Now that the Mayan Non-Apocalypse has come and gone with nary a whimper, it's time to return attention to the strain of apocalyptic thought that potentially
could produce a big bang: the Islamic kind. Predictions, and warnings, of the Mahdi's appearance continue to proliferate in both major sectarian branches of Islam, as well as in several major areas of the Islamic center.
In the Twelver Shi`a world:
I. The Karbala (Iraq)-based Shafaqna Shi`a News Association recently has been running a three-part series on "Signs of the Reappearance of Imam Mahdi." The
first installment, as well as the
second, discussed the astronomical signs that allegedly will precede and/or accompany the Mahdi's return. The
third focused on the Mahdist precursor figures, the Sufyani and the Yamani-the former a "type" of the Dajjal, or Islamic antiChrist; the latter an End Time good guy (for Muslims) whom Shafaqna earlier (in 2012) had
already seen portents of in the ongoing
Hawthi Zaydi (Fiver Shi`i) rebellion against the Sunni regime in Sana`a, Yemen.
II. For the better part of a decade, there has been an active Mahdist movement in Iraq whose leader, Ahmad al-Hasan "al-Yamani," claims to be the very aforementioned eschatological figure from southwestern Arabia. (I wrote a
long blogpost on this group back in 2008.) They are called
Ansar al-Mahdi ["Helpers of the Mahdi;" henceforth AAM] and run a
website as well as publish, every few months, a rather lengthy broadsheet called "The Mahdi Times." The latest edition, from
November/December 2012, is largely concerned with the group's establishment of a branch in Egypt-the Sunni Arab world's most-populous country-and the (alleged) government opposition thereto. A few notable points: the Egyptian opposition to al-Hasan's messianic da`wah is referred to as "Yazidi" (a pejorative term in Iraqi and Iranian Shi`ism for the
heteoodox beliefs of some Kurds) and/or "Salafi" (Sunni fundamentalist); only a few of AAM's members are said to know Arabic, thus indicating most are not from Egypt or Iraq; there is at least one American, one Joseph McGowen, among the AAM-perhaps helping explain why, when government security forces accosted AAM over alleged visa irregularities, the American embassy is said to have helped; at least one Egyptian TV station would regularly attack AAM (before it went off the air); and al-Hasan claims that his father is the occulted 12th Imam, Muhammad b. al-Hasan-which would mean he was sired by a five year-old boy, since the last Imam was born in 868 and assumed
ghaybah ("occultation") in 873 (unless he somehow reached to puberty and beyond in that mystical state).
The Mahdi, post-puberty and, obviously, weight-training. (Thanks to Atomic Think Tank site.)In the Sunni world:
III. Another Mahdi-related figure (sometimes seen as a forerunner, other times as a successor) is al-Qahtani. Heretofore the most prominent such was Muhammad Abd Allah al-Qahtani (d. 1979), the putatative "mahdi" held up as inspiration for the abortive coup against the Saudis led by Juhayman al-Utaby in 1979. Now, however, another-and, thankfully, more pacific-
Qahtani has been identified: he is Fethullah Gülen, the exiled-to-America neo-Sufi Turkish leader of a massive global charter school system This is according to a man whom some consider to be the Mahdi himself, Istanbul-based Adnan Oktar. (And in fact it's not overly cynical to observe that since Oktar and Gülen are in many ways rivals for the mantle of the late Ottoman/early Turkish Mahdist thinker Said Nursi (d. 1960), the former's relegation of the latter to a supporting role is quite astute in Mahdist circles.)
IV. While Gülen and Oktar are peaceful Sunni Mahdists, and al-Yamani seemingly a nonviolent Shi`i one, at least one prominent Sunni cleric links the Mahdi not just with jihad but, indeed, with genocide: Egypt's Mahmud al-Masri, in a
recent religious diatribe, opined that either the Mahdi will wipe out the Jews of "the Zionist entity" when he comes, or that this will happen right before he appears; only the Jews of Isfahan will survive to become followers of the Dajjal until they are killed along with him (a standard Sunni eschatological calumny, indicting both Jews and Twelver Shi`is). "Ultimately," says al-Masri, "not a single Jew will be left on the face of the earth." This view of the Mahdi as the "terminator" of Israel and the Jews echoes that coming out of Ahmadinejad's Iran-with
important exceptions.
al-Dabbah, "the Beast," of Islamic eschatology. He's actually better looking than the Dajjal, and not quite as evil--but close. (From a late-16th c. Persian miniature.)
Observations:
1. Arab Shi`i Mahdism had been largely bottled up in Iraq by Saddam Hussein (brutally, no doubt); the US invasion and toppling of the secular dictator has, among many other unintended consequences, let the Mahdist jinn out of the Ba`athist bottle.
2. Western fears of a Cairo-Tehran Pan-Islamic axis are greatly exaggerated. Those who espouse such are ignorant of the current Egyptian anxiety about that country reverting to its Fatimid past, when a (Sevener) Shi`i minority regime lorded it over the Sunni majority. Both the Muslim Brotherhood [MB] and al-Azhar (Egypt's, and indeed the entire Sunni world's, pre-eminent religious institution) share this disquiet about Shi`ism (and, thus, Iran).
3. But while Egypt is leery of Shi`ism and, presumably, its attendant (and integral) Mahdism, al-Masri's screed is clear evidence that Salafi Sunnism has room for strong eschatological belief. And recall that the Salafis are the junior partners of the MB in the ruling al-Nur party there-so any MB politicians who don't already adhere to Sunni Mahdism as a core doctrine are likely to be exposed to it by their coalition partners.
4. Note that these examples of strong Mahdist belief are manifesting not in the heterodox, Sufi-infused "peripheries" of Islamic civilization--Senegal, say, or Indonesia--but rather in the very central regions of the old Muslim empires: Iraq, Egypt and, a bit later chronologically (thanks to the Byzantines), Turkey. This demonstrates, once again, that analysts and historians who scoff at Mahdism as a mainly marginal belief system are deluding themselves (and others). 
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