20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Concentration On Sunni Mahdism, November 7, 2006
This review is from: Holiest Wars: Islamic Mahdis, Their Jihads, and Osama bin Laden (Hardcover)
For most Muslims 'al-Mahdi' is the messianic figure who will aid the returning Isa (Jesus) to destroy the 'Dajjal' (the 'Deceiver,' the embodyment of earthly evil who shares many characteristics with the Christian Antichrist). After the Dajjal's demise the Mahdi will restore the Caliphate as a global Islamic state, bringing a long period of social and economic justice to the world's righteous before the terminal age of the Last Judgement.
Despite widespread Sunni belief and hopeful expectation for the future coming of the Mahdi, author Timothy R. Furnish feels that most Western academics have neglected the study of Mahdism, considering it a chiefly Shi'a phenomenon if not otherwise dismissing it altogether. This attitude towards so important an aspect of Islamic eschatology is what keeps Furnish's analysis limited to historical Sunni Mahdist movements, largely steering clear of those of the Shi'a and that sect's more mystical offshoots (e.g. Bahaiism, Ahmadiyya). Furnish's work here is a convincing rebuttal of much of western Islamic scholarship's conventional wisdom.
HOLIEST WARS is divided into six chapters:
1/What Is Mahdism and Where Does It Come From?
2/Mahdist Movements Throughout History
3/Counter-Mahdist Rationale and Policies
4/The Virtual Mahdi
5/Modern Muslim Anti-Mahdists
6/Conclusion: Who Will Be the Next Mahdi?
However, the book really reads as three parts: The history of the phenomenon. Its present situation and status in Sunni Islam. And the effects that such doctrines and their history have upon the near future.
Although noting that Mahdism has no Quranic grounding and furthermore is referenced in only three out of the six canonical Sunni collections of hadith (Abu Da'ud, Ibn Majah and al-Tirmidhi to be exact), Furnish provides background and overview for at least eight specific Sunni Mahdist movements, albeit acknowledging that, with the exception of the 1979 occupation of the Great Mosque in Mecca, these were often on the geographical, social and ethnic periphery of the Islamic world:
1/ Ibn Tumart and the Muwahhids (Almohads), circa 1124-1269 AD, against the Murabit (Almoravid) empire of Morocco and Spain.
2/ Western India's Sayyid Muhammad Jawnpuri of Gujarat and the Mahdavi movement of the 15th and 16th centuries.
3/ Ibn Abu Mahallah from early 17th century Morocco.
4/ 19th century India's Sayyid Ahmed Barelwi and his various wars against both the Sikhs and the British.
5/ Mid-19th century Algerian Mahdists Bou Zian and Mohammed Amzian.
6/ Sudan's Muhammad Ahmad and his late-19th century uprising against the Khedive of Egypt and his British allies. Muhammad Ahmad is inarguably the most notorious "Mahdi" in history. Defeating the British at Khartoum and executing the British governor, Charles George "Chinese" Gordon, Muhammad Ahmad and his uprising have become the focus of numerous novels and at least a half dozen big budget Hollywood movies.
7/ Mehmet, a Sufi of the Naqshbandi Order, who led a Mahdist revolt against the secularizing Kemal Ataturk's Turkish Republic in 1930.
8/ The 1979 takeover of Mecca's Great Mosque and attempted overthrow of the House of Saud by Juhayman al-Utaibi and his brother-in-law, Muhammad ibn Abd Allah al-Qahtani.
Furnish details many parallels in these various movements. In addition to their flourishing on the geographic edges of the Muslim world, these uprisings also each share a degree of Sufi influence and appeal to those peole who feel marginalized, living in societies that they see as Muslim in name only, under political systems which they feel to be decadent and servile to the West.
Furnish devotes the second part of the book to contemporary Mahdist thought and belief, providing a detailed investigation into the spate of books recently published in the Islamic world and the growing variety of websites in both Arabic and English that are devoted to this subject. He does a good job of documenting Muslim authors and sites who are anti- as well as pro- belief in Mahdist doctrine. Rather interesting are the websites highlighted here, such as the Arabic "Muntadiyat al-Mahdi" (Gathering [Chat] Rooms of the Mahdi) and "al-Muntadi" (Gathering Room), and the English site, "Mahdi Unite."
The third part of the book looks at Islamist leaders today and asks if any would or could seriously take on the role of the Mahdi. Furnish provides the qualifications as they are mentioned in the aforementioned hadith collections and doubts that the ubiquitous Usama bin Laden would ever dare to portray himself as al-Mahdi. Furthermore, among a great many other things, bin Laden's Yemeni birth and his murdering of pious Muslims contradicts Muslim expectations. Also -and most importantly- there is the problem that the Dajjal and Jesus are missing from the world scene, both are expected at the same time as the Mahdi.
HOLIEST WARS: ISLAMIC MAHDIS, THEIR JIHADS, and OSAMA BIN LADEN is a very well researched, thouroughly documented study on one of the most fascinating aspects of the Islamic faith.
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16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
To understand the accurate and historical roots of Islamic terrorism, January 6, 2006
This review is from: Holiest Wars: Islamic Mahdis, Their Jihads, and Osama bin Laden (Hardcover)
Dr Furnish demonstrates his expert knowledge on Mahdism, its history, and in the end the threats and challenges it could cause if bin Ladin or some other renowned Islamic terrorist were to be declared "the rightly guided one" sent to gather and recruit the Islamic faithful in preparation for the judgment by Allah at the end of time. As Furnish points out, the concept of the Mahdi is not actually contained in the Quran, but rather in a number of the Hadiths which were written separately in the early years of Islam. Furthermore, there is reference in these writings to Jesus Christ as a prophet of Islam, and how his reappearance in Syria will signal that the end of time is near.
There is debate among Islamic scholars which of these Hadiths should be regarded as authentic scriptures of the religion. However, whether authentic or not, going back to the early 12th Century AD and continuing through the last known Mahdist movement in 1979 in Saudi Arabia, these writings have been used to incite violent insurrections against governments, and bloody massacres not only of Christians and Jews, but even Muslims who did not share the views of the fanatic leaders who claimed to the Mahdi. Furnish chronicles each of these Mahdist movements, plus writes about the "Virtual Mahdi", one who has not declared himself as the leader of Muslims to the end of time, but one who may essentially be viewed as such, for example bin Ladin, and the danger this poses for the world.
When one reads the history of these violent movements, full of complete intolerance of other religions and independent branches of Islam, in which the punishment for non-conformance included death by beheading and the massacre of innocents, it seems a reasonable question to ask -- just what has changed since the 12th Century? Witness the beheadings and bombings in Iraq, the September 11th attacks, the attempts by Al Qaeda affiliates to blow up 11 American passenger jets over the Pacific in the 1990's (they came dangerously close to succeeding), attempts to kill the Pope, the oppression and terrorism brought on by the Ayatollah Khomeini and the current Iranian regime, plus the terrorist actions sponsored by Yassir Arafat extending back from suicide bombings in recent years to the kidnapping and massacre of the Israeli Olympic Team in Munich in 1972, and the hijacking and bombing of three western airliners in 1970. While it might not be Mahdism, and the weapons may be more sophisticated, the tactics, intolerance and utter disrespect for human life by this streak of Islamist fanaticism are just the same in modern times as they were during the first major Mahdist movement, by Ibn Tumart in 1130 AD.
The mainstream media and their "experts" on television talk shows often proclaim that we must understand the "root causes" of Islamic terrorism. One of their favorites they trot out ad nauseum is the Israel-Palestine conflict, never minding that the Arab world didn't give a whit about the Palestinians until 1948, and even then it was mainly used as a political tool. Oil-rich Arab governments were perfectly happy to help fund PLO terrorist operations, while expelling Palestinians from their own countries, and Yassir Arafat laundered millions in US and EU aid into his own Swiss bank accounts, while the citizens of Ramallah languished in abject poverty.
If the media, our government leaders, and concerned individuals truly want to understand the root causes of Islamic terrorism, they should read this book to gain a proper understanding of the historical facts. It's all there. The fanaticism, intolerance, and brutality that has been the trademark of Mahdist and terrorist movements for nearly a millennium is documented in detail as a result of Dr Furnish's research. There are a lot of books available on the Middle East and the terrorist threat, many of them excellent in their own right, but "Holiest Wars" presents the topic in a historical context not seen in any other book that I am familiar with. It is a must read for anyone interested in this area.
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