“Henceforth, no one will see me, unless and until Allah makes me appear,” one of the Mahdi’s representatives told his followers. “My reappearance will take place after a very long time when people will have grown tired of waiting and those who are weak in their faith will say: What! Is he still alive?”
Whereas in the Sunni tradition of Islam, belief in the imminence of the End Times is more confined to radical Salafists, it is very much in the mainstream of Shia belief. The Hidden Imam, or Mahdi, will set into motion a course of events that will end the world, just as it is believed in the Sunni tradition.
While most of the Muslim world is Sunni, the Islamic Republic of Iran is almost exclusively (90–95 percent) Shia. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei—as the father of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, before him—is a fervent believer in the End Times and the return of the Mahdi. This informs Iran’s geopolitics. Another prominent Iranian ayatollah has promised that when the Mahdi does emerge, “he will behead the Western leaders.” Indeed, Iran’s headlong pursuit of nuclear weapons is viewed by many as preparation for the confrontation that will ensue when the Mahdi comes out of occultation.
This conflict will be something akin to World War III, with devastation beyond comprehension. Here the Sunni and Shia traditions of apocalyptic thought become united again around the contours of the final cosmic battle, with both sects featuring a surprising ally of the Mahdi fighting the one-eyed Dajjal.
The Return of Jesus Christ
According to both Sunni and Shia traditions, the Mahdi will be joined by Jesus Christ in the bloody battle against the Dajjal. Islam teaches that Jesus, or Isa as he is referred to in the Quran, is among the holiest of prophets, second only to Muhammad. He wasn’t, as Christians believe, the Son of God, but in fact a messenger sent to herald the coming of the Day of Judgment and impose Islamic law on the world.
The Quran teaches not that Jesus was crucified or killed, but that God brought him to Heaven before he died. And, according to Islamic teaching, Jesus will come again, descending near Damascus. As one Hadith describes it:
At this very time Allah would send Christ, son of Mary, and he will descend at the white minaret in the eastern side of Damascus wearing two garments lightly dyed with saffron and placing his hands on the wings of two Angels. When he would lower his head, there would fall beads of perspiration from his head, and when he would raise it up, beads like pearls would scatter from it.
Jesus will be Allah’s apostle and, according to some readings, will help him lead by Islamic law. Jesus then will undertake a pilgrimage to Mecca, called hajj, and will help the Mahdi oversee and enforce Islamic law around the world.
In essence, according to the Hadith, the original prophet of peace becomes a jihadist warrior of the apocalypse:
Certainly, the time of prayer shall come and then Jesus (peace be upon him) son of Mary would descend and would lead them in prayer. When the enemy of Allah would see him, it would (disappear) just as the salt dissolves itself in water and if Jesus were not to confront them at all, even then it would dissolve completely, but Allah would kill them by his hand and he would show them their blood on Jesus’s lance.
The Caliphate
The establishment of the Caliphate is another sign to Islamists of the impending end of days. The success of ISIS in declaring an Islamic State is proving irresistible to thousands of recruits from around the world, including Europe and the United States, who want to join the battle before the final apocalypse. It gives meaning to the lives of those searching for one. Disaffected youths dealing with the mundane struggles of adolescence can quickly define themselves as ISIS holy warriors fighting in a celestial battle. Every brutal act committed by ISIS, every barbaric murder broadcast on social media, becomes justified in hastening the coming of the final battle at Dabiq and the beginning of the apocalypse.
As a result, ISIS has essentially merged the tenets of Islamic belief with the allure of a messianic cult.
Obama’s “JV Team”
The Arab Spring of 2010 was lauded by many in the West as the stirring of democracy and reform across the region. Praise rang out for the uprising and the instability of governments from Tunisia to Egypt to Syria. President Obama applauded it, saying, “The will of the people proved more powerful than the writ of a dictator.” Many others in Washington heralded the movement as well, from powerful neoconservatives like Bill Kristol (“One has a right to actually be hopeful about these developments”) to the perennially wrong liberals who had been hoodwinked into supporting “moderate” Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.
The reality was, as usual, quite different. Out of the chaos of the Syrian Civil War emerged the fiercest, most brutal brand of radical Islam the world has ever witnessed: the Islamic State.
What began as a ragtag group of terrorists has emerged as one of the most powerful terrorist armies in the world, eclipsing even al-Qaeda in its allure to recruits and in its barbarity to victims.
President Obama first declared ISIS as “not Islamic” and simply not worth his time discussing or thinking about, telling the New Yorker’s David Remnick, “The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.”
If Obama had done his homework, he’d have known that ISIS members were the most brutal killers on earth, their skills honed fighting against U.S. forces in Iraq and incubated in the chaos of the Syrian Civil War.
Any illusions about ISIS not having to be taken seriously were likely shattered five months later, in June 2014, when the group seized the key Iraqi city of Mosul, stunning the world. ISIS members stormed through berms of sand that had marked the border separating two sovereign nations for nearly a century. A thousand ISIS soldiers took over one of the largest cities in Iraq, which at the time was guarded by approximately thirty thousand U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers and policemen. The terrorist army took control of tens of millions of dollars’ worth of the finest military equipment in the world: M-1 Abrams tanks, Humvees, and automatic weapons. ISIS was no longer just in charge of the eastern deserts of Syria; now it also held one of the cities that had been liberated by U.S. troops from Saddam Hussein only a decade earlier. Soon ISIS controlled all of western Iraq, effectively governing an area larger than Great Britain.
Days after ISIS troops stormed Mosul, ISIS’s self-appointed leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, looked upon thousands of his faithful from the pulpit of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul, the city that U.S. forces had pacified and occupied only a few short years earlier. It was June 28, 2014, the first day of Ramadan, a symbolic and holy day in Islamic tradition that would soon prove to be notable for other reasons as well: ISIS had rebranded itself. The group now called themselves the “Islamic State,” establishing the first Muslim Caliphate in ninety years.
Al-Baghdadi rebranded himself as well. He would now be known as “Caliph Ibrahim.” Secular laws would no longer be enforced—instead, sharia laws determined by the Islamic scholars and jurisprudents appointed by Baghdadi now ruled. Nor would there be petty distinctions like national citizenship. Names like Syria and Iraq had no meaning.
“Rush O Muslims to your state,” Caliph Ibrahim said. “Yes, it is your state. Rush, because Syria is not for the Syrians, and Iraq is not for the Iraqis.”
Under the new Caliphate, you were either a true Muslim or you were an enemy.
“The Management of Savagery”
For Baghdadi, that day had been nearly fifteen years in the making. Born Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim al-Badr, Baghdadi was, by most accounts, a quiet, understated man from Samarra, Iraq. Not much else is known about his early years, but it is clear that he received his military and terrorist training alongside Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man who had created al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2004 and ramped up a guerrilla campaign against U.S. forces as they were trying to bring peace to the country.
Zarqawi had closely followed an online field manual called Idarat al-Tw
ahhush, or The Management Savagery, by an al-Qaeda theologian named Abu Bakr Naji. The book, which outlines a strategy to directly draw the United States into a prolonged war in the Middle East, suggested executing a series of terrorist attacks against U.S. forces until the “media halo” of American invincibility was steadily erased. Naji believed that once America was shown to be vulnerable more and more Muslims would realize the power of their faith and join jihad. “The public will see how the troops flee,” Naji wrote. “At this point, savagery and chaos begin and these regions will start to suffer from the absence of security. This is in addition to the exhaustion and draining (that results from) attacking the remaining targets and opposing the authorities.”
The field manual holds up jihad as the holiest of endeavors. But Naji also isn’t shy about admitting what it entails. “One who previously engaged in jihad knows that is naught but violence, crudeness, terrorism, frightening (others) and massacring.”
Though American air strikes killed Zarqawi in 2006, al-Qaeda in Iraq, as well as radical Sunnis who allied with the terrorist organization, took Naji’s advice to heart. They sought to sow as much chaos as possible and declared open season on Iraq’s Shia, whom they call rafidun, a derogatory term that means “rejecters” who have perverted the Islamic faith. With deadly car bombs and attacks, Sunnis massacred thousands of Shia in their mosques, during their weddings, at their shrines, and on their holiest days.
The Caliphate and the End Times
Until 2014, the world had been without a Caliphate since the Ottoman Empire was defeated in World War I and a young secularist general named Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk) came to power in Turkey. In 1924, a democratically elected parliament of Turkey formally abolished the Caliphate.
Reestablishing the Caliphate had long been a goal for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. And like al-Qaeda, ISIS has since ruled through fear and brutality. When they took over parts of northern Iraq that a small religious sect known as Yazidis had called home for centuries, they beheaded captives and abducted children to train as suicide bombers. Hundreds of women were enslaved and raped by ISIS fighters. They broadcast their murders to a global audience for a very specific purpose: to shock and deter. Savagery is central to their method of ruling. It may alienate some potential supporters, but it forces many more into submission.
All of the Islamic State’s activities, from its propaganda to its battlefield strategy, are designed to fulfill the prophecies of Muhammad about the coming Day of Judgment. Some within ISIS believe that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is the Mahdi himself. Al-Baghdadi seems to agree with that view, considering he changed his name to include “Muhammad,” something that’s believed to be a prerequisite for the Mahdi.
Many radicals believe that the Caliphate will be ruled from Jerusalem. That is one reason that ISIS has its sights on Jordan—it is seen as the eastern gate to Israel. The Mahdi will then lead the Muslim world for a period of years, vanquishing the enemies of Islam alongside Jesus Christ.
These may seem like fanciful delusions to many of us. Dreams of grandeur. Twisted interpretations of history. False prophecies. But they are the deep-seated ambitions and fervent desires of our enemies.
We underestimate them at our peril.
2
* * *
FROM REVELATION TO EMPIRE
“Then when the Sacred Months (the 1st, 7th, 11th, and 12th months of the Islamic calendar) have passed, then kill the Mushrikun [idolaters] wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush.”
—Quran 9:5
Mecca
December 22, A.D. 609
The brightness was more disorienting than the total darkness that had enveloped him moments earlier. The mountain cave had been an escape from the chaos of the city below, a place of solitude and prayer for days on end—but now it had been transformed into something else entirely.
Mecca itself was a bustling—some might say sinful—oasis in the middle of a vast, unforgiving desert. The shrine at its center, a cube of black stone containing idols of the many gods of Arabia, was the destination for thousands of travelers who came to pray. But, to the merchant in the cave, those thoughts seemed far away at the moment.
What had been a quiet, dark place had suddenly been filled with light and a booming voice that called out one word: iqra, which means “recite.” The command reverberated through the stillness of the cave.
And recite he did. Arabic words filled his head. Words, the merchant had ultimately convinced himself, that were divine in origin. All those who bowed down to false gods would soon know—or be forced to know—the one true God.
And that God was currently in the presence of a forty-year-old merchant named Muhammad.
Over the next twenty-two years Muhammad would have visions of the Archangel Gabriel transmitting to him the direct word of God over and over again.
An ordinary merchant had become a prophet.
The life of Muhammad and the divine teachings he received, later compiled in the Quran, form the basis of Islam. Therefore, understanding his life and the contents of the book that 1.6 billion Muslims regard as the perfect, immutable, unchangeable word of God is essential to understanding the religion. The Quran, unlike the Bible, isn’t a collection of stories or revelations written in the third person by humans; it is Allah’s direct word, in his first-person voice. It cannot and will not ever be changed.
Despite his being one of the most revered and important figures in history, shockingly little is known about Muhammad the man. Western scholars have been largely reluctant to apply the same standards of historical inquiry to Muhammad as they have to other religious leaders, such as Jesus. And their reluctance is easy to understand. Those, such as British scholar Tom Holland, who have dared to look deeply into Muhammad’s life have been subjected to death threats.
Here’s what we can say with near certainty: Muhammad was a person who lived in the Arabian desert from approximately A.D. 570 to 632. What we cannot say is exactly what went on in the sessions when he reportedly heard and recited the word of God. Complicating matters is the fact that it would be decades before those revelations would be systematically committed to paper as the complete Quran.
After receiving his first revelation in a cave in the mountains, Muhammad returned to his home in Mecca. There he began preaching—first to his astonished family and friends, and then to others in his tribe. With a revelation reminiscent of the passion of Moses and the dedication of Jesus he condemned the polytheists and idolaters of Mecca who had strayed from the ways of God. He railed against the corruption and immorality pervading society.
Much of Muhammad’s preaching resembled that of itinerant Christians and monks who occasionally ventured into Arabia, as well as that of the Jews who lived there. In fact, much of the Quran stresses the similarities between Christianity and Judaism and affirms the holiness of the Old and New Testaments and their prophets, from Moses to Jesus. The Quran even suggests that Jesus had predicted Muhammad’s coming:
And (remember) when ‘Iesa (Jesus), son of Maryam (Mary), said: “O Children of Israel! I am the Messenger of Allah unto you confirming the Taurat [(Torah) which came] before me, and giving glad tidings of a Messenger to come after me, whose name shall be Ahmed. But when he (Ahmed, i.e., Muhammad) came to them with clear proofs, they said: “This is plain magic.”
Muhammad also taught, however, that Christians and Jews had perverted their religions and betrayed true faith in God: Christians worshipped Jesus Christ, which was tantamount to idolatry, and Jews had ignored Jesus as a prophet and the importance of his message.
But, like Christianity and Judaism, Muhammad preached judgment and resurrection after a coming Day of Judgment. There was no god but God, whom he called Allah. While Christians and Jews shared a belief in one god, the tribes in and around Mecca were polytheists, and among those hundreds of gods they worshipped was one known as “Allah.”
The Meccan polytheists did not take kindly to Mu
hammad’s message that, by worshipping false idols, they were offending the one true God. As a result, few people, except for Muhammad’s closest friends and families, had any interest in listening. The local townspeople of Mecca did not see a prophet but rather a man intent on disrupting the booming tourism industry they had built around their local shrines.
Shrines, of course, that were dedicated to many gods.
The Satanic Verses
Muhammad was nothing if not a pragmatist. Frustrated by his inability to convert Mecca to Islam, Muhammad knew he had to come up with another option. And so the prophet became a politician.
The Meccans offered him a deal. If he would worship the gods of Mecca for a year, then they would worship Allah for a year. Muhammad contemplated the proposition and asked for divine guidance. It was a difficult decision—he had, after all, derided the Meccan gods as false gods. Should he ignore or twist everything God had told him so far? Did the means justify the end? In response, he received a revelation: the three main gods of Mecca could be worshipped, for they had a special relationship with Allah.
The conciliatory measure pleased the Meccans, but according to the Quran, it greatly angered Allah. The revelation, which would later become known as the “Satanic Verses,” had been a false one—a result of trickery by the Devil.
“Never did We send a Messenger or a Prophet before you,” the Quran says, “but when he did recite the revelation or narrated or spoke, Shaitan (Satan) threw (some falsehood) in it. But Allah abolishes that which Shaitan (Satan) throws in. Then Allah establishes His Revelations. And Allah is All-Knower, All-Wise.”