Analysis • Prophecy and The Mahdi
Preamble: No belief system outside Islam would have a truck
with the child Imam or the eleven reverends before him, but when such
conditions are premised on a destructive caveat, they would.
Belief is an impetus for action. Say you believe your home
is about to be burgled. The perception of such certainty would have you keeping
vigil for intruders for as long as the conviction holds. It underscores that
belief is an impetus for action, but sometimes it is a stimulus for
detrimental ones.
In Christianity, the term 'Rapture' is evolving into a
euphemism for conviction, a harmless conviction, nevertheless. It is not
a biblical word, but whenever the term erupts, non-adherents roll their eyes and
entertain themselves with a plethora of evangelists who go about
embellishing biblical prophecies as fact, but the point is, predicting the
second coming or 'rapture' of Christ has spawned a harmless industry,
if not entertaining. At worst, you have a coterie of placard-wielding die-hards
holding up traffic, lest a deluge of printed pamphlets littering township and
neighbourhood is preferred.
In Shiite dogma, the spectre of an Imam’s 'return' is
sinister. The impending 'resurrection' of the Twelfth Imam, commonly known as
The Mahdi, is a clutch in the Shia psyche that dribbles towards a bizarre conclusion that it is worrisome for non-believers.
Twelvers, as they are commonly known, comprise most Shiites. They believe that twelve imams are in a perpetual state
of divinity. The twelfth was a child in the ninth century when he disappeared
while attending the funeral of the eleventh. One school of thought says the
adolescent vanished into a well in Iran, from where he will eventually emerge.
The other school proclaims he ascended into a suspended state (not unlike an
HTML widget in ASCII code) where he remains until certain conditions are
'fulfilled' for his return to Earth.
No belief system outside Islam would have a truck with the
child Imam or the eleven reverends before him, but when such conditions are premised on a destructive caveat, they would.
Words – Tommy Peters
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