Will The Real Twelfth Imam Please Stand Up !

Since the Hollywood Writers strike is about to "strike down" all forms of human entertainment and distraction for us from the success in Iraq, this might be a good time to have some fun and learn who the enemies are. (No, not Bush and Cheney)

So just in case you are scoring the action at home and having trouble keeping up (like Democrats are) with all of the teams and players in the global Jihad being waged against us, the large majority of Muslims in Iran are Shia and the large majority of Shia Muslims are of of the Shia Twelver persuasion. The primary focus of this post is on the Shia perversion of the Qur'an and the return of the twelfth Imam but will provide some background on Sunni's as well. Democrats have started to begin to approach to almost admitting there are Sunni extremists like Al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan but are a long way from admitting there are others too.

The large majority of Muslims in Iraq are Sunni who don't believe in the 12th Imam but agree with the twelvers on the destruction of Israel, America and the free world part 100%. The large majority of Muslims in Pakistan are Sunni also and Shia radicals have been attacking Sunni's in Pakistan for a while now also. Make a note on your scorecard... Pakistan already has nuclear weapons. Iran want's nuclear weapons.
Unless you are a Oklahoma Congressman you weren't offered your very own free Oklahoma Centennial Qur'an to refuse. It wouldn't help you know the teams, players and rules of the Jihad anyway, just the goal of the game.

As i pointed out above, I don't have room here to go over all of the factions and fragments of Shia AND Sunni extremist groups, so lets deal with the one that in the end will either stomp out all the other groups or will force those groups to convert, submit and assist in the Twelver mandate.
What is the Twelvers mandate?

To announce and welcome the return of Mohammad -The Twelfth Imam, The Perfect One.
And which guy thinks he is perfect and has already announced the return of Mohammad?

Instapundit had a post on this a while back...

It is a serious and dangerous mistake to assume that Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is crazy or flaky because he talks about the Twelfth Imam or claims that a halo of light surrounds him when he speaks. He is performing a rational, premeditated, and carefully thought-out act for his followers, and he may be even more dangerous than Adolf Hitler. Military historian John Keegan (The Mask of Command, 1987, 11) describes exactly what Ahmadinejad is doing. Per Keegan,

The theatrical impulse will be strong in the successful politician, teacher, entrepreneur, athlete, or divine, and will be both expected and reinforced by the audience to which they perform. …What they know of him must be what they hope and require. What they should not know of him must be concealed at all cost. The leader of men in warfare can show himself to his followers only through a mask, a mask that he must make for himself, but a mask made in such form as will mark him to men of his time and place as the leader they want and need.

This concept goes back to the dawn of human history; the leader must play a role as if he were an actor on a stage, and he must make the role real to his followers. Klein and Ritti (1984, Understanding Organizational Behavior) write,

Costumes helped symbolize the power of participants in the ritual over nature. Masks were especially important: the bigger the mask, the greater the power. In fact, the wearer of the mask was more important than a representation of the "god," he was the god; he had the power. Dramaturgy, then, did not begin as entertainment. It began because the human organization, in order to maintain itself, needed some part of a ritual performance to come true. …The dramaturgical impulse seems to remain, nevertheless, even in modern organizations

Alexander the Great, for example, performed certain rituals to increase his perceived power or mana during his conquest of the Persian Empire. He visited Troy and a shrine to Achilles, one of his favorite role models (the other being Hercules). By overcoming the challenge of the Gordian Knot, he gained acceptance as a long-expected liberator. During his stay in Egypt, he had himself proclaimed the son of Zeus-Ammon and thereby made a demigod. These actions were almost exclusively well-orchestrated acts to improve his standing with his followers. Julius Caesar was an outstanding propagandists who invented several legends about himself, and he even turned his epilepsy to advantage. Machiavelli's Art of War reports,

When Julius Caesar landed in Africa, he happened to fall as soon as he set foot on shore; he immediately cried out, "Africa, I take possession of thee."

thus turning a symptom of his disability into a good omen. Attila the Hun claimed to have found the sword of the war god, and even Joan of Arc was not (according to some accounts) above such histrionics. Her "divine visions" may have been part of an act, along with a claim to have "found" the sword of Charlemagne. (Yes, it was just lying around waiting for a French farm girl to pick it up.) It's conceivable, however, that she was coached through all of this by the Dauphin and his nobles. The basic lesson is that the one who would be king or make a king must perform the appropriate rituals and dramaturgy for his or her audience. Such dramaturgy was not, however, limited to ancient and medieval times. Much of General Patton's ferocious temper was an act he performed to motivate his soldiers, and it's even possible that his claim to be a reincarnated soldier who had fought since the dawn of Time was simply a device to add to his mystique. It is important to point out, however, that the act must be sincere because the audience can usually detect a fraud. Now we come to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Per Daniel Pipes' Iran's Messianic Menace,

Thanks to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, a new word has entered the political vocabulary: mahdaviat. Not surprisingly, it's a technical religious term. Mahdaviat derives from mahdi, Arabic for "rightly-guided one," a major figure in Islamic eschatology. He is, explains the Encyclopaedia of Islam, "the restorer of religion and justice who will rule before the end of the world." When he was still mayor of Tehran in 2004, for example, Ahmadinejad appears to have secretly instructed the city council to build a grand avenue to prepare for the Mahdi. ...When addressing the United Nations in September, Ahmadinejad flummoxed his audience of world political leaders by concluding his address with a prayer for the Mahdi's appearance: "O mighty Lord, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace."

This is not insanity. It is the rational and premeditated act of the man who would be God. Ahmadinejad is performing acts and rituals that align with Islamic prophecies and it is clearly his intention to claim the title of Mahdi for himself, whereupon millions of credulous followers will see him as the voice of God. Alternatively, he may bring forth an underling as the Mahdi, who will of course say whatever Ahmadinejad wants him to say. On returning to Iran from New York, Ahmadinejad recalled the effect of his U.N. speech:

"One of our group told me that when I started to say "In the name of God the almighty and merciful," he saw a light around me, and I was placed inside this aura. I felt it myself. I felt the atmosphere suddenly change, and for those 27 or 28 minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink. And they were rapt. It seemed as if a hand was holding them there and had opened their eyes to receive the message from the Islamic republic".

If this is true, the man who said that had been told what to say or he knew what his boss wanted him to say. This is how the soothsayer Aristander retained his position (and life) in Alexander the Great's company for so long. The setting in which Ahmadinejad said that Israel must be wiped off the map was a well-orchestrated public relations event much like those that corporate executives hold when they open a new store or factory. He was on a stage with impressive visual aids behind him, the most prominent of which was an hourglass through which a globe with a Star of David was falling. (A globe with the American flag already lay shattered at the bottom.) This is not the behavior of someone who is stupid, crazy, or insane. It is a scene that he planned and then rehearsed as carefully as any professional actor. It is the kind of public display that Hitler once performed to gain the unquestioning obedience of his followers.

Revelations states that a False Prophet-- perhaps the helpful fellow who makes himself see a halo of light around Ahmadinejad much as a good doublethinker from George Orwell's 1984 could make himself see four fingers as five whenever Big Brother wanted him to-- will help the Antichrist, a religious demagogue, rise to power.

It is also instructive to read Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King, in which two scoundrels set out to make themselves Kings of Kafiristan. As Freemasons, they are able to take advantage of local Masonic legends (started by Alexander the Great) to install Danny Dravot as Alexander's long-expected heir. The other partner, Peachy Carnahan, plays False Prophet to Dravot's God. He resents having to worship his friend like a god but Dravot convinces him that he must perform this act to keep the credulous natives convinced. It is more than likely that Ahmadinejad has someone in his entourage who plays a similar role.

In summary, the man who would be *Allah is a coldly rational and calculating individual, and he is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. He has threatened to destroy not only Israel but also the United States (first), along with the United Kingdom and its former empire. The countries that are among his intended victims must stop him by any means necessary.

Watch Bill Maher get a history lesson and completely rebuked on his own show to the point of trying to change the subject...anything to stop the bleeding.
Benjamin Netanyahu articulates what every Republican Presidential candidate should be able to recite in their sleep but most somehow can't do even while awake... and all with a smile, wit and sense of humor that Maher doesn't have any idea how to deal with. The video is a little long for the A.D.D. crowd of today, but I promise it is well worth the few minutes it takes to learn from a brilliant man who knows and who also knows how to communicate it most effectively.


-red