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[ by Charles Cameron — the Jewish Afghans — part 2 of a series on two end times videos that Tamerlan Tsarnaev “liked” ]
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At this point, we are about a quarter of the way into the Mahdist video I was describing in the first part of this post, and you’d be well-advised to catch up to speed there if you want to follow along here… with the fascinating story of the Afghan children of Isaac.

At [03.16, 03.28 and 03.37] the story begins to unfold [transcripts below]:

The first of these reads:

The army of Imam Mahdi will consist people fro the region of (ancient) Khorasan. Then a question arises: who will give hin alliegance (who will be the majority in his army)? Will it be a certain race or will all the inhabitans of Khorasan give their alliegance to him?

The second:

Pity poor Taliqan (a region in Afghanistan) that at that place are treasures of Allah, but these are not of gold and silver but consist of people who have recognized Allah as they should have

Al-Muttaqi al-Hindi, Al-Burhan fi Alamat al-Mahdi Akhir al-zaman, p.59

It is interesting to note that Harun Yahya quotes this same hadith under the heading “The Occupation of Afghanistan (1979)” and comments:

There is an indication that Afghanistan will be occupied during the Last Days. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan took place in 1979 (1400, according to the Islamic calendar).

The third is headed “Note” in red, and reads:

The word Taliqan not just mentions the Taliqan region of today only but it describes the whole of the area since in older times sometimes a name of small region describes the whole of the region for example the King of whole Afghanistan and many parts of Central Asia i.e. MAHMUD OF GHAZNI was known as the KING OF ZABUL (Persian Poet Firdausi always called him as SHAH-E_ZABUL in his famous poem “Shahnama Ferdausi”). Zabul was a small province but the whole area was known as ZABUL at that time. SO the word TALIQAN means the whole of the area of Khorasan and not just TALIQAN itself.

I have tried to copy the spelling and syntax of the original, which to my ear might betray a touch of the subcontinent — but may of course have introduced errors of my own, or those of some damnable auto-correct function.

To continue. There’s something decidedly educational going on here in this video – the first, I do believe, that I’ve seen footnoted in quite this way.

The next four text slides read [04.00, 04.10, 04.15 and 04.30]:

We now know that the army of Mahdi will come out of Khorasan with their black banners and as to the question earlier (will it be a certain race or will all the inhabitants of Khorasan give their alliegance to him?

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This answer is given to us when we read (the hadith in)
Saheeh Muslim Kitaab al-Fitan Hadith 2920

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Abu Huraira (RA) reported that the Prophet (SAW) said, you have heard about the city of which is in the land and the other is in the sea (Constantinople). They said, Allah’s Messenger, yes. Thereupon he said, The last hour would not come unless seventy thousand persons from BANI ISHAQ would attack it.

Ishaq/Isaac: son of brahim/Abraham, father of Yaqub/Jacob

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When they would land there, they will neither fight with weapons nor would shower arrows but would only say: “There is no god but Allah and Allah is the Greatest,” that one side of it would fall. Thaur (narrator) said: I think that he said: The part by the side of the ocean. Then they would say for the second time: “There is no god but Allah and Allah is the Greatest” that the second side would also fall, and they would say: “There is no god but Allah and Allah is the Greatest,” that the gates would be opened for them and they would enter therein and, they would be collecting spoils of war and distributing them amongst themselves that a noise would be heard and It would be said: Verily, Dajjal has come. And thus they would leave everything there and would turn to him.

And at this point, with pedagogical precision, there’s a numbered summary of what we’ve learned thus far [05.01]:

Then an Afghan appears in video [05.06 forward] —

— while what sounds to me liker a cultured British voice translates:

When I was young, and had no beard, my grandfather’s uncle died at the age of a hundred and fifteen. He used to say that we are the children of Israel. I am of the Musahem, the People of Moses.

Got that?

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And then things take another interesting turn. Our next screen-grab offers an introduction:

What follows is the “Jewish (Bible) scholar” — on camera —

saying [05.32]:

We are in a country that is supposedly dominated by Muslims, but not Muslims just any Muslims, Muslim fundamentalism, And yet, we come face to face with people that say, “We are Musahem – We are from the people of Moses”. Reuben, Gad, Ephraim, Shimon – four more tribes. So we’ve actually located nine of the tribes. Or, let me put it differently: we think we located nine of the tribes. If we haven’t located nine of the tribes, then it’s a very strange coincidence going on, that you have all these people, with Biblical names, with Biblical practices, with an Israelite memory, exactly where they should be according to the Biblical map.

I’m glad the next slide says, again, “And Allah knows best”. But then it segues into the Mahdi’s physical appearance, and again there’s a Jewish strand…

And Allah knows best
Now, let’s look at a hadith which explains Imam Mahdi’s appareance

Here [06.44] follows a long paragrapoh, which I’ve transcribed for easier reading:

The appearance of Imam Mahdi (according to AHadith) is that he has deep wheatish complexion, light stature, medium height,beautiful broad comlexion, long straight nose, eyebrows round like bow, big natural black eyes, very white front two teeth and with a spacing between the teeth, a black mole mark on the right cheek, face glowing like a shining star, a mark on shoulder like that of Prophet Muhammad (SAW),complexion like the Arabs and body like the Childern of Israel, slight stutter in the tongue due to which he hits his right hand on left thigh sometimes because of annoyance, will appear at the agae of 40 ,while praying to Allah he will expand his hands for prayers like birds expanding their wings, will be wearing Qutwani cloaks (the clothes of the Children of Israel), will resemble in character to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) but in appearance he will be different from Prophet Muhammad (SAW)

And this section closes with an illustration — again, presumably from Afghanistan — of what is meant by a Qutwani cloak [07.26]:

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I am going to take a break here, at the end of the section in which the people of Afghanistan, and indeed the Mahdi himself, are seen as having characteristics of the Children of Isaac.

In the third and, I hope final, section of this post, Jesus will make a stunning appearance, and attention will then turn back to Khorasan and the march of the black banners on Jerusalem… That final section of this post will, God willing, appear tomorrow.

In the meantime, I’ll also post Tamerlan Tsarnaev end times videos II: a Vinnie Paz video, which deals briefly with a second “end times” song that Tsarnaev “liked” — this one a whirl of contemporary conspiracy theories with Shaytan at the helm…

[ by Charles Cameron — out of the clear blue… ]
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I suppose you could think of this double image as representing “the ideal” (above) and “the real” (below). In actuality, the upper image is of “Cathedral Balloon @ Balloon Fiesta ’08” — while the lower image is of an actual Russian army chapel, of which the Guardian notes:

The latest addition to the Russian military arsenal takes the form of an airborne church complete with parachuting priests.

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Fr John Peck over at The Orthodox Church of Tomorrow gleefully tosses us this image from the Russian Airborne Force Press-Service:

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Not until that rather boxy parachuting chapel equals and indeed surpasses the great mediaeval cathedrals in splendor will we begin to be on our way to Revelation 21.21:

And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

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Hat-tip to Michael Robinson, my “go to” source (what an abysmal phrase, but language is never static. eh?) for all things antiquarian, aesthetic and ecclesial…

[ by Charles Cameron — finding a gem of a DoubleQuote on ChicagoBoyz ]
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As regular readers here will see, I have varied my usual DoubleQuotes format here to make room for the two particular quotes in question.

Taken together — as I found them in a post by Jay Manifold titled Quoted Without Comment today at ChicagoBoyz — they form a powerful, moving DoubleQuote, and I thought it was worth dropping them into the DQ format, thus essentially reposting Jay’s fine post here at Zenpundit.

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This business of “finding” DoubleQuotes in the writings of others confirms me in my suspicion that the form itself is a naturally occurring one, which can be sharpened into a powerful analytic tool once we recognize its utility and formalize it.

Jay provides a link to the Resilience Engineering book and references Chapter 13, Taking Things in One’s Stride: Cognitive Features of Two Resilient Performances.

My appreciative thanks to Jay Manifold and the ChicagoBoyz.

[ by Charles Cameron — the merest trifle — concerning things that go flash and bang, with potentially lethal consequences ]
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It’s exuberance, exhilaration, it’s celebration, it’s party time. It’s dangerous and stupid like the man says, and it’s unfortunate when your neighbors just happen to bear the brunt of it. It’s also pretty much human nature, in some places it’s how you celebrate your daughter’s wedding…

For your contemplative consideration:

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here’s the video to which the tweet in the upper panel above refers:

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The quote in the lower panel comes from a New York Times Magazine article today, Is This Where the Third Intifada Will Start?

[ by Charles Cameron — reflecting on the anthropology of honor – shame, its relevance to cover ups of many kinds, and its potential for impact in our search for a more peaceable modus vivendi ]
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Cardinal O'Brien & Lord Lennard, their images as juxtaposed on the Cranmer blog

Recent political news in the United Kingdom, from The Telegraph:

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has been forced to admit that his office knew for years of claims that a senior party figure might be sexually molesting volunteers and staff.

The Deputy Prime Minister changed tack in a statement on Sunday evening over the sex scandal which is engulfing his party.

He broke into the end of his holiday to admit for the first time that his office had been aware of the allegations surrounding his former chief executive Lord Rennard since 2008. But he said he was personally unaware of the claims.

Nick Clegg admits his office knew of Lord Rennard rumours for five years

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In today’s Wired, concerning a cover-up in the US Air Force:

A military jury found Lt. Col. James Wilkerson guilty of groping a sleeping woman’s breasts and vagina. But the Air Force wasn’t done with the “superstar” F-16 pilot. It reinstated Wilkerson to active duty and wiped away his conviction — but, to save face, is pledging not to promote him to full colonel.

[ … ]

Now the embarrassed Air Force is looking for a face saving way out of its institutional mess. Its answer thus far, reports Stars & Stripes, is to remove Wilkerson’s name from its promotions list. There’s an opportunity for Wilkerson to appeal the decision.

Air Force Accountability for Sexual Assault: Not Promoting Convicted Officer

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And concerning Lockheed and China, a short while back from emptywheel:

I’m just wondering out loud here: what if China did more than just steal data on the F-35 when it hacked various contractors, and instead sabotaged the program, inserting engineering flaws into the plane in the same way we inserted flaws in Iran’s centrifuge development via StuxNet?

[ … ]

I don’t know that we would ever know if this clusterfuck was caused with the assistance of China. It’s not like Lockheed would publicize such information, just as it asked for another $100 billion. And I don’t want to underestimate the defense industry’s ability to screw up all by themselves.

What if China Not Just Hacked — But Sabotaged — the F-35?

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I think one of the least appreciated parts of our human make-up is what anthros call the honor-shame system. It considers the honor of a larger group — the family, the regiment, the city, the nation, the corporation, the church — as of overriding importance, with personal considerations clearly secondary. And by honor I mean the respect with which the rest of society views it.

That’s the system that gives us “honor killings” in a swathe of countries, and in modified western form it’s also at the root of every cover-up, every attempt by hacks and flacks to put a good face on things — and it’s very much something that investigative journalism exists to uncover, just as PR attempts to cover it up.

To my mind, this is one of the big battlefronts in the world today, comparable perhaps to the battle post-Descartes between “enlightenment” and “superstition”. And when there’s murky business to cover up or admit to, corporations are often slower than individuals to ‘fess up — if only because the stock market favors appearances rather than realities. Until the bubble bursts.

And much the same is true for politicians and the electoral market, and for churches and the market in faith.

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My mentor Richard Landes believes honor-shame is a large part of the battlefront between “the Israelis” and “the Arab world” — he quotes these two definitions:

Politeness is not saying certain things lest there be violence; civility is being able to say those certain things and there won’t be violence.

and writes:

In an honour culture, it is legitimate, expected, even required to shed blood for the sake of honour, to save face, to redeem the dishonoured face. Public criticism is an assault on the very “face” of the person criticised. Thus, people in such cultures are careful to be “polite”; and a genuinely free press is impossible, no matter what the laws proclaim.

Modernity, however, is based on a free public discussion, on civility rather than politeness, but the benefits of this public self-criticism – sharp learning curves, advances in science and technology, economic development, democracy – make that pain worthwhile.

Leaving aside their applicability to the Israeli-Arab issue, are those fair distinctions between two modes of being? How much of the battle between those forces can be found in the world around us, in our politics, our economics situation, and so on?

How much impact did the differences between honor cultures and modernity have, in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Where else might this kind of conflict of values confront our leaders and ourselves?

How can we best handle interfaces between these two ways of experiencing, evaluating and acting in our shared world?