News Abroad

Iran’s New Mahdism Da`wah Video: Letting Slip the Jinns of Jihad?

by Timothy R. Furnish

Timothy R. Furnish, Ph.D., is a recovering college professor and current writer, researcher and analyst specializing in Islamic history, sects, eschatology, ideology and Mahdism. He learned Arabic at taxpayers' expense while in the U.S. Army and, later, studied Farsi, Turkish and Ottoman while a doctoral student at Ohio State University. He blogs at Occidental Jihadist.

Recently the Islamic Republic of Iran put out a video entitled"The Coming Is Upon Us," wherein current events and personalities are explicated in terms of their alleged relevance to the arrival of the Mahdi, the"rightly-guided one" in Islam who will make the entire world Muslim. In Sunni doctrine, the true Mahdi has not yet appeared on Earth (despite the proliferation of mutamahdis, or"false mahdis," over the centuries, as I detail in my first book Holiest Wars). For the Twelver Shi`i Muslims of Iran (as well as Iraq and Lebanon), on the other hand, the Mahdi has already been here, in the person of the twelfth male descendant of Islam's founder Muhammad. This final Imam, according to Twelver Shi`a the rightful leader of the entire ummah, is believed to have disappeared in the ninth century AD /third century AH—a belief which, from a rational historical perspective, would have developed in order to explain away his death and, with it, the extinction of the line of imams and of Twelver Shi`ism. In both Sunni and Twelver Shi`i thought the Mahdi will be assisted by the returned Islamic prophet Jesus in defeating the forces of evil led by al-Dajjal, the"Deceiver" (analogous, in some respects, to the Antichrist of Revelation), whereupon he will go on to establish a global caliphate or imamate. In both major sects of Islam there are views of the Mahdi as doing so peacefully; but there are also equally strong traditions that the Mahdi will usher in malakut Allah, the"kingdom of Allah," via bloody jihad against those who refuse to acknowledge the prophethood of Muhammad and supremacy of Allah. The jinn of Mahdism was released from its lamp after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, having been largely stoppered by the Pahlavi shahs; but it took the election of Mahmud Ahmadinejad, 2005, for the Mahdist ayatollahs (and not all are) to begin a concerted effort aimed at getting Sunni Muslims (and, indeed, even Christians) to buy Mahdist lamps—or at least give them an exploratory rubbing and see what comes forth.

The 28-minute video opens with the usual suspects of Mahdist iconography: nature, fast-forwarded opening flowers, sunrises—presumably in order to emphasize the peaceful, renewing character of Islam's messiah figure. This bucolic imagery then transforms into shots of mosques, chanting crowds in Qom, the Ka`bah and the Arabic name al-Husayn in red script (Husayn, one of Muhammad's grandsons, is the chief Twelver"martyr," having been decapitated following an abortive coup against the ruling Sunni Umayyad dynasty in 680 AD). After that come ominous shots of Middle East maps, President Obama, Saddam, al-Qadhafi, Nasrallah. After this apocalyptic stage-setting, the video segues into a pattern of citing specific Sunni and Shi`i eschatological hadith texts (which are extra-Qur'anic sayings allegedly going back to Muhammad or, for Shi`is, to the 12 Imams) then adducing events, individuals and/or situations that supposedly fulfill these utterances.

The first is the hadith about"a people [who] will rise from the East, preparing the way for the Mahdi." Brief videos of the Islamic Republic's founding fathers, ayatollahs Khomeini and Khameini, follow right after and merge seamlessly with an explication of the hadith about"the emergence of the Khurasani." Khurasan being an ancient Arabic term for eastern Iran/western Afghanistan, it's only logical in the Mahdist mindset to follow this hadith with shots of Ahmadinejad (but images of Moqtada al-Sadr, head of southern Iraq's Jaysh al-Mahdi milita, are a bit perplexing). The fifth Imam, al-Baqir, is quoted to the effect that three major signs—"fear, great earthquakes and sedition"—will precede the Mahdi's arising. A Shi`i hadith that another sign presaging the Mahdi will be"the worst kind of humans becoming leaders" is adduced; this of course is followed by a most unflattering shot of George W. Bush, as well as ones of Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama. (So much, it seems, for the promise of President Obama restoring our image in the Islamic world.) Prurient pictures of bare-headed Muslimahs accompany the Alid hadith that"women will rid themselves of the hijab," while the Muhammadan one that"adultery will be common, men will dress like women, and men and women will consort each with their own sex" is illustrated with shots of gay and lesbian parades in—where else?—San Francisco.

Hammering home the theme of the"nation from the East" that will serve as John the Baptist to the Mahdi's Messiah, images of Khomeini are interspersed with ones of a man on a white horse, his head hidden inside a bright cloud of light—who will, presumably, do something about the slaughter of"1 million Muslims" by the West; the 10,000 nuclear weapons held by the Americans; the 1 billion in the world who are hungry; and the myriads of youth who"worship evil." Francis"Hokoyama" is shown, along with a quotation from his The End of History, stating that Islam is the only system that"threatens the modernized West." This, presumably, allowed America to rationalize its post-9/11"war against Islam." It is suggested that the Americans invaded Iraq because they might have been"looking for certain individuals"—like the Mahdi; Iraq (Kufa), after all, will be the Mahdi's world capital.

Some Twelver scholars believe that after the Mahdi's appearance, the first of his foot soldiers to arrive will be from Yemen; thus, the attacks by the Yemeni and Saudi governments on the Shi`is of Yemen (the Zaydis, who are Fiver Shi`is with whom the Twelver of Iran had ancient ties) makes perfect sense in this light. As for Egypt, the fall of Mubarak and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood there are perfectly in accord with unspecified hadith. Regarding Palestine, Imam Ali is quoted to the effect that"the Jews will come from the West while the Arabs are disunited." The video claims that"the current generation will witness the defeat of the murderous Zionist regime," the annihilation of which"is one of the most important events in the age of the Coming." The Saudis are equated to the Abbasids, the ruling dynasty in Baghdad from 750-1258 which stymied Twelver Shi`i aspirations to power. As for Iran itself, unspecified hadiths that speak of Iran"serving as preparer of the conditions for the coming of the last messiah" and of"a man from the city of Qom" being instrumental in this, are highlighted with shots of Khomeini.

The"man of Khurasan," or"Sayyid Khurasani," who will lead the people of the East before the coming of the Mahdi is said to be—of course—Ayatollah Khameini. Now while Khameini does ostensibly meet the hadiths of"disorder in his right hand" (partial paralysis thanks to a near-assassination) and an army to put at the Mahdi's service ("scores of warships, hundreds of bombers, thousands of missiles and millions of willing martyrs" under his command), his Azerbaijani origin makes it a stretch to say that he is from Khurasan. The"Yamani" eschatological figure is said to be Hassan Nasrallah, head of Lebanon's Hizbullah Shi`i militia—because it is claimed that his ancestors came to Lebanon from Yemen. The Khurasani and the Yamani will" coordinate the revolt against evil"—and in case there was any doubt about the nature of this evil, a burning American flag accompanies this section.

As for the Dajjal, we are treated to a montage of Usama bin Ladin, al-Qadhafi, King Abdullah of Jordan, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Obama and the King of Saudi Arabia—who are, it seems,"types" of the actual Iblistic (Satanic) figure who will oppose Jesus and the Mahdi. The Dajjal, of course, is linked to the Freemasons, who aspire to"a devilish government of the world centered in Jerusalem" and whose signs are the"devilish eye" (the reverse side of the Great Seal of the U.S., the famous"Novus Ordo Seclorum" with the eye on top of the pyramid) and the"six-pointed star" (of David). George Bush is shown making the sign of the devil—which Iranian propaganda film makers seem to have confused with the University of Texas"hook'em horns" hand sign. All these Freemasons and satanic Texans work for the Dajjal—who looks amazingly like the Witch King of"Lord of the Rings."

Another positive eschatological figure who will set the geopolitical table for the returned
Twelfth Imam is Shoaib bin Saleh, sourced from Shi`i hadith and rumored to be President Ahmadinejad of Iran. He will be appointed by the Khurasani, and will have as his final goal the conquest of Jerusalem just before the Mahdi returns. Many shots of Jamkaran Mosque (where it is believed by many Iranians that the Mahdi will rematerialize) and of Ahmadinejad drive home this point. The video ends with the co-narrators pleading for viewers to" come forth with the jihad of faith" because"we have the hope of seeing the beautiful face of the Last Imam in the very near future."

Very little here is new under the sun—at least to anyone who has been following Islamic Mahdism, and Iran, closely. As I wrotein"The Lutheran Witness" following my trip to Tehran in 2008 for the annual Mahdism conference:"It was clear that the conference—and the sponsoring, government-funded Bright Future Institute—had a dual aim. On one level, it was an attempt to spread Mahdism among Sunni Muslims, to convince them it's acceptable to believe in the Mahdi….Shi`i Iran is hoping to rival Sunni Saudi Arabia as the leading Islamic nation, and is trying—with some success—to use belief in the Mahdi as leverage to do so. But the ayatollahs who rule Iran are also trying to gain influence in the non-Muslim world by pushing Mahdism among Jews and particularly Christians, claiming that the messianic hopes of both religions will be fulfilled in the Twelfth Imam, the Mahdi." The Islamic Republic has also, since its inception in 1979, seen itself as the self-appointed leader of the planet's dispossessed over against the"arrogant powers" who exploit them—putting Iran at loggerheads with the not just the most arrogant power, the U.S., but the entire post-World War II international political, diplomatic and economic system which the U.S. vouchsafes. Since one of the Mahdi's major goals will be to institute a globally"just" economic order, it is incumbent upon the ayatollahs and their supporters to begin creating such an equitable Islamic state in microcosm in Iran—which is what Tehran and Qom believe they have been doing for a quarter-century.

While the overall tenor of this Mahdist propaganda video is unexceptional, three aspects of it do stand out. First, in its prognostication about the eschatological game plan and players, Iran's clerical regime seems to have Shi`ized the"newspaper exegesis" approach popularized in evangelical Christian circles by Hal Lindsey and Carole Carlson in their 1970 book The Late Great Planet Earth. (I say"Shi`ized, not"Islamized," because there is a veritable legion of Sunni eschatological works published since 1967 that take their apocalyptic cues from evangelical Christianity—but this video is the first major effort by Iranian Twelver Shi`is to do likewise.) Second, several major eschatological actors spelled out in the Sunni traditions—most notably al-Dabbah,"the Beast"and Yajuj wa-Majuj, "Gog and Magog"—are totally ignored, while another, al-Sufyani, is mentioned only in passing. Since the Shi`i writers and producers saw fit to adduce other Sunni hadiths when it suited their purpose, one can only surmise that , they constituted rather inconvenient eschatological truths for Shi`i exegetes—presumably since convincing analogs for al-Dabbah, Yajuj and Majuj and al-Sufyani could not be found. Finally, it is striking that this video claims"this current generation" will witness the defeat and annihilation of Israel, and that Ahmadinejad, channeling Shoaib bin Saleh, will"have as [his] final goal conquering Jerusalem and on the threshold of the Coming this holy place will be conquered by him and his forces." Again, this is nothing that has not been alleged by the Iranian leadership for some years, as I explained several months ago in"A Western View of Iran's WMD Goal: Nuclearizing the Eschaton or Pre-Stocking the Mahdi's Arsenal?" But in these allegations the Tehran-Qom axis does seem to have moved its role vis-à-vis the Mahdi from the passive to the active register. An eschatological alarm clock has even been set, one might argue, in the contention that Shoaib bin Saleh's authority starts seventy-two months before the Mahdi comes—and since Ahmadinejad was first elected President of Iran in August 2005, time should be up.

The fact that is it not is clear evidence that Iran's apocalyptic hourglass will never totally run out of sand. While some ayatollahs would no doubt like to try and"liberate" Jerusalem, the collective clerical clique is far too intelligent and fond of its own skin to actually attack Israel directly with conventional weaponry, much less with nuclear weapons in an attempt to"hotwire the apocalypse." Israel-bashing is much more valuable to the clerical regime as a propaganda tool than as a true weapon. Most importantly, the Mahdi would not be very happy with his devotees if they were to present him, at his Coming Out party, a radioactive wasteland over which to rule—which even the most virulent anti-Israel ayatollah knows would be the inevitable outcome of any Iranian assault on al-Quds. This video, then, shows the Islamic regime certainly crying eschatological havoc—but a far cry from letting slip the jinns of war.