The Importance of Being Mahdist

...The Shias have to a much greater degree than Sunnis, institutionalized the doctrine...

...They say Hamas and Hezbollah are ‘terrorists’ because they do not understand jihad...

...Those Western academics, analysts, and politicians trying to banish the word jihad from the lexicon need to heed his answer: “Because their power is only a fa?ade, and jihad scares them—they are afraid to risk it...

...Sunnis and Shias, however, differ in that the latter maintain the Mahdi has already been here, as the twelfth of the Imams, the descendants of Muhammad through Ali...

...Other papers at panels going on simultaneously with mine covered topics such as “Strategic Futurism in Mahdism,” “Islamic Revolution and the Role of Mahdism in Awakening the Nations,” and the intriguing, if oxymoronic, “Mahdian Democracy...

...A parade of speakers at the opening ceremonies of the conference thanked him for this support, and Ahmadinejad’s own remarks showed—yet again— his intense devotion to Mahdism as both a doctrine and a means of opposing the West, particularly the United States and Israel...

...But in the view of Iranian leaders like Ahmadinejad and Larijani, the peace of the Mahdi will be that of a victor striding over a battlefi eld strewn with his enemies...

...Most likely the weeping Iranians I saw in Qom’s Jamkaran Mosque— alleged site of the Twelfth Imam’s brief post-disappearance epiphany centuries ago—are looking more for a savior than for a warlord to wipe out the American army and lead them to Jerusalem...

...Perhaps peaceful Mahdists can gain the upper hand over their jihadist brethren, but the longing for the Mahdi is so fervent—in Jamkaran, at Khomeini’s tomb, on Iranian TV, on the Iranian street—that an event unthinkable even a few years ago, an open Mahdist claimant in Twelver Shiism, no longer seems out of the question...

...Larijani opened by gloating over the American “quagmire” in Iraq —the surge’s success being either unknown or inadmissible— and the failed efforts of “the West and the Zionist regime to erase ‘holy jihad’ from the minds of Muslims...

...The Islamic Republic and other Islamic governments need to prepare for the Mahdi’s governance by promoting justice and development and, although we have long-distance missiles, we are not war-like...

...Canadian Fatima Chagpar referred to the U.N...

...And the job of the Bright Future Institute is “to help bring all of humanity to knowledge of the true savior of mankind, Imam al-Mahdi...

...A recent University of Maryland poll indicated the most popular Muslim leaders in the Arab world are Hassan Nasrallah, Lebanese Hezbollah leader...

...Timothy R. Furnish, who runs the website mahdiwatch.org, is the author of Holiest Wars: Islamic Mahdis, their Jihads and Osama bin Laden...

...Bashar al-Assad, president of Syria...

...Khomeini’s death in 1989 effectively killed this belief but not his status as harbinger, and active anticipation of the twelfth imam’s return was given offi cial sanction with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s 2005 election as president...

...In fact, Mahdism has three pillars: spirituality, rationalism, and jihad...

...Jasim Husain, a British Shiite, spoke about the recent emergence of false Mahdi claimants in Iraq and how this indicated a yearning for the coming of the true Mahdi...

...This is the West’s major weakness: that they do not have their own religious-based jihad, as we Muslims do...

...This organization was founded four years ago to “introduce Imam Mahdi to the world” and “pave the ground for his reappearance,” according to Grand Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi, who spoke at the opening session...

...All Islamic sects have traditions about the future coming of al-Mahdi, “the rightly guided” leader who—assisted by the returned Muslim prophet Jesus—will make the entire world Muslim...

...As for those predicting Ahmadinejad’s defeat in his reelection bid: If the crowd of supporters mobbing him post-speech was any indication of his true popularity, four more years is a foregone conclusion...

...Muslims who cooperate with non-Muslim occupiers of Muslim land can be killed...

...Said Larijani: “The time of the supremacy of one religion over another is not over, and Islam is promised fi nal victory...

...Larijani clearly believes that history is not over...

...BY TIMOTHY R. FURNISH The second week of August, I was in Tehran and Qom for the Islamic Republic of Iran’s fourth annual “International Conference of Mahdism Doctrine,” sponsored by the Bright Future Institute...

...My own presentation, on previous Sunni leaders who had declared themselves the Mahdi, was largely uncontroversial, although a number of Shia scholars and clerics afterwards expressed surprise that Sunnis even had such a belief...

...Everyone likes a winner, and the Iranian government carefully cultivates its image as such via constant assertions of Israeli and American troubles in the region and assurances that the Mahdi’s coming is nigh...

...Problems such as “the killing of a million innocent people in Iraq” and “the false, fabricated, criminal Zionist regime” will not be solved “in the absence of the Perfect Man, the Mahdi...

...A sample of papers from the conference shows that Ahmadinejad is far from alone in his devotion to Mahdism as a panacea for humanity’s ills...

...And in a clear rebuke to those adherents of Mahdism who see it as purely peaceful, Larijani quoted Imam Muhammad Baqir, a famous scholar from early Islamic history, who said that “there must be bloodshed and jihad to establish Imam Mahdi’s rule...

...The same is probably true of most members of the Bright Future Institute, who appear to be sincere, well-meaning Iranians dedicated to fostering Muslim-Christian dialogue...

...Hence Larijani’s remark that Iranian long-range missiles would be purely “defensive...

...Bahram Kazemi, from Iran, spoke about the jihad component of the future Mahdiyah (the Mahdi’s regime...

...On the other hand, the keynote speaker at the closing session, Ali Larijani—current speaker of parliament and former chief nuclear negotiator— clearly knows about the power of Mahdism outside the world of Twelver Shias, and his devotion to Mahdism as a pan-Islamic ideology, if perhaps not as a personal belief, appears every bit as intense as Ahmadi nejad’s...

...Mariam Tabar, asserted that “the military capabilities of the future Mahdist state depend on Islamic governments in the here and now acquiring abilities to stand against the enemies of the imam”—presumably including nuclear weapons...

...Is Mahdism, then, necessarily violent...

...But the doctrine of defensive jihad has its own troubling aspects: It can be waged in the Mahdi’s absence...

...The Tehran conference verifi ed what I have long suspected: that the Islamic Republic of Iran is using Mahdism as a pan-Islamic ideology to challenge Saudi Arabia...

...In the crux of his address, Larijani posed the question, “Why are the Americans having such problems in Iraq, and the Zionists in Lebanon...

...and Ahmadinejad—non-Sunnis all...

...Long before the Islamic Revolution, Shiite clerics had ruled that in the absence of Imam Mahdi, offensive jihad could not be waged—only defensive jihad...

...Another Iranian, Dr...

...And this time, unlike with past self-styled Sunni Mahdis such as Muhammad Ahmad in 19th-century Sudan or Juhayman al-Utaybi in Saudi Arabia in 1979, the Mahdi will have access to the Internet, cell phones, and—if he appears in Iran in the near future—quite possibly nuclear weapons...

...Security Council as “the highest form of formalized oppression” and “Western common law as legalized adultery...

...And it is succeeding...

...I wasn’t all that reassured by his contention the Mahdi would be more likely to convert non-Muslims than to simply kill us all...

...Likewise, Westerners try to convince Muslims that Mahdism is either merely a mode of personal devotion or a lifeless historical force, whereas true Mahdism is religious, social, and political...

...treaties and truces with dhimmis (Christians and Jews, who enjoy secondclass status under Islamic law) can be broken at will...

...and, most alarming, there are even fewer limits on the types of warfare that can be employed in defensive jihad than in offensive—in effect sanctioning the use of WMDs...

...Speaking on the subject of “Global Government: A Divine Necessity,” Iran’s president opined that “globalization is not just happening, but is Allah’s plan...

...Rumors swirled during the heady days after Iran’s 1979 revolution that Ayatollah Khomeini was the Mahdi, or at least his herald...