Category Archives: Apocalypse Watch

Mahdi Madness and the 2008 Election

Apocalypse Watch, Election 2008, Iran, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia, Shi'a

For some partisans, no matter who is elected President to succeed George W. Bush, it will seem like the end of the world. We are in the apocalypse silly season once again. Take Tim LeHaye, the doctrinal inspiration of the WASP-friendly Left Behind book series (Jerry B. Jenkins provides the verbal inspiration in sci-fi style); he has been preaching the politics of biblical apocalypse for years. Indeed, since the apostle John allegedly first had his vision on the island of Patmos, the world has been teetering in the end times. This world is always going to hell; Jesus must be coming soon. Bible-belting believers and bible-belching evangelists constantly look to the heavens with rapturous delight for the mother of all shock-and-awe shows to begin. Up go the faithful in the twinkling of an eye and then it is open tribulation season on the Jews that will make the 20th century Nazi holocaust look like a sabbath picnic. Fortunately, most of the world’s Christians look at such a naive-ity scene with alarm. “Even so,” it might be said, “do not come Lord Jesus.”

Reverends Tim LeHaye, Pat Robertson and John Hagee are not the only mega-mouths who know deep down in their saved souls that they will not be left behind. Ironically, they share theologically-maddened space with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the shi’a-evangelical President of Iran. As noted in a New York Times article today by Nazila Fathi, the Iranian President’s “high father” is Imam Mahdi, the hidden 12th “twelver” Imam who occulted well over a millennium ago, but whose reappearance has been looked for year after year in popular imagination. Ahmadinejad, who loves to wear his religion on his sleeves, says that Imam Mahdi guides his day-to-day decisions as a president. In gratitude, Ahmadinejad has sponsored an institute to prepare Iran for the Imam’s immanent return. This would be like Bush asking his faith-based supporters to create a special office in Homeland Security on Eternal Security Risks to those Left Behind. Continue reading Mahdi Madness and the 2008 Election →

Not So Swift Boat Apostasy

Apocalypse Watch, Arab-Israeli Conflict, Election 2008, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia

In this American presidential campaign just about every possible prejudice has been let out of the soap box and it’s not even June. There was a Mormon, but Mighty Mitt dropped the ball when he was kicked in the polls by a Baptist preacher who plays the guitar. There is, though many wish we could see “was”, a woman who had already decorated the White House and whose husband would in turn (pun fully intended) be the first former president-spouse, not to mention the first admitted philanderer to get a second chance to serve tea on Pennsylvania Avenue. And there is a Black man, whose Kenyan father’s skin color seems to trump his white Kansan mother’s nurturing. And, by the way, he has a name that rhymes with Osama. And don’t forget that his father was born a Muslim. If this were American Gladiators, the battle would be simple indeed: White Naval hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton and answers to the call of Maverick vs. the young Chicago machine Black Muslim who, in the words of George Bush the Elder, kicked some — (rhymes with crass, which it is) in the primary (no matter how the folks in the backwoods down in the WV hills vote today).

So it’s full steam ahead for the mean-spitted Swift (and I don’t mean Jonathan) Boaters. Yesterday’s New York Times allowed one of the piratical advisors of John McCain a forum to broadside Obama. This was Edward N. Luttwak, whose overtly rhetorical and inadvertently satirical “President Apostate?” landed like an unexploded shell on the crowded stacked deck of media-hardened pundits. Luttwak takes his sly secular cue from the Left Behind armageddonites, viewing Arabs and Iranians as part of the Gog and Magog crowd out to destroy Israel. For those who love the plot of a clash of civilizations leading to a real-time nuclear armageddon, Luttwak obliges with a medievally-minded attack on Obama’s personal faith. Continue reading Not So Swift Boat Apostasy →

Ahmadinejad and the Twelfth Imam

Apocalypse Watch, Iran, Islamic Rituals, Shi'a

by Christopher Hitchens

[Excerpt from Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great (New York: Hachette, 2007), pp. 278-280.]

On a certain day in the spring of 2006, President Ahmadinejad of Iran, accompanied by his cabinet, made a procession to the site of a well between the capital city of Tehran and the holy city of Qum. This is said to be the cistern where the Twelfth or “occulted” or “hidden” Imam took refuge in the year 873, at the age of five, never to be seen again until his long-awaited and beseeched reappearance will astonish and redeem the world. On arrival, Ahmadinejad took a scroll of paper and thrust it down the aperture, so as to update the occulted one on Iran’s progress in thermonuclear fission and the enrichment of uranium. One might have thought that the imam could keep abreast of these developments wherever he was, but it had in some way to be the well that acted as his dead-letter box. One might ad that President Ahmadinejad had recently returned from the United Nations, where he had given a speech that was much covered on both radio and television as well as viewed by a large “live” audience. On his return to Iran, however, he told his supporters that he had been suffused with a clear green light — green being the preferred color of Islam — all through his remarks, and that the emanations of this divine light had kept everybody in the General Assembly quite silent and still. Private to him as this phenomenon was — it appears to have been felt by him alone — he took it as a further sign of the immanent return of the Twelfth Imam, not to say a further endorsement of his ambition to see the Islamic Republic of Iran, sunk as it was in beggary and repression and stagnation and corruption, as nonetheless a nuclear power. But like Aquinas, he did not trust the Twelfth or “hidden” Imam to be able to scan a document unless it was put, as it were, right in front of him. Continue reading Ahmadinejad and the Twelfth Imam →

Obama, Running for Antichrist?

Apocalypse Watch, Islamophobia, Luke R. E. Publican

Political candidates attract mud and the current presidential marathon on the Democratic side is no exception. Several conservative hit men have emphasized Obama’s Muslim middle name, Hussein, and used their rather pathetic poetic license to rhyme (without reason) Obama and Osama. Already relegated to the status of an urban legend, the smear tactic that Senator Obama is a mixed Muslim/Atheist still resonates in parts of rural America, no doubt among those white out-of-work blue collar men who think Hillary used to be a short-order cook.

But the image of a stealth Muhammadan running for President is outdone on the lunatic apocalyptic fringe of the Christian far-right by Dana Smith’s recent speculation about Barack Obama as the Antichrist. Here is the lead-in on the Raiders News Network:

People are swooning, falling headlong on the floor, while he speaks. Does Hillary get this reaction? An emphatic no is the answer! It seems today that from every corridor the people are talking about this. Is Obama the man? Is he the Anti Christ? Is he this or that? The truth is society is ready for the man of sin mentioned in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. But is Obama the man? The real verdict on that will be out until the end of his term. One thing for sure, his reign, if he is elected will be during a tremendously prophetic time on the calendar. All things are set for the uprising of the ‘man of perdition’. Continue reading Obama, Running for Antichrist? →

Apocalypse Watch: The Man Who Knows Squat

Apocalypse Watch, Islam and Christianity

Most people find it hard to take cartoons seriously, apart from political satire and that can become a deadly issue, depending on the target. Given the recent Danish cartoon controversy it would seem that comics and religion do not mix well or at least settle well for the believers who see themselves as the target. But what about comic relief for the political struggle between Israel and the Palestinians? Fundamentalist tract artist Jack Chick, whose comic empire is dedicated to winning souls for Christ by drawing on God’s hate, has been using his pen to spread a rather nasty version of the Gospel for over 40 years. One of his more recent offerings is called “The Squatters” and it provides a virtual roadmap to apocalypse. Continue reading Apocalypse Watch: The Man Who Knows Squat →

A Pat on Hizzoner’s Back

Apocalypse Watch, Islam in America, Islamophobia, Luke R. E. Publican, Terrorism Issue

The top picture on the front page of yesterday’s New York Times shows two smiling men, strange political bedfellows although not really as gay as the picture might imply. To the left (and think about what this means for a Republican race) is Rudy, the 9-11 man, the swept-the-streets-free-of-vendors hero, the divorced (“I am Henry the VIIIth, I am”) Catholic and the list goes on. To the right (of just about everyone, including former Governor Huckabee) is evangelist Pat Robertson, who once tried to tie the electoral knot himself. “In a Surprise,” runs the headline, “Pat Robertson Backs Giuliani.” An endorsement, the most sought after photo-op in poly biz.

But an endorsement from Pat Robertson? Continue reading A Pat on Hizzoner’s Back →

Huckabee, heck, he ain’t no ord’nary huckleberry

Apocalypse Watch, Islamophobia, Luke R. E. Publican, Terrorism Issue

What better place for the Republican wolf-no-longer-in-sheepish-clothing pack to have a demolition derby debate than Orlando, home of Disney’s fantasy view of America and chosen site for a dodgeball game with reporters (not deciders, of course) from Fox News? Not since the missing chads of 2000 has so much heat been generated in Florida over such an important outcome. Whatever round this is in the GOP run-up to the election, this time they all came out itchin’ for a good-old-boy fight, apparently ready to shed their “family values” political correctness if only for a night. All of the candidates took pot shots at Hillary, playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey until the audience fell on their conservatively smart asses laughing. Fred laid a few low blows on Rudy, who kicked back with his own street smarts. Mitt and McCain were able to raise a little cain. Then there were the also-theres, including the recent third-place values man, Governor and former Baptist minister Mike Huckabee. Taking a page out of Rudy’s play book, he played the fear card. In one of his responses he noted that the greatest threat that has ever faced America (get ready for a history lesson) is Islamofascism. In a recent online interview he laid out his apocalyptic scenario:

“There’s almost an inevitability, not just a possibility. It will happen again. Continue reading Huckabee, heck, he ain’t no ord’nary huckleberry →

This Should Make You Quake

Apocalypse Watch, Turkey


[A mosque still stands amidst the rubble of collapsed buildings in this aerial view of a neighborhood in the western Turkish town of Golcuk, 60 miles east of Istanbul, August 19, 1999.]

The recent earthquake in Peru, although not resulting in massive deaths, still has fallout which is more than nuclear. Turkey, Iran and Pakistan routinely have severe earthquakes, often resulting in the deaths of thousands. By an accident of sacred history, most of these victims are Muslim. In a number of ways these tragic events could be could be styled “an act of God.” To an insurance agent this would merely mean that it was one of those natural events which happen from time to time and are not covered in a standard policy. To Evangelical Christians, at least those who read KJV biblical prophecy as a Fox News documentary, it can easily become a special kind of act of God, not unlike the fire and brimstone that destroyed the wicked lot of Sodom and Gomorrah. But apocalyptic rhetor can boomerang, especially when the walls do not come tumbling down at the blasting away of the self-righteous. Continue reading This Should Make You Quake →