Tehran
T he 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. 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. 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. The Shias have to a much greater degree than Sunnis, institutionalized the doctrine.
Rumors swirled during the heady days after Iran’s 1979 revolution that Ayatollah Khomeini was the Mahdi, or at least his herald. 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 official sanction with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s 2005 election as president. 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.
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.” 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.” 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.” 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.
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. Dr. Bahram Kazemi, from Iran, spoke about the jihad component of the future Mahdiyah (the Mahdi’s regime); 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. Canadian Fatima Chagpar referred to the U.N. Security Council as “the highest form of formalized oppression” and “Western common law as legalized adultery.” Another Iranian, Dr. 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. Dr. 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.
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.” 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.
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. 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.” 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.
Said Larijani: “The time of the supremacy of one religion over another is not over, and Islam is promised final victory. 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.” Larijani clearly believes that history is not over. 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.”
In the crux of his address, Larijani posed the question, “Why are the Americans having such problems in Iraq, and the Zionists in Lebanon?” 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 façade, and jihad scares them–they are afraid to risk it. They say Hamas and Hezbollah are ‘terrorists’ because they do not understand jihad. This is the West’s major weakness: that they do not have their own religious-based jihad, as we Muslims do! In fact, Mahdism has three pillars: spirituality, rationalism, and jihad.”
Is Mahdism, then, necessarily violent? 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. 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. 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 battlefield strewn with his enemies.
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. Hence Larijani’s remark that Iranian long-range missiles would be purely “defensive.” But the doctrine of defensive jihad has its own troubling aspects: It can be waged in the Mahdi’s absence; treaties and truces with dhimmis (Christians and Jews, who enjoy second-class status under Islamic law) can be broken at will; Muslims who cooperate with non-Muslim occupiers of Muslim land can be killed; 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.
The Tehran conference verified what I have long suspected: that the Islamic Republic of Iran is using Mahdism as a pan-Islamic ideology to challenge Saudi Arabia. And it is succeeding. A recent University of Maryland poll indicated the most popular Muslim leaders in the Arab world are Hassan Nasrallah, Lebanese Hezbollah leader; Bashar al-Assad, president of Syria; and Ahmadinejad–non-Sunnis all.
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. 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.
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.
Timothy R. Furnish, who runs the website mahdiwatch.org, is the author of Holiest Wars: Islamic Mahdis, their Jihads and Osama bin Laden.
