The Past, Present and Future Dangers of the Islamic Belief in the Mahdi
Islam has been called a Christian heresy for centuries — first by the Church father St. John of Damascus, an Arab Christian who lived during the Muslim conquests. Other notable Christian thinkers since — Martin Luther, Hillaire Belloc, and C.S. Lewis among them —have agreed. Why?
Because Islam’s founder, Muhammad, and the compilers of its holy book, the Quran, clearly cribbed from the Bible — both the Old and New Testaments, as well as the apocryphal “gospels” that didn’t make the canonical cut.
In fact, a great many biblical figures and events turn up in the Muslim holy book, as well as in hadiths — extra-Quranic sayings attributed to Muhammad. These figures include Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jonah, John the Baptist, Mary, and Jesus—but in the Quran, they’re all given a quite different spin. Raymond Ibrahim deconstructed the Islamic Mary recently; as for her Son, Muhammad’s `Isa little resembles our Lord and Savior Jesus, since Islamic texts deny the Incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection.
It’s probably in the realm of eschatology that the world’s second-largest religion most clearly plagiarized the largest. Here’s the Islamic version.
As the end times unfold, with civilization and “true religion” (Islam) crumbling, several familiar evil entities from the book of Revelation will appear:
- al-Dabbah, “the Beast;”
- Yajuj wa-Majuj, “Gog and Magog;”
- al-Dajjal, “the Deceiver” or antichrist, who will lead the armies of darkness (non-Muslims, especially Jews).
Then `Isa (Jesus) will return, having been taken to Heaven while still alive in the first century. He will kill the Dajjal and then support the main Islamic eschatological figure, the divinely guided al-Mahdi, as he takes over the world and establishes a global caliphate.
Belief in the Mahdi Transcends Muslim Denominational Differences
Both Sunnis and Shi`is believe in this Mahdi, despite his appearance only in hadiths, not the Quran. (I’ve written two books on the topic: Holiest Wars and Ten Years’ Captivation with the Mahdi’s Camps.)
While the doctrine is intrinsic to Twelver Shi`ism (and formally incorporated into the government in the largest Twelver state, Iran), it’s less institutionalized in Sunnism — but still quite strong, as Pew data on this topic has shown. The biggest difference is that for Twelver Shi`is, the Mahdi has already been here as the twelfth imam, or leader, of their community, descended from Muhammad. However, he “disappeared” in the ninth century AD and will return as Allah deems appropriate — when Islam’s need is dire.
For Sunnis, the true Mahdi will step onto the stage of history as a great Muslim military and political leader, whose successes will eventually reveal him as Allah’s anointed.
Many Mahdis in Islam’s Past
So for the Muslim world writ large, neither Mahdi has come yet. But there have been legions of pretenders to the throne across the centuries in both Sunni and Shi`i societies, many of whom gained a considerable following — and some of whom actually seized power. (I examined eight of the most prominent Sunni ones in Holiest Wars.)
Perhaps the most successful was Ibn Tumart, the twelfth-century Mahdi who convinced many people of his calling and took over much of what is now Morocco and Algeria.
Another such leader, Ibn Abu Mahallah, cropped up in the early seventeenth century in the same region, but fared less well. Ditto for the late nineteenth-century Mahdis in Algeria, who mainly fought the French.
In late fifteenth-century India, Muhammad Jawnpuri claimed the title and led warriors against the Mughal Empire. So did Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi in late nineteenth-century India.
The second most effective Mahdi was Muhammad Ahmad of Sudan, whose 1880s movement threw out the Ottomans and British (led by Major General Charles Gordon) and established a state that lasted until 1898. In early Republican Turkey, a chap named Mehmet declared himself the Mahdi but was quickly squelched by the Turkish Army.
The most recent alarming outbreak of Mahdism was in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) in 1979, when armed followers of Muhammad al-Qahtani took over the Great Mosque of Mecca and called for the overthrow of the Saudi royal family. They were eventually put down by hired French forces.
Also Many Mahdis in Modern Islam
But since then, several other self-proclaimed Mahdis have materialized in the Muslim world. (I have written about 11 of these in the last six years at my website, The Occidental Jihadist.) Two were in the KSA, two in Egypt, one each in Bangladesh, Iraq, Morocco, and Sudan — and four in Turkey , as of last week, when Mustafa Çabuk, “declared himself the Mahdi.” This was in northwestern Turkey, the same area where Mehmet, the Mahdi in 1930, lived.
Çabuk had some 200 followers, who took “loyalty oaths” to him as Mahdi. He and 20 of them were arrested on “charges of establishing a criminal organization for profit and qualified fraud.” After being charged, “the false Mahdi Mustafa Çabuk” was taken to Istanbul and “admitted to Bakırköy Mental and Neurological Diseases Hospital to determine whether his mental health was intact.”
This is very similar to what transpired with Adnan Oktar, or “Harun Yahya,” who for several decades oversaw a cult of followers who revered him as the Mahdi. I traveled to Istanbul and interviewed him in 2006. Oktar was arrested in 2018 and later sentenced to life in prison, partly as a result of being implicated in the 2016 attempted coup in Turkey.
However, the plot thickens with Çabuk. Besides his crimes against Islam and Turkish law, he and his Mahdists were charged with “conducting illegal excavations.” For what? According to an Oct. 11 story on the English-language version of the Turkish news site Haberler.com,
The suspects were searching for an ‘ark of the covenant’ in the area they dug. The suspect Mustafa Çabuk, who claims to be the Mahdi mentioned in the hadiths, alleges that the location of the ark was revealed to him by angels.
I’ve been studying Mahdism since my doctoral work at Ohio State in the 1990s, and this is the first time I’ve heard or read of a self-proclaimed Mahdi emulating Indiana Jones or Joseph Smith. But it makes sense. Several hadiths state that the Mahdi will procure the Ark from its hiding place, either in Antioch or the Sea of Galilee. This will prove his claim to be sent from Allah — which would make the Mahdi and his followers “top men,” I suppose. Too bad Çabuk’s folks were digging in the wrong place.
Turkish Mahdism Could Be Quite Dangerous
Turkey is still secular (officially). Yet according to the aforementioned Pew polling, it has the third-highest number of people (68%) who believe in the Mahdi’s imminent return — trailing only Afghanistan and Iraq.
President Recep Erdoğan may see himself as a modern Ottoman sultan, and members of his government, including probably Erdoğan himself, seem to be looking for the true Mahdi over false ones. Just four years ago, a senior military advisor to Erdoğan, who also was the head of a powerful Turkish private security firm, was forced to resign after saying publicly that his company was paving the way for the coming of the Mahdi.
Flickr/Recep Tayyip ErdoğanTurkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Turkey isn’t some barren, bleak, fundamentalist-ruled backwater like Afghanistan. It’s a modern country with the second-largest military in NATO, enormous cachet in the Muslim world as the heir to the Ottoman Empire, and the largest non-oil-based Muslim economy in the Middle East. Self-styled Mahdis in much poorer and weaker states have wreaked havoc. Imagine what such a leader could do at Turkey’s helm.
Islam’s messianic heresy of Mahdism has proven to be both a political and military problem for Muslims and their neighbors for centuries. The belief is deeply embedded in Islam, and it isn’t going away.
One final note: Mahdis tend to appear at the approach of a new Islamic century. November 28, 2076 will be New Year’s Day, Hijri year 1500. So over the next 52 years, we can expect to see a plague of Mahdis. Let’s hope they remain to be one-offs consigned to mental hospitals. But if history is any guide, they won’t be.
Timothy Furnish has a PhD from Ohio State in Islamic, World & African history. He’s been an Arabic interrogator in the 101st Airborne, a US Special Operations Command analyst, an author and professor. Furnish is the military/security affairs writer for The Stream.
