zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — more of some familiar ZP themes, now in a new container ]
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There are several matters of special interest to me that I’d like to draw your attention to in the new magazine, Azan, just issued from the Afghanistan / Pakistan region:

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First, Azan has a major article devoted to the Dajjal [pp. 38 ff.], the end times figure in Islam equivalent to the Christian antichrist. Here’s the introduction:

The world today stands nearer to the Day of Judgment than ever. 1434 years after the migration of the last Prophet (May Allah’s Blessings be upon him), the conflict between the satan and the human being is nearing its final stage. It is therefore crucial that the world events that are unfolding themselves in quick succession be viewed by the and analyzed by the Muslims in the light of the Divine Shariah. Of the Islamic scholars who have dedicated themselves to this pristine cause is Maulana ‘Asim Umer (May Allah Protect him) whose books regarding Islamic eschatology have proved invaluable in guiding the Ummah through these troubled times. In addition, the Maulana (HA) is, by his self, part of the global Jihad caravan that is seeking to implement the Khilafah on Allah’s Earth. This article is about the state of the world before the advent of Dajjal, the false Messiah (Antichrist in the Biblical Tradition). It carries an eerie resemblance to the world we live in today.

It looks as though this excerpt comes from “Third World War and Dajjal: Maulana ‘Asim ‘Umar Page 111-114 8th Edition” [p. 41].

Sadly, I lack Urdu — along with Bangla, Arabic and most everything else.

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Second, the “sign of the times” that’s emphasized in the article — the “fitna of the Dajjal” — is one that would appeal to those who already mistrust world leaders and the press…

The truth would be indistinguishable from falsehood and the callers to misguidance would be plentiful. The propaganda during his time would be so ghastly that the truth would be presented as falsehood and the falsehood would be presented as the truth. And this twisted reality would be broadcast to the entire world. The enemies of humanity would be shown as saviors while the real saviors of humanity would be shown as “terrorists.”

That is why the Prophet Muhammad explained the Fitnah of Dajjal in great detail.

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Third, there’s a sidebar to that article from al-Awlaki [p.41], titled Shaykh Anwar Al-Awlaki (RA) on the Final Battle. He suggests we are nearing the end times:

So the upcoming battle will be either lose it all or win it all and that is part of al-Malhama. It will be the final battle between Kufr and Iman; it will be a battle that will give victory to this Muslim Ummah. It’s not the end of it all as you still have Dajjal, Ya’juj and Ma’juj; but that battle will be the battle that will establish the Islamic Khilafah on a global scale.

So this is an indication that we are getting close to those times. Now, if we are getting close to those times, you really don’t want to be sitting on the sidelines and lose out on all of this reward in this Golden Era; because it is a Golden Era. Upon reading these ahadith, people would wish they were there; and here we are living in those times sitting on the sidelines just as Shaykh ‘Abdullah Yusuf ‘Azzam (rahimahullah) said, “The Jihad was a market that opened, people made a lot of money, and then the market closed.” It’s not going to last forever; if you sit behind, if you hesitate, if you are reluctant, then you will miss out because the chance only comes once.

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Fourth, in a round-up of jihadist fronts from around the world, there are a few paragraphs devoted to the Ghazwah e-Hind, termed here “the Jihad of Hind” [pp. 15-16]:

As for the Jihad of Hind (present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh), it comes in a Hadith:

Abu Huraira (RA) narrates that, “The Prophet Muhammad promised us the Jihad of Hind. If I get a chance to be part of that then I would spend my whole wealth and life in that. Then if I’m martyred, I’ll become the best of martyrs and if I return alive, then I will be a free-from-hell Abu Huraira.” [Sunnan Al-Nisai]

“Thauban (RA) narrates in a Marfoo’ Hadith that the Messenger of Allah said that there are two Jama’ahs (groups) in my Ummah for whom Allah Has Decreed salvation from Hell. One of these Jama’ahs is the one that will wage Jihad in Hind and the second Jama’ah is the one that will wage Jihad with Isa (AS) after he descends during the last days.” [Tibrani Shareef]

With such glad tidings from the Messenger of Allah [saw], the Mujahideen of Pakistan have their firm sights on freeing both India and Pakistan from the rule of the disbelieving rulers and to establish Shariah in all these lands once more. May Allah Grant victory to them! Ameen!

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And finally, there’s mention of the obligatory black banners of Khorasan [pp. 13-15]:

Black flags were unfurled from Khorasaan just as the Prophet Muhammad [saw] had foretold:

“Black flags will emerge from Khorasaan, and nothing will hold them back until they plant (their flags) in Eeliyah (Jerusalem).” [Sunnan At- Tirmidhi]

So, if indeed these Taliban are the flag bearers mentioned in the Hadith, then they shall inshAllah march forth to and conquer Jerusalem. And this is a note to the “powers” of today. In fact, the Shariah of the Taliban gained such acceptance with Allah The Exalted, that He Made the land of Afghanistan the base for the start of the global Jihad movement.

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The black flags of Khorasaan became being unfurled all around and the sacred call to Tawheed (monotheism) was renewed.

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There is plenty more, of course, and I’ve cherry-picked the bits that bear on specific themes I have been exploring here at ZP that have end times relevance.

Aaron Zelin has made a .pdf of the magazine available via Jihadology. Bahukutumbi Raman discusses it from an Indian intelligence perspective on his blog. Reuters looks at what the magazine has to say about drones. And no doubt others will be providing analysis from various other perspectives in the coming days.

[ by Charles Cameron — taking a break from my pressing writerly duties ]
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I wouldn’t have noticed these two offerings quite so clearly if I hadn’t been pointed to each of them in the last couple of days. Both look to be of considerable interest:

Artur Beifuss & Francesco Trivini Bellini, Branding Terror: The Logotypes and Iconography of Insurgent Groups and Terrorist Organizations
Asiem El Difraoui, The Jihad of Images

Hat-tip Nico Prucha at Jihadica, and who or whatever pointed me to HuffPo — idenitfy yourselves and be saluted!

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The first image in the HuffPo slideshow for Branding Terror (lower image, below, AQIM) really hit me square between the eyes, because when I was in Mashhad, Iran, in the early seventies, I snarfed up a postcard with a very similar design — Shi’ite rather than Sunni, and not so distinctly violent (upper image):

Some things just don’t seem to change.

[ by Charles Cameron — often puzzled & shocked at the way some algorithms behave in public ]
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I was on Silobreaker this evening, looking at a page called Dead Terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev Channeled Islamic Videos, and what I found curious was this little network diagram, presumably algorithmically-generated from the Silobreaker database:

I have to tell you, I like network diagrams — but what are we supposed to infer from that?

Do you see the same diagram when you visit the site — or is this display just for me, knowing what books I buy, what movies I see, what friends I have — and tailored to sell me something, or get my vote?

[ by Charles Cameron — how to tell an authentic Mahdist “black banner” — from a false flag, perhaps? ]
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There has been considerable talk about black flags featuring the Shahada:

This is the creed of Islam, and reads, “There is not God but God, and Muhammad is the Prophet of Allah.”

And more recently, of black flags featuring the seal of Muhammad:

Will McCants wrote of this:

When the ISI adopted the flag, it issued a statement in 2007 explaining its design. In the statement, the group relates oral traditions portraying Mohammad’s battle flag as either black or white (other traditions say yellow) with the words “No god but God, Mohammad is the messenger of God” written on it. The ISI chose black for its flag because most accounts say the Prophet’s flag was black, and chose the Muslim testimony of faith because many accounts said it was written on the Prophet’s flag.

For the second half of the testimony of faith, “Mohammad is the messenger of God,” the ISI reproduces the Prophet’s seal. They contend that the seal’s design is preserved in Ottoman manuscripts and its three-lined text, “God/Messenger/Mohammad,” is mentioned in oral traditions about the Prophet. They have added this seal to their flag, they explain, because some Muslim scholars say that it appeared on the Prophet’s flag.

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I therefore thought it worth noting that al-Islam.org — which presents Islam “with particular emphasis on Twelver Shia Islamic school of thought” — has a section on The Slogan on the Flag of the Uprising in Chapter 7, The Uprising of the Imam of the Time (‘atfs) of Najmuddin Tabasi‘s An Overview of the Mahdi’s (‘atfs) Government, which reads:

Every government has a flag by which it can be recognized, and uprisings and revolutions also have particular flags whose logos bespeak of the objectives of their leaders. The global revolution of Hadrat al-Mahdi (‘a) has also a specific flag on which a slogan has been inscribed. Of course, although there are differences with respect to the slogan on his flag, there is a common point in all the statements and that is: It invites the people to obey him (‘a).

Now, it would suffice to mention some pertinent instances:

It has been recorded in a hadith: “It is thus written on the flag of Hadrat al-Mahdi (‘atfs): ‘Listen and obey him’.”

Elsewhere, we read: “The slogan of al-Mahdi’s (‘atfs) flag is al-bay‘atu lillah (the allegiance for the sake of Allah).”

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Just a little different, eh?

Well, that’s it — just a footnote to ponder.

[ by Charles Cameron — wanna know the very latest on those black banners from Khorasan? ]
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Here’s the scene that greeted four British recruits to the jihad on their arrival at a training camp in Pakistan in August 2011:

This wasn’t like the training camps of propaganda videos, with the black flag of al-Qaeda flying free in the wind. There were no racks of weapons waiting for recruits. And all the trainers had left for the religious festival of Eid.

They came home to the UK, where their families “berated” them, they were arrested, tried, found guilty and sentenced to 40 month terms in prison.

With jihad, as with so much else, you can’t always count on truth in advertising.

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And then there’s Omar Hammami.

Even Rusty Shackleford from My Pet Jawa — “a weblog comparing Muslims to Jawas and containing criticism and satire of Islamic traditions and beliefs” — can’t help but like Omar Hammami, aka Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki, the American jihadist from Alabama who, as Wired puts it, “shoots the breeze” on Twitter “with the people whose job it is to study and even hunt people like him.” He does it with verve, even when ridiculing al-Shabab, the group he was put on the the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist List with a $5 million bounty for joining:

Shackleford commented, “I’ve actually become kinda fond of the guy — if that’s possible”.

Al-Shabab, however, appears to dislike him enough to have tried to assassinate him a couple of days ago, following up their failure with a major attack, results as yet unknown.

With jihad in foreign lands, apparently, you can’t even trust your fellow mujahidin to treat you better than your avowed enemies.