Putin, guys who can afford to wear the big-boy pants.

What about the little guys and gals?

That, YNet tells us, is where a spot tourism might come in handy…

Gush Etzion has become a hot destination in recent months for tourists seeking an Israeli experience like no other: The opportunity to pretend-shoot a terror operative. Residents of the nearby settlements, who run the site, offer day-trippers a chance to hear stories from the battleground, watch a simulated assassination of terrorists by guards, and fire weapons at the range.

The fact that the tourist attraction is located beyond the Green Line only intensifies the thrill for the visitors, who often appear disappointed when told by their guides that they are not in any danger.

That strikes me as just a tad messianic, too… in a very post-modern sort of way.

Cute pic from that YNet article, photo credit Alex Kolomoisky:

To judge by the surrounding text, that young lady’s from Miami. She’s five.

[ by Charles Cameron — fear, hope, the Egyptian military, the Supreme Court, the Muslim Brotherhood, certainty and roulette ]
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The Apocalypse is a trump card — the Final Trump card if you will.

And because we so often associate “apocalyptic” with devastation and “post-apocalyptic” with a glowing nuclear waste-land, I’d like to establish first the joyous feelings the word “apocalypse” can also evoke. From Handel‘s Messiah, then, the glorious sound of the apocalyptic trumpet:

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That sounds pretty terrific, granted, but as we all know, apocalypse also has a darker side — in fact it is a two-sided business, offering both maximal terror and optimal hope.

On the one hand, as Yeats puts it:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

While on the other, as John of Patmos says, “I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”

Utmost disintegration and devastation — and the immaculate hope of a new heaven and a new earth.

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As we watch events unfolding in Egypt, then, there are some specifically apocalyptic themes in the air, both on the Egyptian Islamic side…

… where a vision-swept crowd can chant for the triumph of Islam in Jerusalem … and on the Christian side, where an apocalyptic writer such as Joel Richardson can use that same clip to reinforce a message of the lateness of the hour from the other side of the apocalyptic coin:

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We can, it seems to me, react to the clip of the TV preacher Safwat Hijazi in at least four ways — with jubilation, as the crowd in the video does; with quiet satisfaction, as the politicians of the MB who stand to gain from his support presumably do; with fear, as those of us roused by the video to a vision of the Middle East plunging headlong, unavoidably, into war are likely to do; or with concern — a more temperate approach, and one that await further details, further indicators, further events unfolding.

I don’t think it’s time, yet, to place any bets. Dr. Hegazi’s statement, and the crowd’s response, certainly concern me. The motif of a victorious march of Islam to retake Jerusalem is and end times motif, and I can think of few things more terrifying than a Mahdist army on the march.

But we are not there yet, Dr Hegazi is articulating a dream, not a party political program. And between that dream — a powerful one, to which many Egyptians are clearly susceptible — and its realization we have the moderating factors of realpolitik, of the Supreme Court rulings just a day or two ago — and of the power and entrenched financial interests of the Egyptian military.

In watching the video of Dr Hegazi it is possible to forget all this and be swept up by fear, just as the crowd was swept up by hope of conquest.

And as I’ve said before, I take comfort also in the fact that Joel Richardson is at pains not only to argue, from his own perspective, for the conversion of Muslims — but also to renounce the use of explicitly Christian force until that Trumpet sounds:

I explained to my host that unless a supernatural man bursts forth from the sky in glory, there is absolutely nothing that the world needs to worry about with regard to Christian end-time beliefs. Christians are called to passively await their defender. They are not attempting to usher in His return. Muslims, on the other hand, are actively pursuing the day when their militaristic leader comes to lead them on into victory. Many believe that they can usher in his coming.

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From my point of view, then, we should be cautious, informed and deliberative. This is not the time to be leaping to conclusions.

I am no expert on Egypt. What I am attempting here is to be aware of the apocalyptic current that was stirring in that Egyptian crowd — and of the apocalyptic currents stirring here, also, in the United States — with calm, with moderation, with an eye to the other influences, some of them both powerful and entrenched, which will themselves tend to divert, moderate, arouse or inflame the situation.

The Supreme Court. The election and whatever comes of it in terms of both power and backlash. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. American dollars. Israeli nukes. The inevitable ebbing away at some point of heightened emotions. The economics of tourism…

The unknowns…