FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Obama: Mahdi or Dajjal?

Rant Number 478 21 February 2012

Three years ago the priest gave a talk in the House of Lords. President Obama, just elected, was my subject. I compared him to Samuel Beckett’s enigmatic, absent hero: Godot. Eagerly awaited, trusted to save the poor and the desperate, Beckett’s Saviour has one vital defect: he never arrives. Which is just as well. Because he may turn out to disappoint. Or, worse, to be non-existent. Quite smart then of Godot to keep out of sight. Pity, I said, Obama could not quite live up to Godot’s example. Hence, I predicted trouble ahead for him and the dupes who expected him to usher in the millennium.

Never, however, was I visionary enough to foresee that some pious Muslims took Obama to be...the Mahdi! The redeemer or restorer who comes at the end of time to abolish injustice, slay the wicked and convert the whole world to Islam. Sounds nuts but...it is true. Clues as tenuous as Obama’s middle name, Hussein (the Prophet’s beloved grandson), his handsome, vaguely messianic looks – Barack could well star as Jesus Christ Superstar in the next production – his rather imprecise, mysterious origins...all conspired to fuel the fantasy. Never mind that in Muslim eschatology the Mahdi issues from the Prophet’s family and speaks perfect Arabic. Mere bagatelles. Muslims frustrated by wicked Americans attacks on their lands suddenly hit upon the mother of all pipedreams – their Muslim Messiah enthroned as the ruler of America – verily, Allahu Akbar!

Actually, Obama did his bit to encourage this bêtise. His 2009 Cairo speech enraptured Muslims. Afterassalamualaikuming the audience (how did they lap it up!), he invoked the Qur’an five times. Considering the true, expected Mahdi will not preach religious dialogue platitudes but exterminate the unrighteous and the hypocrites, Obama’s fulsome praises of all things Islamic was perhaps a little too rosy. Besides, his swearing that the bond between the USA and Israel is ‘unbreakable’ should have sobered up even the most messianically deluded. Real reality checks came later. Guantanamo kept going, Afghanistan smouldering on, drones zapping innocent Pakistanis, cold-blooded execution of Osama Bin Laden (another unsuccessful Mahdi-candidate, by the way) - the list is long and still incomplete. Barack Hussein Obama – a Mahdi that failed – that must be the melancholy conclusion.

Or is there more? I mean, could it be that Obama will still stun, shock Muslims – dismally, horrendously so? Not as their awaited, yearned-for liberator, alas, but as their monstrous, satanic enemy? Obama as...Dajjal!?!

Dajjal. Like the Mahdi, this dreaded figure does not appear in the Qur’an but he is alive in some ahadith, the sayings and acts attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. Dajjal is a liar, an impostor and a deceiver. He too, like the Mahdi, arrives at the end of known history. Unlike the Mahdi, he rules and fills the earth with corruption, violence and immorality. In the end, either the Mahdi or Jesus will kill him and that will serve him right.

The legends relating to Dajjal are interesting. As evil is the inversion or mockery of good, so stories about Dajjal seem to hint at a grotesque imitation of Christ’s life and deed. Dajjal, for example, comes riding on an ass, the same humble beast Christ rode on when he entered Jerusalem. Earthly rulers went to war on a horse but the Messiah, the Prince of Peace, chose to convey a different message. Dajjal’s imitation is a sinister parody. A shedder of innocent blood, he contradicts Christ who has his own innocent blood shed to save humanity. Also, Dajjal’s rule will last either 40 years or 40 days, again, an allusion to Christ’s fasting in the wilderness, fighting the Devil and all his works. (Lent begins tomorrow, folks!)

Dajjal, some say, is Jewish but...Achtung! Don’t take that as anti-Semitic. Christ was Jewish too, along with so many Prophets. It is all part of the monster’s disguise, to confuse and befuddled believers.

Monstrous? Morally, yes. Some say Dajjal is portly, bloated and huge, a sort of malign Eric Pickles. Others describe him as tall and suave, a Brad Pitt or a Keanu Reeves or...take your pick. Maybe the Beast is a shape-shifter...But essentially Dajjal is evil. He is a bringer of strife and destruction. They say he will kill two resurrected Prophets...his chain of crimes is enough to make your hair stand on end.

How is Obama like Dajjal? Nonsense, surely? Obama is a nice guy. Politically he messes it up but he means well, no? OK, Dajjal comes from somewhere in the East – Obama’s Indonesia? Hawaii? No, too flimsy. It simply isn’t good enough, is it?

But Dajjal is smart. Like the Antichrist of Christian tradition, the true Dajjal will not come with ‘Infidel’ or ‘Satan’ writ large on his forehead. I surmise Dajjal will come as a philanthropist, a lover of humanity, a social and political and moral reformer. A goody. A melange of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, perhaps. Watch out!

It figures. How would Dajjal deceive anyone if he came like an obvious stage villain, Superman’s Lex Luthor or Sherlock Holmes’s Dr Moriarty? Too easy. No one would be taken in. No, Dajjal’s opening gambit will be cleverer than that. Expect to be surprised – horribly so.

Obamacare is meant to help the American poor, the disadvantaged. Yet...what if that was a cover? A pro-life group in the States points out how Planned Parenthood organisation aborts hundreds of thousands of unborn babies. Now, black women constitute 34.4% of those. One third of all abortions in some States. Black babies, you get it? Yet, ghastly irony, America’s first black President refuses to de-fund the Planned Parenthood set-up. 125.000 black unborn babies are terminated by PP. And Obama wants to go of funding the job. Funny that.

Dajjal, Antichrist, the Man of Perdition...who and where art thou? How are the faithful going to smoke you out? Or maybe, like Godot, you do not exist? You will never arrive? Or...you are already here, active in our midst, at your fell work?

God forbid!

Revd Frank Julian Gelli