11-27-2013, 04:20 PM
<big>Religious leaders to meet Ascendancy this week</big>
<small>Karim Sadjadpour
SENIOR ASSOCIATE,
DOMINANCE V CENTRE
The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre</small>
The Middle East is at a crossroads. It is crunch time for the CCD, where Dominance V has always teetered on the edge of a sword. Thirty years ago, nobody would have guessed the nations of bitterly antagonistic religious dogmas would agree to unification beneath one flag, leader, and name. The succession to the CCD did not come without negotiation, however. You might recall the intense and lengthy meetings featuring a younger, but no less emboldened, Nikolai Brandon, President of the Ascendant Soviet Union and heads of state that were loathed to enter the same room, let alone dissolve their borders. However, Brandon emerged victorious and the separation of church and state that held such firm boundaries elsewhere in the CCD was wholly ignored in the construction of the Fifth Dominance.
This autumn, for the first time since its inception, the dynamic in DV has shifted. The violence is primarily contained by the Arabian Peninsula. Surprising since the more historically violent areas constitute lands farther north where Jewish, Islamic, and Christian cultures collide.
Today, the Governance-Directors of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Bagdad, Tehran, and Kuwait City sit content with their spheres of influence. Fighting over the sites of the Holy Lands stopped with the blurring uniformity of the CCD. Meanwhile, the most heated clamoring to ever emerge rattles Medina and Mecca - so loud that the Moscow Kremlin has answered. The Ascendancy intends to put a foot down like a stern parent annoyed with his children's behavior.
But one child in particular seems unlikely to listen to reason. The loudest of the tantrum-throwers comes from the followers of Muhammad Al-Hasan, who has been proclaimed as the the Islamic Mahdi: a figure from Islamic eschatology who is meant to rule in the years before a Day of Judgement and rid the world of evil.
However not all Islamic scholars agree on the existence of the Mahdi. Notably expert in Islamic Jurisprudence, Jave Ahmad Ghamidi, who attests the Mahdi is not mentioned in the Qurʾān, but only in the Sunni hadith, a report or tradition that follows along the tales of the Qurʾān but is itself not a religious text.
The figure of a Mahdi is far more prevalent in Shia Islam who say he is equivalent to the Twelfth Imam, the son of the eleventh Imam, Ḥasan ʿAskari, who died in 874 AD. The cryptic destiny of the assumed son of the eleventh Imam led to numerous rifts with prominent doctrinal adjustments. Some groups claimed that his son died at a very early age, others that he had survived until a certain age and then died, and still others solely denied his very reality, considering that Ḥasan ʿAskari never had a son. Only a small minority sustained the notion that the son of the eleventh imam was alive, that he was in “occultation”, [from: occult, or hidden as in an object blocked from view by another in the foreground] and that he was to recur as mahdi at the end of time.
However not all Shi'i believe in the idea of Occultation, such as the Zaidi and Nizari Ismaili. Among the groups that do, debate continues as to which individual is in Occultation.
These differences in belief compromise the underlying violence seen erupting across Dominance V. The Twelver Shia Islam, the largest branch of the Shia faith, have proclaimed the return of the Twelvth Imam, the Mahdi, as Muhammad Al-Hasan. His followers, the Mahdaviat, claim the world has become overrun with the wicked. This Messaianic figure will be the "restorer of religion and justice who will rule before the end of the world". He is intended to not only re-establish Islam to new veracity, creating “submission to God” the worldwide religion as the whole world is taken into his submission.
Unsurprisingly, the idea has not been well-received, particularly by Sunni unbelievers. The tales of a Islamic savior are older than a millennium, yet it is this ancient atmosphere that the Ascendancy intends to negotiate. Perhaps another miracle will astound the world as it did twenty-five years ago, and DV will truly see peace.
We wait on baited breath.
-The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre is an independent research centre affiliated with the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, an international Islamic non-governmental, independent institute headquartered in Amman, Dominance V, Central Custody of Dominion. 2045
![[Image: bbce8d78-d4dc-4321-be7b-e2db7a9bcc29_zps78da686c.jpg]](http://i1334.photobucket.com/albums/w643/thefirstage/bbce8d78-d4dc-4321-be7b-e2db7a9bcc29_zps78da686c.jpg)
COMMENTS: Open
<small>Karim Sadjadpour
SENIOR ASSOCIATE,
DOMINANCE V CENTRE
The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre</small>
The Middle East is at a crossroads. It is crunch time for the CCD, where Dominance V has always teetered on the edge of a sword. Thirty years ago, nobody would have guessed the nations of bitterly antagonistic religious dogmas would agree to unification beneath one flag, leader, and name. The succession to the CCD did not come without negotiation, however. You might recall the intense and lengthy meetings featuring a younger, but no less emboldened, Nikolai Brandon, President of the Ascendant Soviet Union and heads of state that were loathed to enter the same room, let alone dissolve their borders. However, Brandon emerged victorious and the separation of church and state that held such firm boundaries elsewhere in the CCD was wholly ignored in the construction of the Fifth Dominance.
This autumn, for the first time since its inception, the dynamic in DV has shifted. The violence is primarily contained by the Arabian Peninsula. Surprising since the more historically violent areas constitute lands farther north where Jewish, Islamic, and Christian cultures collide.
Today, the Governance-Directors of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Bagdad, Tehran, and Kuwait City sit content with their spheres of influence. Fighting over the sites of the Holy Lands stopped with the blurring uniformity of the CCD. Meanwhile, the most heated clamoring to ever emerge rattles Medina and Mecca - so loud that the Moscow Kremlin has answered. The Ascendancy intends to put a foot down like a stern parent annoyed with his children's behavior.
But one child in particular seems unlikely to listen to reason. The loudest of the tantrum-throwers comes from the followers of Muhammad Al-Hasan, who has been proclaimed as the the Islamic Mahdi: a figure from Islamic eschatology who is meant to rule in the years before a Day of Judgement and rid the world of evil.
However not all Islamic scholars agree on the existence of the Mahdi. Notably expert in Islamic Jurisprudence, Jave Ahmad Ghamidi, who attests the Mahdi is not mentioned in the Qurʾān, but only in the Sunni hadith, a report or tradition that follows along the tales of the Qurʾān but is itself not a religious text.
The figure of a Mahdi is far more prevalent in Shia Islam who say he is equivalent to the Twelfth Imam, the son of the eleventh Imam, Ḥasan ʿAskari, who died in 874 AD. The cryptic destiny of the assumed son of the eleventh Imam led to numerous rifts with prominent doctrinal adjustments. Some groups claimed that his son died at a very early age, others that he had survived until a certain age and then died, and still others solely denied his very reality, considering that Ḥasan ʿAskari never had a son. Only a small minority sustained the notion that the son of the eleventh imam was alive, that he was in “occultation”, [from: occult, or hidden as in an object blocked from view by another in the foreground] and that he was to recur as mahdi at the end of time.
However not all Shi'i believe in the idea of Occultation, such as the Zaidi and Nizari Ismaili. Among the groups that do, debate continues as to which individual is in Occultation.
These differences in belief compromise the underlying violence seen erupting across Dominance V. The Twelver Shia Islam, the largest branch of the Shia faith, have proclaimed the return of the Twelvth Imam, the Mahdi, as Muhammad Al-Hasan. His followers, the Mahdaviat, claim the world has become overrun with the wicked. This Messaianic figure will be the "restorer of religion and justice who will rule before the end of the world". He is intended to not only re-establish Islam to new veracity, creating “submission to God” the worldwide religion as the whole world is taken into his submission.
Unsurprisingly, the idea has not been well-received, particularly by Sunni unbelievers. The tales of a Islamic savior are older than a millennium, yet it is this ancient atmosphere that the Ascendancy intends to negotiate. Perhaps another miracle will astound the world as it did twenty-five years ago, and DV will truly see peace.
We wait on baited breath.
-The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre is an independent research centre affiliated with the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, an international Islamic non-governmental, independent institute headquartered in Amman, Dominance V, Central Custody of Dominion. 2045
COMMENTS: Open