Juan Cole delivers some fascinating background on the recent bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Baghdad. The shrine is dedicated to a figure connected to the apocalyptic "Twelfth Imam" tradition. Most Americans reading Cole's description of this tradition will be struck -- at first glance -- by its exotic nature. On second glance, the story seems familiar enough. Are these irrational beliefs really so different from the scenarios outlined by Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye?
One unfortunate side effect of this shrine-destruction strategy is that the shrines are revered in Iran, as well, and President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is a millenarian especially devoted to the cult of the Twelfth Imam. Sentiments of the Iranian public are also being stirred by these attacks (not to mention Hizbullah in Lebanon, and Shiites in Pakistan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, who increasingly blame the US for the desecrations). Religious politics is politics, and the US is being wrongfooted in a major way here.
Muqtada al-Sadr has alleged that the entire point of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq was to keep this decadent situation in place and to forestall the coming of the Mahdi by planting military bases around Iraq and the Persian Gulf. He says that the US Pentagon has an enormous file on the Mahdi.
In orther words, the US and militant Sunni Arabs are felt by many Iraqi Shiites to be playing the role of Dajjal or "Anti-Christ", a figure whose purpose is to forestall the coming of the Imam Mahdi. Shiite tradition holds that the Mahdi will come together with the Return of Christ, and that the returned Christ will kill the Dajjal. (Ironically, some of the US troops fighting the Shiite millenarians may be evangelicals who also believe that the Return of Christ is near; Iraq is a wonderland for apocalytpicism).
We face an appalling situation: Believers in the apocalypse may bring about that which they predict and claim to fear.
2 comments:
What is that they say about self-fulfilling prophecies?
Does it ever occur to you that the bible is true and that the religious "puppets" are "all" being swept into the last satges of world history..or His story?
Do you remember that in the Book of Revelations the so called church, (the Whore of Babylon..in Iraq where we are entrnched today..is the fallen castaway church ) is led into perdition by a human leader, aka antichrist? The "spirit" of antichrist, that has been budsy for millenia obfuscating and distorting "Truth", will eventually incarnate completely into that dreaded world dictator..soon coming.
That nominal "carnal" christians have been so easily entranced and seduced, explains how people like REagen, Bush and Hitler are so easily able to entrance nominal christians into their camps and lead them iinto docile slavery.
The bible is very specific and is written as a warning to the "believers" but even so the majority of "beleivers" still don't get it after so many generations and after countless lessons in the bible..which they claim to believe but obviously rather beleive their LeHayes, Dobsons, Falwell, Robertsons, and Bushes.
The book tells the truth "for all with eyes to see and ears to hear". It is the readers of the book that are lazy and unenlightened saps.
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