The pseudonymous, former Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Reza Kahlili, has warned in a July 9, 2012 WND article, just yesterday, of how:
[Iranian] State-owned media outlets, in a coordinated effort, all ran a similar story Friday highlighting Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s message on the coming of the last Islamic messiah.
Until now, the Iranian media would mostly quote clerics from seminaries on the issue of the last Islamic messiah to avoid the regime being labeled messianic. However, the wide publication of Khamenei’s statements on a need to prepare for the end of times as it confronts the West over its illicit nuclear program is alarming to Western leaders.
“The issue of Imam Mahdi is of utmost importance, and his reappearance has been clearly stated in our holy religion of Islam,” Khamenei said. We must study and remind ourselves of the end of times and Imam Mahdi’s era. … We must prepare the environment for the coming so that the great leader will come.” . . . .
“Today we have a duty to prepare for the coming. … If we are the soldiers of the 12th imam, then we must be ready to fight,” Khamenei said.
“With the guidance of Allah and His invisible help, we shall make the Islamic civilization proud on the world stage. … This is our destiny. … The youth, the faithful must prepare themselves for this great move.”
Giving background, Kahlili notes how:
Shiite theology holds that great wars must engulf the Earth, during which one-third of the world’s population will die in the fighting and another third from hunger, lawlessness and havoc. [--> That's 4 - 5 BILLIONS dead, folks . . . ] Israel is to be destroyed, and only then will the 12th imam, Mahdi, reappear and kill all the infidels, raising the flag of Islam in all corners of the world . . .
As further backdrop, we must understand that, as long as nine years ago, the Iranian authorities have circulated to army bases, to the Basij ideological militia and the Revolutionary Guards, a key booklet, The last Six Months. According to Kahlili, this booklet, "describes the conditions needed in the last six months prior to the reappearance of the last Islamic messiah." Which, of course, are just as described.
The just linked April 24, 2012 article comments:
Mahdi will only reappear, Shiites believe, when Israel is destroyed and the U.S. is brought to its knees; two-thirds of the world’s population will die in a nuclear exchange, and with this chaos and havoc engulfing the earth, the “coming” will unfold.
As revealed in the Iranian secret documentary “The Coming Is Upon Us,” it is believed within the Islamic regime that the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is the historical figure as claimed in a hadith who will rise up against the infidels and pass the flag of Islam to Imam Mahdi, the last Islamic messiah.
It is worth again pausing to watch the video (which has been previously featured at KF):
We should also recognise that Khamenei is on record, as long ago as 1984 (when he was President of Iran), per an excerpt from a IAEA document, is on record:
“. . . in April 1984 the then President of Iran, H.E. Ayatollah Khamenei declared, during a meeting of top-echelon political and security officials at the Presidential Palace in Tehran, that the spiritual leader Imam Khomeini had decided to reactivate the nuclear programme. [--> NB: at the turn of the 1980's, I was taught Physics by one of the men who ran Iran's nuclear physics research reactor and programme under the Shah in the 1970's] According to Ayatollah Khamenei this was the only way to secure the very essence of the Islamic Revolution from the schemes of its enemies, especially the United States and Israel, and to prepare it for the emergence of Imam Mehdi. Ayatollah Khamenei further declared during the meeting, that a nuclear arsenal would serve Iran as a deterrent in the hands of God’s soldiers.”
In short, the diplomatic dance and hesitations over the past decade have simply secured the time Iran needed to be in the position where it seems that within one to two months it could credibly sprint into nuclear power status. Where, the leadership are in the grips of an ideology that EXPECTS nuclear war costing the world 2/3 of its population as a feature of an eschatological scenario that brings Iran to centre stage as the vanguard of the Mahdi/re-emerged 12th Imam of Shia Islam, as leader of a global, final revolution.
No wonder, former US UN Ambassador John Bolton has summed up:
No wonder, former US UN Ambassador John Bolton has summed up:
The ongoing failure of talks concerning Iran’s nuclear weapons program, most recently in Istanbul on July 3, is no surprise. This latest negotiation charade between Iran and the Security Council’s five permanent members plus Germany (P5+1) is the culmination of 10 years of innumerable diplomatic endeavors. These efforts rested on the erroneous premise that Iran could be talked out of its decades-long effort to build deliverable nuclear weapons.
Now, almost no one argues there is light at the end of the negotiation tunnel . . . . Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on June 30, for example, that “the pressure track is our primary focus now, and we believe that the economic sanctions are bringing Iran to the table.” That is a far cry from actually terminating the weapons program. Moreover, what would a negotiated deal look like? Our goal is to deny Iran nuclear weapons; Tehran manifestly wants the opposite. What is the compromise? Iran gets to keep a small nuclear weapons program? . . . .
The fundamental problem today is that there simply is no effective, enforceable sanctions regime that will compel Iran to abandon its nuclear aspirations. It may once have been possible, a decade ago or more, but even then would have required full, active cooperation from Russia, China, and others; comprehensive sanctions, not the ad hoc structure actually created; armed enforcement; and checkmating Iran’s highly successful cheating and evasion efforts. That theoretical chance has long since disappeared.
Since none of this is really new, apart from last Friday's statement by Khamenei, we need to pointedly ask: why is this something that has not been properly and repeatedly headlined as one of the most important trends to understand events in the Middle East and implications for the world?
Such is obviously highly newsworthy, but has been met with a studied silence or -- almost worse -- a studied burial in the back pages or odd corners and hours of the global 24/7 news cycle. Frankly, this suggests that our perceptions and views are being willfully manipulated by those who deem themselves our betters, to make sure we toe the required politically correct lines. For shame!
If there ever was a need for Samizdat, this is a case in point!
But also the bottomline our betters plainly don't want us to think too deeply about is clear: we are now at the brink of nuclear threshold war in the Middle East, in a situation that is likely indeed to so disrupt the world's oil supplies, that chaos lies ahead, absent a miracle of Divine mercy.
But also the bottomline our betters plainly don't want us to think too deeply about is clear: we are now at the brink of nuclear threshold war in the Middle East, in a situation that is likely indeed to so disrupt the world's oil supplies, that chaos lies ahead, absent a miracle of Divine mercy.
Further to all of this, the well informed, pseudonymous [--> he has had his life threatened] commenter Joel Richardson warned in a September 6, 2006 open letter to Mr Ahmadinejad, then recently chosen -- he can hardly be said to have been legitimately elected, given the censorship of candidates by the Guardian Council -- as Iranian President:
Mr. President, in your letter to President Bush, you said this:
"I have no doubt that telling lies is reprehensible in any culture, and you do not like to be lied to."Of course, while much of the world has never heard of the doctrines of Kithman or al-Taqiyya, as a Shi’a Muslim, you are most certainly aware of these terms, are you not? Certainly you are aware of the words of Imam Jafar Sadiq, the sixth Imam of Shi’a Islam who clearly disagrees with you about the reprehensibility of lying. In fact, he even states that Allah will dishonor anyone who tells the truth about certain elements of Islam:
"One who exposes something from our religion is like one who intentionally kills us."
"You belong to a religion that whosoever conceals it, Allah will honor him and whosoever reveals it, Allah will disgrace him."I have also read from A Shi’a Enclopedia a specific definition of al-Taqiyya:
"The word ‘al-Taqiyya’ literally means: ‘Concealing or disguising one's beliefs, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions, and/or strategies at a time of imminent danger, whether now or later in time, to save oneself from physical and/or mental injury.’ A one-word translation would be ‘Dissimulation’".So Mr. President, my first question to you would be the following: Would I be wrong to believe the words of your Imam and the words of your scholars by understanding that Shi’a Muslims are commanded to purposefully hide what they truly believe in order to mislead others as to the true nature of their religion, their "beliefs, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions, and/or strategies"?
In short, the same religiously motivated ideological system outright commands calculated deceit in a strategic situation. That is a serious warning indeed, and it therefore means that we should attend more to internal words and deeds that reveal ideology and intent to those they lead or plan together with, than to potentially deliberately misleading statements meant for consumption by outsiders.
Obviously, that is what Reza Kahlili and Joel Richardson have given us a window on.
Richardson continues:
Mr. President, despite the fact that your nation essentially sits atop an endless supply of oil, how is it that you expect intelligent people to believe you when you claim that your only motivation to achieve nuclear capabilities is for energy? In light of the millions of lives that may potentially be at risk due to a potential nuclear exchange, wouldn’t the leaders of the world be utterly foolish to accept anything you say regarding your nuclear program? And wouldn’t their foolishness be multiplied by the fact that you regularly seem to make outlandish comments such as your recent statement at the "World without Zionism Conference":
"They say, ‘how could we have a world without America and Zionism?’ But you know well that this slogan and goal can be achieved and can definitely be realized."Mr. President, certainly you must realize how such comments will be viewed by the rest of the world.
Richardson goes on, even more pointedly:
In Ayatollah Ibrahim Amini’s work on the subject of Mahdism for instance: Al-Imam Al-Mahdi: The Just Leader of Humanity, we read of those who refuse to convert to Islam and submit to the Mahdi’s leadership over the earth:
This group will indisputably be opposed to justice and will never give up their stubborn antagonism against any power. Such people will do anything against the promised Mahdi to protect their vested interests. Moreover, they will do anything within their power to demoralize and combat those who support the Imam (Mahdi). To crush the negative influence of this group there is no other solution except warfare and bloodshed.And again, we read that:
The Mahdi will offer the religion of Islam to the Jews and Christians; if they accept it they will be spared, otherwise they will be killed.Mr. President, thinking people around the world will certainly ask; if Islam is such a true and wonderful religion, why then is it necessary to resort to jihad, force and bloodshed to spread among mankind? If God truly wanted Islam to spread, would he not simply cause it to do so through peaceful means? Or is he unable to do so Himself? In this, do we not see the difference between God and Satan. Does God not offer His truth to mankind according to their own choice and free will? Does not God’s ultimate judgment of each person hinge on their own response to His invitation? But historically it is always oppressive and tyrannical regimes that enforce their ideologies onto the people. Can you see how your religious worldview regarding the eventual triumph of Islam does not reflect the manner in which God offers His mercy to mankind? Can you see how your worldview and expectations of the coming new world under al-Mahdi instead reflect the pattern of other various failed regimes of the past, having been exposed by the very people that they once controlled as being destructive and oppressive to the human spirit?
Sobering, and utterly consistent with the similar teachings of the other main branch of Islam on what the Mahdi will do. For instance, Richardson cites " Egyptian authors, Muhammad ibn Izzat and
Muhammd ‘Arif " commenting on an Islamic tradition that "Rasulullah [Muhammad] said:
"Armies carrying black flags will come from Khurasan. No power will be able to
stop them and they will finally reach Eela (Baitul Maqdas in Jerusalem) where
they will erect their flags"21:
The Mahdi will be victorious and eradicate those pigs and dogs and the idols of this time so that there will once more be a caliphate based on prophethood as the hadith states… Jerusalem will be the location of the rightly guided caliphate and the center of Islamic rule, which will be headed by Imam al-Mahdi… That will abolish the leadership of the Jews… and put an end to the domination of the Satans who spit evil into people and cause corruption in the earth, making them slaves of false idols and ruling the world by laws other than the Shari’a [Islamic Law] of the Lord of the worlds. (Emphasis mine) 22----------
- Tirmidhi as quoted by Mohammed Ali Ibn Zubair Ali, Signs of Qiyamah (Islamic Book Service, New Delhi, 2004), p. 42 and Prof. M. Abdullah, Islam, Jesus, Mehdi, Qadiyanis and Doomsday, (Adam, New Delhi, 2004), p. 54
- Izzat and Arif, Al Mahdi and the End of Time (London,Dar Al-Taqwa, 1997), p.40
Sobering.
Now, across the road from me, a neighbour occasionally pens sheep in a field with Guinea Grass. And, as I regularly passed by, I could not but notice how intently the sheep are focussed on the matter of eating the grass, sometimes to the exclusion of all else.
So, too, one of the images that has been coming to mind recently is a sheep in a field, in a dry time. That sheep is concerned about the next clump of grass, to make sure it fills its burning hunger. But, somehow, it is not pausing sufficiently often to look around to see who might be sneaking up on it to turn it into a meal of Goat Water (the local national dish, which is often made with sheep rather than goat).
But, by contrast, the guava trees in the backyard are often visited by wild Agouti, which we love to watch; they can be quite entertaining. But one thing we notice, is that every few seconds, these animals lift their heads, scan all around and cock their ears to listen.
They are always on the alert, and at the slightest sign of danger, away they go, heading for safety.
I think the time has more than come, for us to learn from the sheep and the agouti, especially in such a hard, deceitful and dangerous time. But also, a time in which we are called:
2 Cor4:1 . . . since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. 2 Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. [NIV, '84]
So, let us stand out by sharp contrast with the manipulation that so marks our time. END
