Is Islam a religion of peace? President Bush continues to inflict that view on the American people, but that does not make it necessarily true. Instead conservative Christian leaders are being set-up by the Bush Administration as hate mongers and enemies instead of theologians with more insight into the matters of faith then he might have. I suppose it is easier for the Bush Administration to go with the flow of anti-Christian thinking in the media then it is to actually lead for the good of the nation. “Islam is a peaceful faith” is clearly hopeful pandering. Pandering, in the sense that it is intended to make political inroads with the Muslim community in America. Hopeful, in the sense that maybe 60% plus Presidential approval ratings translate into a two-thirds national attention deficient.
Is Islam a religion of peace? In answering that it is instructive to understand how this faith began. Islam began as a warrior faith. The prophet Muhammad led an army to victory, and to the victor goes the spoils. In this case the spoils included the propagation of his message as doctrine and the institutionalizing of the charismatic leader as necessity in the Muslim world.
Contrast this beginning with the number one most hated faith of the world’s elites, Christianity. Jesus, rejected by the Jews because he did not fulfill their expectations of a conquering messiah, waited quietly and in prayer in a garden to be arrested. And once arrested he quietly stood trial before the Romans who found no threat and only then crucified him for his affront to the Jewish religious leaders.
Led an army and established a faith, or waited passively in a garden, executed and established a faith. Two separate beginnings, but only one religion of peace.
If simple beginnings are not enough to make a clear point, perhaps it is the endings that we should focus on. Islam is an established faith that has its own established Eschatology, its own view of the “end-times”, i.e. how the world ends and the faith is proved out. The predominate player in Islamic Eschatology is the “Mahdi”, the great religious leader at the head of a victorious army. The “Mahdi” leads an Army in advance of the appearance of the Islamic version of Jesus (In Islam Jesus is a mortal conqueror who rules for 40 years and then dies). With the appearance of the Mahdi followed soon by the Islamic Jesus the Cross is broken and the “swine” are killed (any thoughts on who are considered to be the swine?), and the faithful of Islam THEN live in peace. Perhaps this is what President Bush is reaching for with the “peaceful faith” statements, but that would be too Clintonian wouldn’t it?
No it is more likely that the President is just reciting what he is told, and is only showing a hopeful ignorance of Islamic eschatological history. That of course does not mean that the American people should be so hopeful, as history does tell them a more accurate and different tale.
British General Charles “Chinese” Gordon was the appointed Governor-General of the Sudan in 1877. Gordon, a devout Christian was responsible for ending the Islamic practice in the Sudan of enslaving Blacks. He left the Sudan, but returned in 1884 to confront Islamic fundamentalism and the “Mahdi”. The charismatic leader Muhammad Ahmad, an Islamic holy man had emerged and taken the title of the “expected one” or Mahdi. Aligned with the slave traders and Islamic fundamentalist, the Mahdi led a popular uprising to bring a pure Islamic rule to the Sudan.
General Gordon was killed defending the besieged city of Khartoum on January 26th, 1885. The “Mahdi” died himself about 5 months later of Typhus, but not before establishing a “jihad” state, Sharia law, and successors who continued to run the Sudan as a “jihad” state.
The expected appearance of the Islamic “Mahdi” is a deeply held and popular article of faith among Muslims even to this day. It is arguable that it is this expectation of the warrior Mahdi that has overwhelmed any source of democratic reform in the Islamic world and has worked instead to install tyrant after tyrant. Even in modern times the allure of the “Mahdi” is felt.
In 1979 the Grand Mosque in Mecca was seized by an armed band of 200 men proclaiming the coming of the Mahdi and urging Islam’s followers to rise up with them in Jihad. The Saudi’s sealed off the country and attacked these “Mahdi” followers in the Mosque itself, word could not be allowed to escaped too far. Today the world finds itself at war with Islamic fundamentalism once again. While President Bush may not understand Islam very well, you can be assured that Osama bin Laden does.
Whether the declaration has reached you through one of our U.S. news services or not you can be assured that bin Laden is making a play for “Mahdi.” It is a fundamental article of faith among Islam’s followers that the Mahdi will arise and he will lead his armies to victory. The faithful wait and watch for every sign that the Mahdi is growing in power. At each new sign – Bali, Kenya, Nigeria – the following grows, and the Mahdi’s reach is extended.
Whether bin Laden succeeds is of course not the real issue, it is that the faith of Islam awaits the conqueror, the expected warrior leader that will defeat their enemies. The Mahdi is an inviolable article of Islamic faith. He is sought after and is expected, and there will always be contenders for that title. Unless Islam is reformed from within or contained from without, the peace the world will find is only the peace found at the eye of the storm.
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”