FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Syria’s Armageddon

Rant Number 516       28 November 2012

‘Come, o Mahdi! Come!’ a caged prisoner in Guantanamo, Ahmad, would constantly call out. Half-deranged from ill-treatment, the wretched man found relief in the hope that the Mahdi, the awaited Islamic deliverer of the End Time, would soon rescue him. A consolation of sorts...

From Guantanamo to the Middle East, the mysterious and shadowy figure of the Mahdi seems alive and kicking in the believers’ minds. In Syria, jihadist militants from all over the Muslim world pour in to fight against Assad. Moroccans, Algerians, Yemenis, Chechens, Malays, Indonesians, Brits and many others – a novel, fanatical Foreign Legion - rally under the banner of al-Qaeda and other war-like groups. Armed with sophisticated weapons and ground to air missiles supplied by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey (NB the latter a NATO member), yes, but also powered by trust in apocalyptic prophecies. The battle for Damascus is thus no mere earthly struggle. Supernatural forces, invisible agents, heroes and villains from the worlds above and below are at work, jihadists are convinced. Prophesies attributed to the Prophet Muhammad are fervently and reverently cited. The end is nigh.

You learn about the physical weapons from the media. Info about the spiritual dimension is harder to come by. Because the Western mindset shuns and abhors religion. Especially one fired with zeal for faith and combat. (Unlike, say, the comedy of Anglicanism.) It maddens secularists that someone should be so ‘irrational’ as to lay down his life for his God. Hence, their deliberate, pig-headed silence about it. Such prejudiced, ostrich-like behaviour will cause the object of their fears to go away, though.

In a recent Chatham House lecture on Syria, Martin Chulov, Guardian Middle East correspondent, referred to a hadith some jihadists like to invoke. Mr Chulov was kind enough to e-mail me further details – I am indebted to him. And excited. See, my MA dissertation in Islamic eschatology is really about such wondrous ‘last things’. The priest’s bread and butter, folks!

The Prophet Muhammad speaks. He refers to ‘Rum’, the Greeks, aka the Romans of Byzantium. They war against an unidentified foe. Muslims fight alongside Christians and then make a truce. Victory and booty follow. The scenario shifts to a ‘vast plain, encircled by hills’. Christians get uppity and hoist up the Cross. An enraged Muslim smashes it, provoking the Nazarenes into killing him. The former allies fight each other. Many Muslims are martyred. The Christians then prepare for a final struggle against ‘the Arabs.’ Constantinople gets a mention too. Muslims will conquer it, not by force but by faith: shouting thrice Allahu Akbar! will suffice to make her walls crumble.

Detailed exegesis is both impossible and tedious here. Still, the hadith envisages a temporary alliance between monotheists. Does that mean with Hussain Obama and Ms Hillary Clinton’s administration? Also, that desperately dull duo, Dave Ca-moron (sic) & ‘Sad’ Hague? All now rooting for the jihadists’ cause? (Wonderful how Yanks & Brits are busy making a rod for their own back, just as they did arming the anti-Russian jihad in Afghanistan.) The Mahdi is unnamed, true, but maybe he lurks there by implication? As to the taking of Constantinople, the interesting Maulana Imran Hosein (I love this guy!) suggests not Ottoman Turks are meant but modern Istanbul, Turks of today, caught in a diabolical, unnatural alliance with the ‘Christian’ West and Zionists. As to ‘the foe’, who could that be? Bashar Assad? The Alawis? Iran, maybe? Huh!

Wily Assad, par contre, might argue that Rum means Moscow, the third Rome, its chief ally. And Syrian Christians are said to back him up. In this interpretation, Saudis and Qataris are the West’s puppets, the baddies...Get my drift?

Innumerable hadith exist, in various collections. Scholars reject many as unsound and yet popular preachers revel in them. Bukhari and Muslim, the best authorities, keep mum about the Mahdi but the Deliverer will not stay out. He surfaces in Abu Daoud’s Sunan and others. The eminent Ibn Khaldun in his Prolegomena pooh-poohs belief in the Mahdi but, as I argued in my dissertation, Ibn Khaldun’s judgment savours of an intellectual’s supercilious, superior attitude. The Muslim masses, the downtrodden, the disinherited and the humiliated par excellence yearned for justice and equity (clearly in short supply even under Muslim rulers), hence they trusted in a messianic liberator. Ibn Khaldun found these popular sentiments and aspirations somewhat low and vulgar: too bad!

There are of course two Mahdis, figures quite distinct from one another. The Sunni Mahdi has never appeared yet, despite many bogus claimants, such as Muhammad Ahmad, the Sudanese leader of dervishes who took Khartoum and killed Gordon. Presumably, he is the one expected by jihadists in Syria. The Imam Mahdi of Shia’ Muslims is an entirely different figure. Named Muhammad, he was born in 868 AD (256 of the Hijra), the twelfth in a series descended from Ali. This Mahdi thereafter went into occultation and never died. He is alive somewhere and his return is eagerly invoked by Shia’ faithful. At his manifestation, the rights of the House of Ali will be vindicated.

Islamic eschatology is rich, luxuriant. It also includes the Sufyani, a speaking Beast, Gog and Magog and, above all, Dajjal, a fiendish Antichrist made much of in some hadith. Eventually, another hadith says, before the End Time Jesus will descend from Heaven on Damascus. He will fight and slay the vile Dajjal. (Maybe not quite like the Christian Jesus, alas...) My dissertation goes into that, too.

All too theological, too unreal for you? Don’t be snooty. If Syria falls, what if Israel attacked Iran, as indeed it has been threatening to do for some time? And what if Russia fought back to defend Iran? And America then hit back at Russia? Might you then be facing a thermonuclear exchange between superpowers? A mega-horror to make WWII look like a squabble between frogs and mice? A prelude perhaps to Armageddon, the biblical battle of the nations alluded in Revelation 16:16?

La samaha Allah – may God not allow it. Still, beware o secularists! You neglect eschatology at your peril.

Revd Frank J. Gelli