Egypt: it’s the Mahdi!

February 12th, 2011 by Charles Cameron

[ by Charles Cameron ]

16_imam-zaman2-mahdi-from-tehran-times.jpg

image of the awaited Twelfth Imam from Tehran Times

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Here’s a report on remarks President Ahmadinejad made in celebration of the anniversary of the Iranian revolution, just hours before President Mubarak quit, from this morning’s Washington Post:

The crisis that has been roiling Egypt, a key U.S. ally in the region, dominated Friday’s celebration. Ahmadinejad said that the 12th imam Mahdi, a revered 9th-century Shiite saint, had directed the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.”

This is a global revolution, managed by the imam of the ages,” he told the crowds gathered in and around Tehran’s central Azadi Square.

He predicted the formation of a world government, ruled by the 12th imam: “Hearts and beliefs are swiftly leaning toward forming a global governance and the necessity of the rule of the perfect human, linked to the heavens.”

h/t @IbnSiqilli

I really should have seen that one coming!

Posted in ahmadinejad, analytic, Charles Cameron, framing, geopolitics, iran, islamic world, islamist, Religion, shia, washington post | 4 comments

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  1. Bryan Alexander:

    February 12th, 2011 at 3:33 pm

    You really should have.  🙂  I think of it as a Charles moment.
    .
    More seriously, is this statement a Shi’a celebrating Sunni chaos, and hoping for the latter’s eventual conversion?
    .
    PS: have you seen Jørgen Leth’s "The Perfect Human" (1967)?

  2. Charles Cameron:

    February 12th, 2011 at 7:48 pm

    Rummaging around for some quotes, Bryan, and I think Timothy Furnish may have some suggestions, too…
    .
    It’s a complex business, there are some efforts at Sunni-Shi’a rapprochement, but it’s not easy to see how Sunnis can accept as their Mahdi someone who claims to have been born the son of the eleventh Shi’a Imam.
    .
    On the other hand, here’s one quote from Taqrib, the journal of The World Forum for Proximity of Islamic Schools of Thought, editorial offices in Tehran:

    [I]n our camp it is possible for there to be people who work for the Ahl al-Bayt [lit: Family of the Prophet, i.e.: Shi’ites] without knowing the Ahl al-Bayt. This is also something very important. You may have a non-Shia who works for the Ahl al-Bayt better than many Shias. Indeed, you have some Shias that work against the Ahl al-Bayt. You may even have non-Muslims who are working for Imam Mahdi—for the cause of Imam Mahdi, for justice, for many things—and they may not even know who Imam Mahdi is. So it is not that whoever is not a Shia is not in our camp. … I believe that the majority of the people of the world are not against us; it is just our failure to present our ideas and to convince them that what we have is for all mankind. I think in particular, in the case of Imam Mahdi, we must do the same thing: we must not present Imam Mahdi as a saviour for the Shias. Imam Mahdi is not a saviour for [just] the Shias. Imam Mahdi is a saviour for all mankind…

    This is in line with the teachings of Mohammed Baqir as-Sadr, who wrote:

    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.

    I guess my point is that there’s quite a chasm, the Shi’a are making some attempts to bridge it, exactly what those attempts imply is not yet cleat at least to me — and there are also flat out contradictions of the possibility in which one side’s messiah is the other side’s antichrist — as in this quote from a Jihadist forum [link is to a non-jihadist source] about a year ago:

    The Shia is in the process of awaiting the appearance of al-Qaim or the 12th Imam or Imam Mahdi who have been hiding twice in the hole of Sardab in Sammara’. The following evidences have proven that the one who will be filling up the post of the 12th Imam is no other than Dajjal, based on the information from the religion of Shia itself (the hadiths and literary works associated as the words of their Imams [a.s.]). The Ahlus Sunnah must always be alert and careful and keep in their mind that the Shias are the followers and forces of Dajjal who will appear sooner or later.

    There’s a curious echo there, incidentally, of Joel Richardson’s notion that Islam’s Mahdi will be the Christian’s antichrist.
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    Indeed, the first words of Tim Furnish’s book Holiest Wars are One man’s messiah is another man’s heretic.

  3. Charles Cameron:

    February 12th, 2011 at 8:15 pm

    Ibn Siqilli just kindly sent me a couple more pointers: a Twelver Shi’i polemic on the 12th Imam, and Sunni polemic against the Twelfth Imam — and still we’re just talking background, not the specifics of interpreting Ahmadinejad’s statement re Egypt.

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