A follow-up piece from Furnish
[ by Charles Cameron — here Dr Furnish explores and explains the rival eschatologies afoot in the Syrian conflict ]
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The New Mahdi, from http://ghareb.deviantart.com/art/Ahat-ALGhareb-107961264 via Furnish
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Timothy Furnish has a new post up on Syria at his MahdiWatch blog, supplementing his recent guest post on Zenpundit, Reprehending Ignorance about Syria, in which he discussed sectarian issues, with Intervening (in Syria) Like It’s The End of the World?, in which he zeroes in on the strands of Mahdist expectation and enthusiasm on both sides of the conflict. Dr Furnish’s new post is long, so I’ll offer you some key paragraphs as a teaser, then suggest you go read the rest.
Iraq has always been more more central to Islamic history than far-eastern or far-western peripheries like Afghanistan or Libya, albeit less so than Syria. Iraq was on the fault-line between Western and “Eastern” civilizations, going back to Roman and Byzantine times, when it was a contested buffer zone between those empires and the various Persian ones. The region of Iraq itself was divided, after the coming of Islam, into Sunni and Shi`i sections — the former often under Ottoman Turkish rule, the latter in the orbit of (or at least doctrinally sympathetic to) the Safavid , and subsequent other Shi`i, Iranian states. To this day, especially post-American occupation (which empowered the Twelver Shi`i Iraqi majority to take power), Iraq is religiously and even eschatologically important for the Twelvers of the world primarily because six of the twelve Imams’ tombs are there and, after his reappearance, the returned 12th Imam al-Mahdi will rule from Kufa, Iraq. However, despite Baghdad’s undeniable importance as a political and intellectual center from its founding in 750 AD to its demise at the hands of the Mongols in 1258, Iraq pales in importance next to Syria for the majority Sunni Muslims, particularly Arab ones.
Syria was the first area outside the Arabian peninsula to be conquered, and not only was it taken from the superpower al-Rum (the Byzantine Christian Empire), but al-Sham, “Greater Syria” centered on Damascus included Jerusalem, the capture of which “proved” Islamic superiority to the other, corrupted monotheistic religions: Judaism and Christianity. This fervent triumphalism only intensified after the hated Crusaders were expelled from their 88-year occupation by the Syrian Kurd Salah al-Din in 1187, and the “Zionist occupation” of al-Quds (“The Holy”=Jerusalem) since 1948 is seen by many Arab (and other) Muslims are merely a temporary setback, which the Mahdi and Jesus will rectify. Thus many hadiths predict eschatological events transpiring in what the French and Brits used to call “the Levant,” the most important among them including: al-Sufyani, (a “type” of the Muslim antichrist, al-Dajjal, “the Deceiver”) will emerge from Syria; Christians will (re)conquer Syria; the Mahdi will reveal himself; the Dajjal himself appear; Jesus will return by descending into Damascus; the armies of the Mahdi and the Sufyani will battle; and Jesus will kill the Dajjal in or near Jerusalem. After all this the Mahdi and Jesus will jointly rule over a Muslim planet, and eventually both will pass away. The true end of history, and the Final Judgement, will not come for some years after that. Also: the Sunni Mahdi and the Twelver Shi`i one perform virtually the same role, the major differences being 1) the former will step onto the stage of history for the first time, whereas the latter will return from a millennium-old mystical ghaybah, or “occultation;” and 2) Sunni eschatologists prognosticate that the person whom Shi`is believe to be their 12th Imam will actually be the Dajjal—and Shi`is say the same about the Sunni Mahdi!
Thus, Syria is the most important eschatological venue of Islam, bar none. Quoting sayings of some of their twelve Imams, at least one Iranian government official has superimposed eschatological themes on the Syrian conflict — Hujjat al-Islam (or “Hujjatollah,” a cleric ranking below Ayatollah) Ruhollah Husayniyan, who claims that the strife in Syria is the prelude to the Imam al-Mahdi’s coming and revolution. (This sort of “newspaper exegesis” has been going on for years in Tehran and Qom, actually.) And Twelver Shi`is in neighboring Iraq and Lebanon are not only enthused about this idea, but have been motivated by Mahdism to go join the fight for Bashar al-Asad and the Alawi regime over against its Sunni opponents!
Here are Dr Furnish’s concluding words.
While certain writers in the US obsess about Evangelical Christians trying to fit the Syrian Islamic civil war into a Christian eschatological blueprint, the truth is that they have no significant political power (and the ones I know are adamantly against President Obama’s proposed strikes on the al-Asad military) — they just like to opine, talk, and sell books. The true believers in the Mahdi, the Sufyani and the return of the Islamic Jesus — who comprise hundred of millions of Muslims, according to polling data — should be the real focus of concern, most especially those of their ranks putting their beliefs into practice in Aleppo, Dayr al-Zur and Idlib. The Obama Administration would do well to consider the apocalyptic aspect of the Syrian civil war, before committing our forces to helping those of the Mahdi or the 12th Imam.
As I suggested earlier, now go read the whole thing.
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ICYMI, I think that final phrase — “before committing our forces to helping those of the Mahdi or the 12th Imam” — is one we should read with care in light of his earlier sentence:
Sunni eschatologists prognosticate that the person whom Shi`is believe to be their 12th Imam will actually be the Dajjal—and Shi`is say the same about the Sunni Mahdi!
Whichever side we might commit our forces to, in other words, we’d be supporting one strain of Mahdism or the other…
September 7th, 2013 at 9:59 pm
Charles,
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Thanks! I finally remembered your mild critique re my ending, so I changed it to this: “The Obama Administration would do well to consider the apocalyptic aspects of the Syrian civil war before committing our forces to helping those of the Mahdi (if we back the Sunni jihadist “opposition” via air strikes) or the 12th Imam (if we do nothing, and tacitly assist al-Asad and his Twelver Shi`i allies). ”
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Tim
September 7th, 2013 at 11:33 pm
“Whichever side we might commit our forces to, in other words, we’d be supporting one strain of Mahdism or the other…” would be better stated if “not committing our forces” could be worked into the idea as a form of support.
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But there are more than two sides to this equation.
September 8th, 2013 at 12:08 am
Thanks, Tim — much clearer IMO.
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And Curtis — agreed. I think Tim’s revised version takes care of your point as well as mine…
September 8th, 2013 at 3:52 am
Superb posts Tim and Charles, very informative.
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I will wager $100 that the ominous religious implications of US intervention in Syria Tim outlined was never considered ( or even heard) by the crowd in the White House basement, who according to our UN Ambassador believed that Russia and Iran could have been persuaded to drop Assad as a client and proxy by an American show and tell about a tactical use of poison gas by the regime ( while ignoring ghoulish rebel atrocities and use of CW).
September 8th, 2013 at 4:10 am
You’re welcome, Charles; and thank you, Zen. Of course this administration won’t consider religious motives, much less apocalyptic ones–after all, the DCI says that considering Islamic religious motives is verboten.
September 8th, 2013 at 2:08 pm
“the truth is that they have no significant political power”
But not an insignificant (though suppressed) history in the Levant.
Protestant Millenarienists were very active in the Near East in the 19th century and founded American University of Beirut.
You can trace the emergence of Al-Nahda renaissance and the Young Turk nationalist movement to their work.
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I wouldn’t dismiss their power to influence events so quickly
September 8th, 2013 at 2:15 pm
Grruray: good point. But neither JaN and other Sunni jihadist-caliphist groups nor the IRI and Hizbullah are taking their cues from Evangelical Christians–they are, rather, articulating and working out intrinsic Islamic beliefs.
September 8th, 2013 at 2:53 pm
Of course you are right, and our current policy makers aren’t taking cues from them either. Very good write-up.
However, exploring a strategy that takes into account things that worked for us in the past doesn’t sound like such a bad idea to me. It’s at least interesting to know there is another choice.
The problem is our leaders are currently caught in a post-normal, anti-colonialist orientation and have no time to revisit anything not fitting into their politically correct worldview.
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September 8th, 2013 at 4:38 pm
Grurray: Your last sentence is of course incredibly incisive!
September 9th, 2013 at 3:22 pm
I may be going against prevailing opinion here, but I do think the eschatological fantasies are secondary to realpolitik. They can get out of control (eventually) but there may still be an opportunity to upend both Mahdists and Imamists and take care of things using nothing more fantastical than brains and good old TNT. But the US (not just Obama, the system as a whole) is not going to be able to do that, so we are back to square one. http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2013/09/syria-the-case-for-inaction-or-action.html#more
btw, Maudoodi, in one of his books (I will have to look it up, but it is not an obscure reference) worked out that the final battle will take place at a place called Lod. Since Tel Aviv has an airport that happens to in Lod he was able to predict that the final battle will be in a suburb of Tel Aviv.
September 9th, 2013 at 4:23 pm
Thanks, Omar:
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My thinking regarding realpolitik and apocalypticism is that they are complexly entangled — for instance, the Abbasids had political reasons to draw on apocalyptic rhetoric in fabricating the “black banners” ahadith, but the popular response, then and now, must have had a strong apocalyptic component, or they wouldn’t have fabricated them, no? If we judge by results as they unfold, we may tend to see all apocalyptic rhetoric as a “cover” for realpolitik — but what we’re liable to miss using that lens is the gathering of potential apocalyptic enthusiasm “under the surface” — which, when it surfaces, can have profound and unexpected consequences, as in the case of Taiping, with 20 or more million dead. So my interest here is to track the undercurrents of Mahdism so as not to be too surprised if, at some point, they merge with or supersede “normal” realpolitik.
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As for the Maududi quote…
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It’s in The Finality of Prophethood, in the section of Traditions Relating to the Descent of Christ, Son of Mary, of which Maudid writes, “we record here authentic traditions on this subject with full references to the authoritative works on Hadith”:
Footnote 9 says:
September 9th, 2013 at 5:20 pm
Charles, I agree, but I meant that all this can still be contained (maybe, just maybe) but if it goes on, it will become a really almighty mess.
I guess “it will go on” does seem like the more realistic probability.
Thanks for the Maudoodi reference. You are amazing.
September 9th, 2013 at 6:48 pm
That trope about Lud/Lod shows up in a number of Arabic (Sunni) books on eschatology. I didn’t realize it came from Mawdudi. Thanks! And I totally agree with Charles, that it’s not a case of eschatology/Mahdism OR realpolitick — it can well be both/and.
September 9th, 2013 at 8:13 pm
My article from spring 2012 on Iranian eschatological views is relevant to what’s going on in Syria right now: http://hnn.us/article/138229
April 1st, 2014 at 7:56 pm
As Tim Furnish points out, Reuters has a piece on the battle of eschatologies, Sunni and Shia, in Syria — published today: Apocalyptic prophecies drive both sides to Syrian battle for end of time. Tim’s own more detailed description, of which I gave an excerpt above, was posted seven months ago.
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Stay ahead of the curve — read Furnish / Zenpundit!