The Sunni mahdi is essentially an anonymous figure the Shi’ite mahdi is a divinely inspired person with a real identity. Shi’ite Islam differs from Sunni Islam regarding the identity of the mahdi. There is no question that Ahmadinejad believes he has been chosen to be the herald of the mahdi. His appearance would involve terrible war and unusual bloodshed.Īhmadinejad, as mayor of Teheran, built a spectacular boulevard through which the mahdi would enter into the capital. He is expected to conquer the world and establish Shi’ism as its supreme religion and system of rule. Since the late ninth century, the Shi’ites have been expecting the emergence of the hidden imam-mahdi, armed with divine power and followed by thousands of martyrdom-seeking warriors. Moshe Sharon recently provided a very lucid summary of the unique features of Shi’ite eschatology, its key point of consistency with Sunni understandings of this doctrine, and Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s deep personal attachment to "mahdism": And the notion of jihad "ransom" extends even into Islamic eschatology-on the day of resurrection the vanquished Jews will be consigned to Hellfire, and this will expiate Muslims who have sinned, sparing them from this fate. Another hadith variant, which takes place in Jerusalem, has Isa (the Muslim Jesus) leading the Arabs in a rout of the Dajjâl and his company of 70,000 armed Jews. When the Dajjâl is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered- everything will deliver them up except for the so-called gharkad tree, as per the canonical hadith included in the 1988 Hamas Charter (in article 7). At his appearance, other traditions maintain that the Dajjâl will be accompanied by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan wrapped in their robes, and armed with polished sabers, their heads covered with a sort of veil. Jews are described as adherents of the Dajjâl-the Muslim equivalent of the Anti-Christ-or according to another tradition, the Dajjâl is himself Jewish. As characterized in the hadith, Muslim eschatology highlights the Jews’ supreme hostility to Islam. The recent annihilationist sentiments regarding Jews, as expressed by Hamas cleric al-Zarad, and incorporated permanently into the foundational 1988 Hamas Charter, are also rooted in Islamic eschatology. Concluding observations illustrate the scope of contemporary Muslim Jew hatred fueled by orthodox motifs in Islam’s foundational texts, and reinforced by Islam’s central religious educational shrine, i.e., Al Azhar University, and its Muslim Pope equivalent, to textbooks widely used in Islamic schools across the globe, even those within the United States.
This third and final installment also illustrates the interaction between indigenous Islamic Antisemitism, and two salient "imports" from colonial Europe-specifically, the blood libel, and Nazism. Part 3 focuses on the Antisemitic motifs in Islamic eschatology and how they have become enmeshed with the "corporeal" Antisemitism from Islam’s foundational texts to engender a contemporary atmosphere of genocidal Muslim Jew hatred.
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