APOCOLYPSE NOW? Very interesting article on islam's belief in "messiah"

I'm pretty sure that Christians will tell that Jesus Christ was resurrected almost 2000 years ago - the tomb was empty.

 

the president should be enough

 

This passage indicates to me that this article is biased. They mention that he is a part of a sect with extremist views, then goes on to use his quote to make a generalization of the entire Shia community. And even then, the quote is obviously a biased translation. Not biased against the religion but towards making the article's point.

Martyrdom is to die for a belief. In Islam there is no belief worth dying for except religion. A martyr to a Muslim, is a Shaheed. When we talk about martyrs we use the term Shaheed exclusively.

I love this country, I would be willing to die for this country. If no american shared that belief with me, we'd be typing in England. As they have provided no direct quote of him i cannot translate it directly. What i can tell you is that from a knowledge of how people articulate that translation makes no linguistic sense. That passage is 99.99999 percent more likely to mean he feels it is important for people to be willing to die for their beliefs.

I just wonder how much more of that article is built on assumptions and biased data.

 

and for bush or bushbot, is a Suicider

 

'End Times' Religious Groups Want Apocalypse Soon

'End times' religious groups want apocalypse sooner than later, and they're relying on high tech -- and red heifers -- to hasten its arrival.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/l...77604,full.story?coll=la-headlines-california

By Louis Sahagun, Times Staff Writer
June 22, 2006

For thousands of years, prophets have predicted the end of the world. Today, various religious groups, using the latest technology, are trying to hasten it.

Their endgame is to speed the promised arrival of a messiah.

For some Christians this means laying the groundwork for Armageddon.

With that goal in mind, mega-church pastors recently met in Inglewood to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft to transport missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission: to make every person on Earth aware of Jesus' message. Doing so, they believe, will bring about the end, perhaps within two decades.

In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a far different vision. As mayor of Tehran in 2004, he spent millions on improvements to make the city more welcoming for the return of a Muslim messiah known as the Mahdi, according to a recent report by the American Foreign Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

To the majority of Shiites, the Mahdi was the last of the prophet Muhammad's true heirs, his 12 righteous descendants chosen by God to lead the faithful.

Ahmadinejad hopes to welcome the Mahdi to Tehran within two years.

Conversely, some Jewish groups in Jerusalem hope to clear the path for their own messiah by rebuilding a temple on a site now occupied by one of Islam's holiest shrines.

Artisans have re-created priestly robes of white linen, gem-studded breastplates, silver trumpets and solid-gold menorahs to be used in the Holy Temple — along with two 6½-ton marble cornerstones for the building's foundation.

Then there is Clyde Lott, a Mississippi revivalist preacher and cattle rancher. He is trying to raise a unique herd of red heifers to satisfy an obscure injunction in the Book of Numbers: the sacrifice of a blemish-free red heifer for purification rituals needed to pave the way for the messiah.

So far, only one of his cows has been verified by rabbis as worthy, meaning they failed to turn up even three white or black hairs on the animal's body.

Linking these efforts is a belief that modern technologies and global communications have made it possible to induce completion of God's plan within this generation.

Though there are myriad interpretations of how it will play out, the basic Christian apocalyptic countdown — as described by the Book of Revelation in the New Testament — is as follows:

Jews return to Israel after 2,000 years, the Holy Temple is rebuilt, billions of people perish during seven years of natural disasters and plagues, the antichrist arises and rules the world, the battle of Armageddon erupts in the vicinity of Israel, Jesus returns to defeat Satan's armies and preside over Judgment Day.

Generations of Christians have hoped for the Second Coming of Jesus, said UCLA historian Eugen Weber, author of the 1999 book "Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults and Millennial Beliefs Through the Ages."

"And it's always been an ultimately bloody hope, a slaughterhouse hope," he added with a sigh. "What we have now in this global age is a vaster and bloodier-than-ever Wagnerian version. But, then, we are a very imaginative race."

Apocalyptic movements are nothing new; even Christopher Columbus hoped to assist in the Great Commission by evangelizing New World inhabitants.

Some religious scholars saw apocalyptic fever rise as the year 2000 approached, and they expected it to subside after the millennium arrived without a hitch.

It didn't. According to various polls, an estimated 40% of Americans believe that a sequence of events presaging the end times is already underway. Among the believers are pastors of some of the largest evangelical churches in America, who converged at Faith Central Bible Church in Inglewood in February to finalize plans to start 5 million new churches worldwide in 10 years.

"Jesus Christ commissioned his disciples to go to the ends of the Earth and tell everyone how they could achieve eternal life," said James Davis, president of the Global Pastors Network's "Billion Souls Initiative," one of an estimated 2,000 initiatives worldwide designed to boost the Christian population.

"As we advance around the world," Davis said, "we'll be shortening the time needed to fulfill that Great Commission. Then, the Bible says, the end will come."

An opposing vision, invoked by Ahmadinejad in an address before the United Nations last year, suggests that the Imam Mahdi, a 9th century figure, will soon emerge from a well to conquer the world and convert everyone to Islam.

"O mighty Lord," he said, "I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace."

At the appropriate time, according to Shiite tradition, the Mahdi will reappear and, along with Jesus, lead Muslims in a struggle to rid the world of corruption and establish justice.

For Christians, the future of Israel is the key to any end-times scenario, and various groups are reaching out to Jews — or proselytizing among them — to advance the Second Coming.

A growing number of fundamentalist Christians in mostly Southern states are adopting Jewish religious practices to align themselves with prophecies saying that Gentiles will stand as one with Jews when the end is near.

Evangelist John C. Hagee of the 19,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio has helped 12,000 Russian Jews move to Israel, and donated several million dollars to Israeli hospitals and orphanages.

"We are the generation that will probably see the rapture of the church," Hagee said, referring to a moment in advance of Jesus' return when the world's true believers will be airlifted into heaven.

"In Christian theology, the first thing that happens when Christ returns to Earth is the judgment of nations," said Hagee, who wears a Jewish prayer shawl when he ministers. "It will have one criterion: How did you treat the Jewish people? Anyone who understands that will want to be on the right side of that question. Those who are anti-Semitic will go to eternal damnation."

On July 18, Hagee plans to lead a contingent of high-profile evangelists to Washington to make their concerns about Israel's security known to congressional leaders. More than 1,200 evangelists are expected for the gathering.

"Twenty-five years ago, I called a meeting of evangelists to discuss such an effort, and the conversation didn't last an hour," he said. "This time, I called and they all came and stayed. And when the meeting was over, they all agreed to speak up for Israel."

Underlining the sense of urgency is a belief that the end-times clock started ticking May 15, 1948, when the United Nations formally recognized Israel.

"I'll never forget that night," Hagee said. "I was 8 years old at the time and in the kitchen with my father listening to the news about Israel's rebirth on the radio. He said, 'Son, this is the most important day in the 20th century.' "

Hagee's message is carried on 160 television stations and 50 radio stations and can be seen in Africa, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and most Third World nations.

By contrast, Bill McCartney, a former University of Colorado football coach and co-founder of the evangelical Promise Keepers movement for men, which became huge in the 1990s, has had a devil of a time getting his own apocalyptic campaign off the ground.

It's called The Road to Jerusalem, and its mission is to convert Jews to Christianity — while there is still time.

"Our whole purpose is to hasten the end times," he said. "The Bible says Jews will be brought to jealousy when they see Christians and Jewish believers together as one — they'll want to be a part of that. That's going to signal Jesus' return."

Jews and others who don't accept Jesus, he added matter-of-factly, "are toast."

McCartney, who only a decade ago sermonized to stadium-size crowds of Promise Keepers, said finding people to back his sputtering cause has been "like plowing cement."

Given end-times scenarios saying that non-believers will die before Jesus returns — and that the antichrist will rule from Jerusalem's rebuilt Holy Temple — Jews have mixed feelings about the outpouring of support Israel has been getting from evangelical organizations.

"I truly believe John Hagee is at once a daring, beautiful person — and quite dangerous," said Orthodox Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, vice president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in New York.

"I sincerely recognize him as a hero for bringing planeloads of people to Israel at a time when people there were getting blown up by the busloads," Hirschfield said. "But he also believes that the only path to the father is through Jesus. That leaves me out."

Meanwhile, in what has become a spectacular annual routine, Jews — hoping to rebuild the Holy Temple destroyed by the Romans in AD 70 — attempt to haul the 6 1/2 -ton cornerstones by truck up to the Temple Mount, the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock shrine. Each year, they are turned back by police.

Among those turned away is Gershon Solomon, spokesman for Jerusalem's Temple Institute. When the temple is built, he said, "Islam is over."

"I'm grateful for all the wonderful Christian angels wanting to help us," Solomon added, acknowledging the political support from "Christians who are now Israel's best lobbyists in the United States."

However, when asked to comment on the fate of non-Christians upon the Second Coming of Jesus, he said, "That's a very embarrassing question. What can I tell you? That's a very terrible Christian idea.

"What kind of religion is it that expects another religion will be destroyed?"

But are all of these efforts to hasten the end of the world a bit like, well, playing God?

Some Christians, such as Roman Catholics and some Protestant denominations, believe in the Second Coming but don't try to advance it. It's important to be ready for the Second Coming, they say, though its timetable cannot be manipulated.

Hirschfield said he prays every day for the coming of the Jewish messiah, but he too believes that God can't be hurried.

"For me," he said, "the messiah is like the mechanical bunny at a racetrack: It always stays a little ahead of the runners but keeps the pace toward a redeemed world.

"Trouble is, there are many people who want to bring a messiah who looks just like them. For me, that kind of messianism is spiritual narcissism."

But some Christian leaders say they aren't playing God; they're just carrying out his will.

Ted Haggard, president of the National Assn. of Evangelicals, says the commitment to fulfilling the Great Commission has naturally intensified along with the technological advances God provided to carry out his plans.

Over in Mississippi, Lott believes that he is doing God's work, and that is why he wants to raise a few head of red heifers for Jewish high priests. Citing Scripture, Lott and others say a pure red heifer must be sacrificed and burned and its ashes used in purification rituals to allow Jews to rebuild the temple.

But Lott's plans have been sidetracked.

Facing a maze of red tape and testing involved in shipping animals overseas — and rumors of threats from Arabs and Jews alike who say the cows would only bring more trouble to the Middle East — he has given up on plans to fly planeloads of cows to Israel. For now.

In the meantime, some local ranchers have expressed an interest in raising their own red heifers for Israel, and fears of hoof-and-mouth disease and blue tongue forced Lott to relocate his only verified red heifer — a female born in 1993 — to Nebraska.

Cloning is out of the question, he said, because the technique "is not approved by the rabbinical council of Israel." Artificial insemination has so far failed to produce another heifer certified by rabbis.

"Something deep in my heart says God wants me to be a blessing to Israel," Lott said in a telephone interview. "But it's complicated. We're just not ready to send any red heifers over there."

If not now, when?

"If there's a sovereign God with his hand in the affairs of men, it'll happen, and it'll be a pivotal event," he said. "That time is soon. Very soon."

 

The day will come GOD willing...

 

Virtually every religion has a mythology about a higher power returning and rescuing the righteous and damning the sinful. Using fear to justify religion is as old as religion.

Tens of millions of American Christians believe The Rapture is imminent. Most are desperate for it to happen during their lifetimes. This strikes me as kinda sad -- it seems they're so unhappy and scared in this life that they put all their hope in a life that lies beyond death.

So they try to hasten it by demanding an escalation of violence...so that they will be saved because of their compassion. Dangerous cycle.

Religious zealots who use violence to prove their worthiness are perhaps more dangerous than even David Hasselhoff.

 

i agree...it strikes me as sad, too. probably for a different reason than you have, though...because in my mind it means they've missed the heart of Christ's message.

i look forward to God's redemption...but God is redeeming right now.

 

Couldn't have said it better.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14489705/

First in a series
By Ellen Knickmeyer

Updated: 5:10 a.m. CT Aug 24, 2006
KUFA, Iraq - Pumping their fists in the air, the men and boys inside the colonnaded mosque shouted their loyalty to Shiite Muslim leader Moqtada al-Sadr. "Hasten the coming of the Mahdi!" thousands chanted in the baking sun of the open-air mosque, summoning the central religious figure of Sadr's movement. "And curse his enemies!"

Booming loudspeakers outside the mosque echoed the devotion of Sadr's followers converging for Friday prayers last month in Kufa, the cleric's spiritual base outside the Shiite holy city of Najaf. "Moqtada! Moqtada!" martial male voices intoned over the loudspeakers in rhythmic cadence with the footsteps of the gathering worshipers. "Even the child in the mother's cradle cries: 'Moqtada! Moqtada!' "


• More Iraq news

Sadr's followers answer as one when his movement calls them, and his organization of social, religious, political and military programs -- as well as the young clerics, politicians and fighters around him -- has become the most pivotal force in Iraq after the United States.

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Millions of Sadr's supporters turned out in December elections to give his movement the largest bloc in parliament, which in turn put him in control of four government ministries. Thousands of male followers abandoned their homes and jobs when a bomb destroyed a Shiite shrine in Samarra on Feb. 22, rallying at Sadr headquarters on a night and day of retaliatory bloodletting that plunged Iraq into sectarian war.

While opposition to the U.S. military presence in Iraq remains one of its core tenets, the Sadr movement's militia, called the Mahdi Army, took heavy casualties in two military uprisings against better-armed, better-trained U.S. forces in 2004. Today, according to Sadr leaders and outside analysts, the movement is husbanding its strength and waiting for American troops to go.

Sadr "clearly is the most potent political figure, and the most popular one," in Iraq, said Joost Hiltermann, Middle East project director for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. "Unless directly provoked, Sadrists will lay low, because they know the Americans' time in Iraq is coming to an end," he said. "Why would they risk another major loss of fighters if it's not necessary? Americans in their eyes are already defeated -- they're going to leave."

In the plainly furnished front room of his simple house in Najaf, one of Sadr's top aides agreed.

"The first time the Sadr trend fought them, it was forced on us," said Riyadh al-Nouri, a brother-in-law of Sadr's, reflecting the movement's belief that American military and civilian leaders provoked the confrontations with the cleric's followers in 2004. "We had no choice. Sayyid Moqtada didn't want to fight," Nouri said, using a religious honorific for Sadr. "This time, it might be the people who are mad and upset who would do this again. But as of now, in terms of orders from the Sadr trend, it doesn't call for these things."

"Until now, the Shiite giant has not begun to move. But if things come to a dead end," Nouri added, Shiite religious authorities "could take a decision to move him. It depends on them."

"Until now, they have patience," Nouri said.

Building a movement
The movement that Sadr now leads took shape in the seminaries of Najaf, a theological center of the Shiite world, as clerics in the second half of the 20th century sought to counter what were then growing secular and nationalist movements in the Arab world. Sadr's own work since the U.S.-led invasion builds upon the social and health programs for Shiite poor begun by his father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, in the 1990s. Sadr's father died with two of his sons in 1999, in an assassination believed to have been ordered by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

 

The Sadr movement's ultimate goal is a "united Islamic state," Bahaa al-Araji, a senior lawmaker in the Sadr political bloc, said in an interview. In Baghdad's Sadr City and other areas under Sadr's control, women uniformly cover their hair with scarves in the style of conservative Muslims. Islamic scholars operating with Sadr's office help arbitrate divorces, inheritances and other social matters in accordance with religious law. And fighters claiming to be part of Sadr's Mahdi Army -- named for a figure some Muslims believe will usher in an era of justice and true belief just before the end of time -- enforce a stringent Islamic code that includes the prohibition of alcohol and help enforce the orders of extrajudicial Islamic courts.

The movement is highly structured, largely along the lines of the Lebanese Hezbollah organization, building for its followers a state within a state while also acquiring a share of power in Iraq's formal government. Sadr, like Hezbollah, built popularity in part by providing social services such as health care. Because he controls the Health Ministry, and with it the hospitals and clinics of Iraq, his followers bear their children in public hospitals decorated with posters of the young cleric. They go to their graves washed by workers of a Sadr charity at a sprawling Shiite cemetery in Najaf, at a cost of 5,000 dinars, about $3.40, one-fifteenth of what grieving families outside Sadr's network pay. Sadr also sponsors the God's Martyr Foundation, which supports veterans and the families of fighters who are killed.

Under a tithing system followed by Sadr's movement and many other mainstream Shiite groups, those who are financially capable give one-fifth of their income, capital investments or both to their religious leaders.

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At Sadr's busy headquarters in Najaf last month, a steady stream of men poured in to sign up for a Sadr recruitment drive in the name of rebuilding the Samarra shrine. Younger men offered their labor. Other followers offered cash, including a proud grandfather who prodded forward a toddling grandson clutching two crisp U.S. $5 bills.

Describing the method of building Sadr's organization, Araji said, "We now see resistance should be political, and not military."

Avoiding confrontation
Sadr's relationship with the occupying U.S. forces has been hostile, and at times violent. In early 2004, L. Paul Bremer, then the top U.S. administrator in Iraq , declared Sadr an "outlaw." Bremer's spokesmen announced a murder warrant accusing Sadr in the stabbing death of a fellow Shiite cleric. Sadr's forces battled against the U.S. military in Sadr City, Najaf and across the south that year. But in elections in 2005, Sadr's movement participated in the political process, and along with other Shiite parties claimed power and became part of the government.

Today, Sadr's movement remains wary of the U.S. forces now trying to impose order on chaotic Baghdad. Mahdi Army fighters openly operate checkpoints in Sadr City and elsewhere, standing at intersections and positioning themselves between two lanes of traffic on Sadr turf, scanning each car for strangers. They have sometimes taken Sunni Arab men away for detention or execution, according to Sunni witnesses. But they hide their weapons from American eyes, tucking pistols in waistbands under their shirts or hiding automatic rifles behind doorways.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14489705/page/2/

When U.S. patrols roll into Sadr City, Mahdi Army patrols melt away. Last month, as Capt. Troy Wayman, one of the commanders of the tiny U.S. force overseeing training of the Iraqi army unit in Sadr City, led one of the small daily U.S. convoys through the district's streets, Mahdi Army fighters faded from view.

A Mahdi Army member in civilian clothes, standing in Sadr City 's main road at an informal checkpoint, caught sight of Wayman's approaching Humvees and scuttled out of sight, disappearing into the crowds of men watching the Americans.

As Wayman visited what were supposed to be Iraqi army checkpoints in Sadr City that morning, the first stop showed not a single soldier of Iraq's regular army at their posts monitoring passing cars for bombs, kidnappers and the like.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14489705/page/3/

The militias rapidly infiltrated key government agencies. Sadr's movement was not alone; it worked in parallel with another Shiite movement, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, headed by Abdul Aziz Hakim.

Hakim's militia is known as the Badr Brigade. Its members largely took control of the Interior Ministry after the 2005 elections, building commando and other police forces. They are better organized and better armed than the Mahdi Army, thanks to decades of Iranian backing when it opposed Hussein. The Mahdi Army tended to supply the rank and file among Iraq's new police forces, rather than commanders. Together, the two Shiite militias infiltrated into Iraq's security forces thousands of people whose loyalty is to the religious parties rather than the national unity government.

In addition, Sadr's four ministries control 70,000 uniformed, armed men who are part of a government agency known as the Facilities Protection Service, according to the Interior Ministry. U.S. military commanders acknowledge that the agency has mushroomed to more than 140,000, largely outside American notice. A top former U.S. military commander has said militia fighters under the Facilities Protection Service are tied to kidnappings, execution-style killings and other crimes.

Thousands of fighters
Both movements can also field thousands of armed civilian men in a matter of hours. Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council, boasted to his followers in December that he could muster 200,000 militia fighters.

The Sadr movement claims more. "All Iraq is Mahdi Army," said Thamara al-Fetlawi, a civilian leader of the God's Martyrs Foundation, which cares for the families of slain and wounded Sadr militiamen as well as offering broader social services to followers of Sadr.

Fetlawi, like some other Sadr officials, rejected the definition of the Mahdi Army as a militia, apparently as a tactical move against any future efforts to disband the militias. Instead, he called it "the people's army," suggesting ordinary men who spontaneously grab their own weapons and respond when need and Shiite clerics call. The weapons seen by Washington Post reporters in Sadr City on the night of the Feb. 22 Samarra bombing included grenade launchers and heavy machine guns.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14489705/page/4/

Sadr's Mahdi Army and the Supreme Council's Badr Brigade -- rivals that fought deadly battles in power struggles in the predominantly Shiite south last year -- cooperate when their interests overlap. In the turbulent days after the Samarra bombing, Sadr and Badr militiamen marched openly in a Shiite neighborhood of central Baghdad, each carrying banners declaring their battalion and brigade designations within their militias.

American officials have called the Shiite militias a danger to the Iraqi state. But the United States has yet to tackle what it and the Iraqi government say is their goal of dismantling the militias. In a congressionally mandated report last month, the State Department said that "a plan is being developed to assist Iraqi leaders" in breaking up the militias of the governing Shiite religious parties.

A more ominous warning came recently from the departing British ambassador to Iraq, William Patey, in a cable that was leaked. "If we are to avoid a descent into civil war and anarchy, then preventing the Jaish al-Mahdi from developing into a state within a state, as Hezbollah has done in Lebanon, will be a priority," Patey wrote, using the Arabic term for Mahdi Army.

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Top U.S. officials and leaders of the Sadr movement both say many of the gunmen claiming to be in the Mahdi Army are increasingly operating outside Sadr's control. Nouri, Sadr's brother-in-law, and others blamed rogue elements and impostors for escalating killings and kidnappings since the Samarra bombing. Many of the attacks since July have focused on driving Sunnis from predominantly Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad.

‘The real struggle’
"I will say that evil exists in every sect and every place," Nouri said in the interview at his home in Najaf. "And also good exists. Just like with the Jews and the Christians, it is so in Islam.

"They might be gangs claiming to be the Mahdi Army and doing these bad things. But they don't believe in the doctrine, they only do what they want and wear clothes of the Mahdi Army. They do not follow the guidance of the leaders," Nouri said. "They are exposed when there are orders from the high command to sit and do nothing and still they do their acts. Anyone who is not following such orders from the Sadr office is not a member of the Mahdi Army."

"After the Samarra bombing, it seems there were major reprisals organized for large part in Sadr circles," said Hiltermann, the International Crisis Group analyst. "Moqtada himself was very clear no revenge should be taken. It's not clear whether he was simply not listened to, or was giving a double message -- one to the outside world, one to followers."

Unable to figure out Sadr's militia or approach him on political terms, Americans have been frustrated in their hopes of reining in the Mahdi Army, as well as the Badr Brigade.

"It would be a whole lot easier if these armed illegal groups had a coordinated structure with a clear headquarters," a Western diplomat in Baghdad said last month in response to questions about why no progress had been made on U.S. and Iraqi pledges to disband the militias. Ultimately, Hiltermann said, the Mahdi Army, as well as the Supreme Council and both groups' Sunni rivals, need only bide their time, until growing opposition to the war among the American public brings U.S. troops home.

"Then the real struggle begins," Hiltermann said.

Correspondent Jonathan Finer in Najaf contributed to this report.

Tomorrow: The Mahdi Army's role in escalating sectarian violence.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company