Christ, the Madhi and the Muslim "End of Days" (book excerpt)

(I'reading a fascinating book calledThe Siege of Mecca by Yaroslav Trofimov. I came across of section I thought Freepers might find interesting. It has to do with the Muslim concept of the "End of Days" and part played in it by Jesus Christ. It is from Chapter 5, pp. 47-48.

(P.S. I having to type this in, so please forgive by hunt-and-peck fingers. Hopefully there's not too many typos.)

"The idea of a Mahdi has fuel Muslim imagination for centuries. There is no mention of it in the Quran itself . But the Phophet Mohammed, according to some nattators, had forcast that God will one days dispatch a redeemer -- a Mahdi -- to command the Muslim world and establish an ideal society, after an apocalyptic clash witht he forces of evil. This Mahdi cannot be killed by mere mortals -- at least not during the first seven years of his reign. In that time he will "fill the earth with peace and justice as it will have been filled with injustice and tyranny before then," the phophecy says.

"...All true Muslims will pledge him baya, the religious oath of allegiance...An army of the Madhi's enemies will be swallowed inro the opening ground etween Medine and Mecca.

"Then, the prophecy held, the hour will sound for the grear showdown. The world's Christian empires, dead-set in their arrogant ways and their hatred of the true faith, will dispatch a never-before-seen force to Arabia. Forty thousand short of a million Christian soldiers will disembark, bringing their fearsome weapons and intent on descrating the shrines of the Muslims and defeating God's servants.

"One-third of the Muslim forces will be striken by feat and flee when confronted by Christians in the battlefield...these men would be condemned to everlasting damnation.Another third will be martyred, retilizing the land with their precious blood. But the remaining third will triumph in battle, seizing all Christian cities of the Christian world with the cries of 'Allah Akbar'.

"Rge elimanation of the Christian world will not be the end of events, however. That's precisely the moment when the devil will show his ugly hand, sending Dajjal --the Antichrist sorcerer and deceiver -- to the world...

"Overwhelmed by the Antichrist's power, the Mahdi will flee to Damacus, where the Mulims will be besieged behind the city's thick walls...In the trying house, the Mahdi will kneel in prayer and Jesus Christ will be returned to Rarth, carried by two white angels.(Jesus, in Mulsim tradition, is a prophet but not a son of God; much of the Christian dogma is therefore viewed by orthodox Muslims as a distortion of Jesus' teaching.)

"Appearing in front of the Mahdi and extending his comfort, Jesus will rejoice at the elimination of Christians and take over command in the battle against global evil. The Antichrist, or Dajjal, will be promptly slain by Jesus, who will stab him with a lance borrowed from one of the Muslims; the devil's envoy will dissolve like salt in water. After this the Jews will be slaughtered just like the Christians had been and the hour of redemption will finally sound. "

1) Kudos to Yaroslav Trofimov for mentioning the Muslim End-Time prophecies in his fine book. I was very pleased when I saw those pages last year.

2) But he barely scratches the surface of those prophecies, nor their relevance to the current jihad.

3) As I do of so many others, I disapprove of Trofimov's translating "the Dajjal" as "the AntiChrist" as well as ignoring the growing popularity of an allegorical interpretation of the terms "Dajjal" and "Mahdi."

4) By so doing he ignores the fact that the jihadists come to the conclusion that Western Civilization is itself the Dajjal, and their belief that the prophesied time when Muslims will wipe all wipe all non-Muslims off the face of the earth to be near at hand.

For more information on Muslim End-Time beliefs, see my FR Homepage and Links page.

But the remaining third will triumph in battle, seizing all Christian cities of the Christian world with the cries of 'Allah Akbar'.... After this the Jews will be slaughtered just like the Christians had been and the hour of redemption will finally sound.

Here is a short excerpt from my FR Homepage:

Okay, I'm going to try to summarize in general how it is that Western Civilization is the Dajjal, for those imams who read Dajjal as a metaphor, and not a literal individual person. This is cobbled together from a number of sources I've read. (And I don't know Arabic, Persian, or Urdu, so my sources are from the tiny fraction of Dajjal literature in English.)

a) The word "Dajjal" literally translates as "Deceiver."

b) From the Muslim, Qur'anic point of view, Jesus was a prophet of Allah, who taught that Allah is the One Undifferentiated God. Anyone who says that God is a Trinity of Three Persons, and that Jesus is one of those Divine Persons, is deceiving. If he says it because he believes it, he is both deceived and deceiving.

Hence, Christianity is itself an AntiChrist, because it is teaching the "opposite" of what Christ taught.

The evangelists and especially St. Paul "did not understand" who Jesus was and what he taught. And the texts of the Bible "have been corrupted" by deceivers over the centuries to support the dogma of the Trinity. Some imams might say the early Church was good and Islamic, but that corruption set in with Constantine and the Council of Nicaea. Regardless, to get the "truly infallible" account of Jesus, one must read the Qur'an.

But that’s not all.

c) The Dajjal of the hadith is not merely a deceiver -- he is the greatest menace ever to scourge the earth from Adam to the Last Trumpets.

d) At the time Muhammed was alive, the Christians were not the Dajjal. They might have been deceived and deceitful, but back then they generally kept to themselves in Europe and thereabouts. For those imams, this “explains” why in Muhammed’s hadith, he talks about the Dajjal as an evil yet to come.

e) The Christians didn’t start "menacing the whole planet" until the explorers of the 15th and 16th centuries.

f) So now we get into the history of colonization of the world by the European Christian powers, the exploitation of nonwhite races throughout the world, slavery, the pillaging of the world’s land and natural resources by the conquering European nations, etc., etc., etc.

g) Meanwhile, with the Age of Enlightenment, European (and American) people are becoming more secular, agnostic, and atheistic (more levels of deceitfulness). With the progress of science and technology, they care more about external material things than about internal spiritual pursuits. With the rise of industrial capitalism, people and the environment are exploited on every level, and the West truly becomes a menace to the entire globe.

h) And let’s not forget the spread of Western Culture throughout the world. On the one hand you have musical instruments, immodestly dressed women, novels and films spreading sinful morality, etc.

On the other hand you have Christian missionaries converting people around the world, slandering Muhammed and the Qur’an, and working hand-in-hand with the governments and banks back in Europe and America.

i) I’ve been focusing on the Christianity of the West, but my Jewish friends should not feel left out. That’s where the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” comes in. The Trinitarian Christians may be the figurehead Deceivers menacing the globe, but behind the scenes they themselves are being led around by a secret council of Jewish planners and financiers pulling the strings.

j) Q.E.D. The Dajjal is a metaphor for the West.

k) Now in the hadith Muhammed prophesies that the Mahdi will arise who will be the greatest Muslim since Muhammed. 'Isha (the Qur’an’s version of Jesus) will descend on a cloud and fight under the Mahdi in jihad. Together they will kill the Dajjal and spread Islam and shar’ia law throughout the planet.

l) Okay, now we’re going to get into some tricky interpretation here. Is the Mahdi an individual person, or a metaphor for a social movement of Muslims to oppose Western Civilization and everything for which it stands? If he’s an individual, will the Mahdi be the actual person to duel with the Dajjal, or might he be an individual who gets the ball rolling whereby the Dajjal’s inevitable demise is set in motion (*cough*BinLaden*cough*).

If the Dajjal is a metaphor, why shouldn’t the Mahdi be a metaphor?

But if a literal person, there are lots and lots of candidates in the past and present, and I’m sure there will be more in the future. An imam can pick his favorite one.

m) Now, what does “killing the Dajjal” mean? For some terrorist imams, that means chopping off the heads of every Westerner.

For the nicer, pacifist, we-are-in-the-end-times imams, that means the Mahdi will (“like Muhammed”) be a preacher and he will lead a "spiritual jihad" of converting the West to Islam. The hadith says that “the sun will rise in the west,” so this is interpreted to mean that the light of Islam will spread throughout the West.

n) After killing the Dajjal (whichever way), the Mahdi will govern the planet in perfect peace, justice and prosperity. Then the trumpets will sound, time will end, and the Day of Judgment will arrive. Allah will judge all souls (well, except for the prophets and martyrs since they are already in Paradise) and they will go to Paradise or Hell for all eternity.

o) I’ve dealt with the Dajjal as a metaphor for Western Civilization. For a more literal treatment of the Dajjal as a coming future individual person who will use the Western nations, the UN, the IMF, etc. as his power base, revise the scenario accordingly.

BTW, when thought of as an individual, many imams say he will be Jewish, although no hadith says this.
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I myself am an amillennialist. I do not believe we are living in the End Times, whether by this prophecy or that prophecy. I don’t particularly mind if someone does choose to believe in millennialism, unless that person starts using that as an excuse to attack my countrymen. At which point I take it as my duty to alert my fellow countrymen and our allies as to how millennial beliefs are a factor in the attacks.

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