The Power Of Belief

It was with interest that I read about how the prayer meetings in the resurgent Shia Mosques of Iraq are humming with the idea, that the Mahdi is going to make an imminent arrival. The Friday prayers in the great cities of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq, Qom and Tehran in Iran and in other great Shia mosques and seminaries are replete with references of how the Mahdi will appear as the salvation of the Muslims. The preachers point to the appearance of the Rumi's (foreigners, or strangers with strange behaviour) in Basra and al-Kut, women dressing as men, men soft as women, difficult times following the fall of a tyrant, appropriate astrological signs, unrest and troubles in Jerusalem and in the land of the 2 mosques (Saudi Arabia), all with references to Hadith. The coalition is, to my knowledge, ignoring these aspects, which is rather worrying and alarming indeed, as ignoring these aspects means that the battle for minds and hearts is definitely not being won. Not only this, the resistance is going to keep on increasing, if the coalition does not factor in these rumours and sermons. Strangely enough, this concept of the Mahdi has an extraordinarily powerful hold on the Islamic minds, with references popping up quite regularly over the past few hundred years.

Before we find out, what's so interesting and why it is particularly alarming when looking at the situation in Iraq, we have to understand the background to the story of the Mahdi. The Mahdi has been promised to the believers by the Prophet Muhammad, who is noted to have said, "The world will not come to an end until a man from my family (ahl al-bayt), who will be called al-Mahdi, emerges to rule upon my community". Another quote by the Prophet is even more interesting: “Listen to the good news about the Mahdi! He will rise at the time when people will be faced with severe conflict and the earth will be hit by a violent quake. He will fill the earth with justice and equity as it is filled with injustice and tyranny. He will fill the hearts of his followers with devotion and will spread justice everywhere." Similarly, there are tens of other sayings of the Prophet in which he proclaimed that the Mahdi will appear. As it is with these things, what he said, even if it was 1500 years ago, is believed till today.

Mind you, this belief in the legends and extraordinary power surrounding the Mahdi seems to be mainly Shiite in nature, whereas the Sunnis believe more in his appearance per se rather than his supernatural powers, but I don’t want to get into a theological argument about which one is accurate or not. There seems to be a bit of disagreement about the place that the Mahdi will appear in, as some say he will emerge in Mecca, while some others say that he will emerge in Qom in Iran. Be that as it may, the idea is that the Mahdi will come and sort out all the problems of the Muslims, creating a heaven on earth so wonderful, that the dead will want to be alive again. Before we get carried away, it should be made clear that all the Hadiths and commentary are very clear that he will arrive to cleanse the earth with the sword. There is ample commentary on how brave he and his band of warriors will be, who will survive and who will not, which followers of which religions and sects within them will be in the promised land and which would be on the “recycling landfill heap”.

There have been quite a lot of instances in history when the Mahdi has appeared, or is said to have appeared or the person himself claimed to be the Mahdi. For example, Said ibn Husayn carved out a dynasty (the Fatimid Dynasty) starting from 909 AD for himself, proclaiming himself as Mahdi, and then ruled over a vast territory ranging from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya all the way to Egypt. For our purposes, there are two instances which are rather interesting. The first case was in Sudan, around the 8th decade of the 19th century, when Sudan was ruled by the Ottomans's / Egyptians and latterly the British. The Egyptian Khedive ruled Sudan under the Ottoman suzerainty and seriously raped the country with extremely strict rules and obnoxious levels of taxation until Dunqulawi Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah, who declared himself as the Mahdi and was indeed accepted as such by the Sudanese, objected. He was extraordinarily personable and very learned indeed. This ‘Mahdi’, by dint of his forceful personality and religious sanction, gathered almost the entire country around him and routed the Turks, Egyptians and most famously, General Gordon of the UK. There were several expeditions which the British / Egyptians launched against the Mahdi and the majority failed in the most disastrous manner indeed. The Mahdi's regime lasted for about 13 years, and collapsed mainly due to famines and ended when Lord Kitchener invaded Sudan and put paid to the short lived regime. While the Mahdi had died, content that his promised land was in existence and in safe hands of his successor, the Khilafa. Lord Kitchener put down the regime with the utmost brutality, killing the Khilafa and his followers, digging up the Mahdi's grave and desecrating his body. Still, the numbers of British soldiers and officers killed or seriously wounded is mind-boggling indeed.

Similarly, in Algeria and Tunisia in the 19th century, resistance to French Invasion was driven by this concept that the Mahdi will appear to throw the infidels out. Muhammad ibn Abd Allah, who called himself as the Mahdi, along with other religious notables, revolted against the French. He led a rebellion from Warqala, attacking the French and their supporters at Tuqqurt, Zab Qibli, Wadi Righ and al-Aghwat between 1851 and the end of 1854. In 1855 he escaped and hid in Tunisia, and then escaped from Tunisia when the heat was turned on and retreated into central Sahara. He was finally captured and executed by the French in 1861 after moving north again to Warqala. As with the Sudanese case, the Mahdi was considered to be the awaited prophet, capable of miracles and was greeted with rapturous welcome by the various tribes of the time. He fought against the rumi (or the French in this case) and their depredations in North Africa. While the rebellion was short lived, he created severe problems for the French indeed.

If the Mahdi is supposed to be the saviour who appears right before the end of time, there are 2 aspects to this discussion. (1) Either the end of time is coming which, given the recent millennium scare stories and the various cults propagating the idea that the end is nigh, sounds like a pipe dream or (2) the people do need something supernatural or superhuman to deal with clear technologically advanced enemies. I personally think that the latter is true. When people do not have anything to fight against technologically superior forces, then the only thing that they can offer, is their own deaths. To get somebody to voluntarily give up their own lives, something very powerful has to motivate them, something that will give them hope that with their deaths, the rewards will be greater than succumbing to tyranny and occupation. With the Mahdi's imminent arrival, the troops or the mob can be whipped up into a passion, that there is God's own messenger who is coming to lead them to victory over the enemy, infidels, occupiers, invaders, or what have you.

The litany of errors made by the coalition is long, but one of the major ones is the fact that the Americans ignored the religious factor almost completely. Relying on the force of arms and a culture of secularism, which permeates the military and political processes, the concept that religion can be a very strong driving force has been ignored. One can thank the strict separation of State and Church in the UK and USA for this. Consequently, the entire military apparatus is almost wilfully ignorant of the power of religion in changing the battlefield. On one hand, we have the image of a very high technology unmanned Predator offering real-time images and control over the battlefield, on the other, we have the image of a bunch of men, all fired up with the thought of the Mahdi riding with them to fight the enemy. It just does not compute. In one of my previous columns, I mentioned how the military must be extraordinarily careful when dealing with religious places (like when terrorists hole up in mosques or gurudwaras). Similarly, ignoring the power of prophets and religion in motivating fighters is spectacularly silly. This is asymmetric warfare at its very basics. A person who has nothing to lose and everything to gain from his own death cannot be reasoned with, defended against or protected from. They will keep on coming. The only thing one can do is kill them. And once you kill them, they win. It is a lose-lose solution, which means that the only way around it, is to go for the root causes!

I know this sounds ironic, specially when we hear about the root causes explanation of terrorism. Some people ignore this root cause component and say, eradicate and obliterate these people who are terrorists. Some other people say, yes, but look at the causes behind the terrorist activities. The causes have been attributed to poverty, occupation, no political representation, ideological, religious etc. etc. The root cause for looking for the Mahdi at times of unrest and occupation is the interesting bit. What history tells us is that the Mahdi is a symbolic representation of rebellion against tyranny in these cases. Whenever there has been occupation, invasion or tyranny, the rumours of the Mahdi re-emerge and swirl around. So why use the Mahdi? Why not rebel directly against the enemy by appealing to their desires for freedom?

This is because most of these people did/do not have the concept of freedom. The idea that they can have their own destiny, take charge of their own future is very alien. Whether we talk about Sudan, Iran, Iraq, or Palestine or wherever, the concept of freedom or democracy doesn’t work out. They have always been ruled over by the colonial powers or their own despotic regimes. Their own tyrants are mostly backed by the religious authorities or through force of arms. So take the example of Iraq. Most of the resistance is coming from people who are backed by Al-Queda, the Baatist resistance or some of the Shia religious groups. Not even one group is actually fighting for the liberation of Iraq. They are fighting not for liberating Iraq but to remove the Americans. What will happen is, that after the Americans have gone, it will be the same type of despotic regime which will come back. Whether an Islamic state desired by Al Queda, or a Baathist state by the ex-Baathists or a theocratic Iran-like state by the Shia groups, none include a vision where every man or woman is free, where democracy rules and individual liberty is sacrosanct.

Since they do not have a concept of freedom, the mob is motivated by religious idolism such as with the Mahdi. And it is pretty effective indeed as we have seen. This leads me to point to the second error, which the Americans made. They did not proceed to direct elections for the Iraqi Interim council. The idea that direct elections were impossible is a bit of a crock, if elections could be held in East Timor directly after liberation and similarly in Bosnia, there is no reason why they couldn’t be held in Iraq. I suspect it’s the ‘control freak’ instinct, which governed the coalition's work. If direct elections had taken place right after the interim constitution was established, perhaps under the supervision of the UN, I suspect that the fangs behind this Mahdi story would have been drawn. Obviously, no other body could have overseen elections, the Arab League doesn’t know what an election is and the OIC will not recognize an election, if it was written on a dimpled chard and rolled into a banner. Still, having direct elections would have empowered the common Iraqis, given them a framework for political representation and most importantly, would have restricted or perhaps even removed the space, through which the religious mullah's are rampaging right now.

Prophets are and can be earth shattering. They or even just their very name can change history and overthrow regimes. They can fire up entire countries and regions and lead thousands to their deaths. Ralph Waldo Emerson said : “In old Egypt, it was established law, that the vote of a prophet be reckoned equal to a hundred hands.” I agree with him that this was much underestimated. So a word to the wise: “Deal and handle prophets with the utmost care, oh! you powers that be, otherwise the juggernaut will roll all over you.”

All this to be taken with a grain of salt!