When I began work on Revelation 11 two years ago, I thought it was a pretty straight forward story centered around a group of people who either genuinely believed or claimed to believe for their own reasons that we were in the endtimes. I explored this from a purely Christian point of view. Near the end of writing the book, I decided to throw a curve into the mix and have the second witness be a Muslim.
As I began to look for a historical or scriptural basis for this assumption, I found that Islam has a parallel eschatology to the Christian narrative. Most Islamic endtime prophecies are contained in the Hadith. A one-eyed leader called, Masih ad-Dajjal, is the Islamic version of the Anti-Christ. Both religions point to a climactic battle in the Middle East. For Christians this is Armageddon and for Muslims it is Dabiq. As I explained in my previous post, Dabiq is generally considered to be the hamlet of Murj-al-Dabiq that sits just across the border from Iraq in Syria
The Hadith claims that Jesus (Isa) returns to earth to "break the cross" -- meaning He explains that Islam is the one true religion. This may simply be the Islamic version of "from whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead."
The parallels seem to have taken on a life of their own in the last two years. Islamic State leaders and fighters apparently believe they are and should be fulfilling the endtimes prophecies--in effect dragging the world toward a climactic battle between Islam and what the Hadith calls the "army of Rome." Under Islamic prophecy, the battle cannot take place until the Caliphate is re-established. Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, claims to be the new Caliph.
According to a recent Atlantic article, a legitimate Caliph requires three things to fulfill the prophecy, "being a Muslim adult man of Quraysh descent; exhibiting moral probity and physical and mental integrity; and having ’amr, or authority." Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is of Quraysh decent, the tribe to which Mohammed belonged. He claims the second requirement, but the article notes there is more to the third requirement than meets the eye. To have "authority" in the sense the prophecy indicates, the Caliph must rule territory and hold the authority over the people living there by enacting and enforcing Sharia law. Islamic State fighters currently control or operate freely in an area larger than the United Kingdom.
Thousands of young Islamic men and women have traveled to the "Caliphate" from Europe and around the world to join the jihad. What is it about this ideology they find so appealing? The article quotes George Orwell when he was asked a similar question about Nazi fanaticism. Orwell describe Fascism as "psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life … Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people “I offer you a good time,” Hitler has said to them, “I offer you struggle, danger, and death,” and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet … We ought not to underrate its emotional appeal."
No comments:
Post a Comment