Mahdism and Globalization
Mahdism: Semitic Thought, Arabic Culture
In the political studies, the concept of Mahdism, is the deepest spirit of Aryan or Semitic cultural heritage. This Arabic term, has an equivalent with the Messianism in the theological orientation of the West-Christianity. It also represents the political orientation of secular Western people to await the golden era of capitalist globalization through a figure of messianic statesman. The West as the cultural imitation of the Hellenic Christianity and the Latin Christianity, inherited the Greek knowledge in the era of renaissance, in fact, they adopted, adapted, and reformulated the Hellenic messianic idea in the paradigm of post-modernism, secularism, capitalism, and then used it to find the form of other messianic, that is, the capitalist global messianic itself to represent the matrix as the hegemonic globalization. In the episteme of the West, one source of confusion is that the term ‘messianic’ has much wider range of meaning than ‘Messiah.’ The term ‘messianic’ is usually applied to everything in the Bible when it refers to the hope of glorious future. This suggests that central feature of the coming golden era is the expectation of the global savior. But, that fact, is hotly debated, for in the minds of most scholars today, the oldest and most general expectation was for the coming era of happiness. Many scholars concerned to a messianic idea, only in much later times, according to this academic consensus, was the hope of the Messiah connected with this expectation.
Moslem scholars have discussed the messianic idea of Islam in their various writing, but their researchers ironically without referring to the classical data beyond of Islamic literatures to dig up the real understanding of the Mahdism through a historical linguistic study of the Hebrew Bible, one of Semitic heritage. Therefore, as a result, without philological understanding, many Moslem theologies developed a wicked hermeneutic approach to understand the Mahdism as the messianic idea of Islam. Moslem academicians then fall into a fallacy thinking to interpret the term Al-Mahdī, in the Arabic context with which the origin of its culture deals with ‘an expected one’, in the Hebrew discourse.
The Sunnite state that the Mahdism deals with a theology of the hope, is totally rejected, then regard it as a myth of the hope, even, an utopist idea. They also claim that the Mahdism historically adopted from the Jewish messianic idea which was composed and designed as a common episteme by Shiites in the era of social and political captivity. The depression for the Shiites or the Jews, extremely then created a new political trend through a messianic imitation of Zoroastrian myth in the land of Babylonian Empire territory in the era of Ezra. In this context, the liberal Sunnites called it as a political spirit of post-exilic Babylonian captivity. But, I think, it is fallacy thinking to understand about the making of Islam and the Judaism as the Abrahamic religions in the context of history. In the light of Jewish history, and the Semitic tradition, it is a form of messianic spirit of post-exilic Egyptian captivity in the life and times of Moses when he was chosen by God as the first Israelite Messiah. In other words, the Messianism of the Jews has no relation with a tragedy of Babylonian slavery after the establishment of the Judaism as a religion, but it has a relation with a primordial tragedy of Egyptian captivity when the Judaism still in the making process, and appears as a religious community which is created by Moses himself.
The Mahdism of Islam, of course, is a version of Jewish messianic idea in other Semitic language, because Islam itself came after the establishment of Judaism. Linguistically, both Arabic and Hebrew were descended from the same mother language, the Semitic. As the messianic visions of Abraham which have historically been compiled in the Bible and the Quran, these messianic ideas refer to the Israelite and Ishmaelite expected ones whose will come from among ‘Ibrī, the Hebrews (Genesis 15:13-14) and ‘Arabī, the Arabs (al-Baqarah 2:127-129). Exegetically, the context of both Abrahamic messianic verses deal with the expected appearance of both prophets, namely Moses, the largest prophet of the Jews, and Muhammad, the largest prophet of Islam (peace be upon them). Indeed, the messianic philosophy of the Jewish faith, in the Hebraic episteme has a relation between Mosheh (Moses) and Moshiah (Messiah). Linguistically, the word Mosheh, as a Hebrew noun, is originally formed from consonantal triliteral root, מ (mem), שׁ (shīn) and ה (hē), and other word Moshiah, as a Hebrew noun, is originally also formed from consonantal triliteral root, מ (mem), שׁ (shīn) and ח (heth). In the Jewish Haggada, one of the Jewish literatures, the word Moshiah, as a Hebrew noun is early applied to Moses himself, the Israelite Messiah who had saved the Jews from the Egyptian captivity. In the context of linguistic analysis, it is really amazing. Historically, Moses as the prophet came to save the Israelites from the Egyptian slavery, and take them out from the land of Egypt; as well as Muhammad as the prophet came to save his people from the capitalist tribal slavery of the Quraishites. It means that both largest prophets per se are the Abrahamic prophethood which is theologically representing the ‘messianic idea’; and the appearance of Muhammad among the Arabs, is a fulfillment of Mahdism in pre-Islamic times to make a justice order among the tribes in all aspects of the life in the Arabia. It also means that the prophet of Islam as the fulfillment of pre-Islamic Mahdism is a Semitic thought in the Arabic culture.
Mahdism as ens realissimus in the future era is a globalist theological perspective to build up the new justice global order; it further fight the tyranny of politic on one side, and to marginalize the tyranny of religion on other side. Obviously, the spirit of Mahdism in Islam is to end the social riot, that is a manifestation of the collective violence in the world of capitalist globalization. The social riot, is a politico-social violence or cultural one in the era of capitalist globalization through the status quo of religion, ideology, and language. As a solution, we must inject the Mahdism among the global societies to fight against the capitalists, and to expect one government, one global village, something like the Kingdom of God, through the Mahdi.
Cultural Violence in the Capitalist Globalization Era
In the era of capitalist globalization, the cultural aspects which are considered as symbolic spaces to justify the social violence either the direct social violence or the structural violence are religion, ideology, and language. These aspects of culture do not stand in a separated way, but relate to one another in producing the influence to the event of violence. We try to describe them separately and to find out their appearance in some cases of violence prevailing in the capitalist global world.
Religion: the Making of an Image
The empirical study about religion has revealed that every religion contained the seeds of violence; and I think, the roots of violence were directly influenced by the symbolic actions of Abrahamic icons, like Jesus or Muhammad to fight against the symbolic hegemony of tribal capitalist economic practices in the Temples of Mecca and Jerusalem. Amazingly, they did the similar actions to fight against the quasi-truth in the days of same tribal religious celebrations. Jesus went up to Jerusalem in the Moed ha-Pesach (the Passover), and he entered into the Temple of Jerusalem and threw out all those selling and buying in the Temple. He poured out the coins of the money changers, and overturned their tables, and the branches of those selling doves. Muhammad, the prophet of Islam also entered into the Temple of Mecca in the holy day of ‘Ied al-Hajj (the Pilgrim). He poured out the idols of Quraishites, and overturned their idols over the floor. I think, their symbolic destructions of both Temples were the historical actions. Those were not the cases of prophesy historicized, those are, of the historical events. These attacks on the Temple trading system constituted, therefore, a most radical challenge to the authority of sacerdotal aristocracy, and these were also the truly revolutionary acts, for the high priests held their offices, and authority from Roman and the Quraishite capitalists; and were thus the essential factors for Roman empire in Judea and the Quraishite capitalist government in the Arabia. To challenge the rules of the high priests of the Jews as kohanīm and the high priests of Arabs as kāhins were thus, in fact, to challenge the rules of the Roman and the Quraishite aristocrats.
The contents of the doctrines formulated in dogma have from itself the exclusive character, especially in the concept of theology and christology. It means that there have been the limiting elements that cause consequently the other ideas and system of belief to be not included. The people who put the doctrines into practice form their social group that distinguished itself from the other social groups because of the different system of belief. As the Semitic religions, Christianity, Islam, Jewish faiths, show up a such exclusive character. The doctrines of religion lead indirectly their followers to do the violence when they are facing and confronting themselves with the other followers. The social riot in the global world have started with the conflicting and fighting between the ‘Ibrī (Israelite Hebrews) and the ‘Arabī (Palestinian Arabs), about the heritage of the land of Canaan. Based on theological interpretation of the Torah, the Israelite Hebrews claimed that God himself have given the land to the Israelites as the promised land through the mouth of Abraham. Meanwhile, based on theological interpretation of the Quran, the Palestinian Arabs also claimed that God himself have cursed the Israelites as the chosen people, so that why they can not inherit the land as the promised land of God. But later on these conflicts and fighting went on larger between the West and the Middle East, even, between the West and Islam. The sentiment basing on the religion spread out. The Arabs politically identified themselves with Islam, whereas the Hebrews with the West. By making an image of Biblical text, the Hebrews and the West, the representations of Judaeo-Christianity and the Hellenic-Christianity, considered Arab Moslems and non-Arab Moslems as αγαρμνοί, hagarenoi (the sons of slavery), goyim (unbelievers) and regarded them as beney pere adam (descendants of wild donkey), whereas the Arab Moslems also considered Hebrews and the West as kāfir and easily being cheated. These pejorative titles represented Arabs or Moslems as ‘being uncivilized and having no respect on local customs and culture’. The religion which ties up closely with its followers becomes then the essential element of the social group’s self –identity, and during the time of violence this element is taken out to be instrument of strengthening the self-identity of the religious followers against the other groups.
The dangerous social riot prevailing in the capitalist global world is also the sectarianism which is operated by certain groups under the banner of a certain religion. The violence and social riots are triggered out by the religious violence. The social riots in Iraq have been ridden by sectarianism that has aggravated the situation of conflicts becoming clash between Sunnites and Shiites.
Nowadays, in the capitalist global world, the religion is understood yet as the determinant of the national identity which is used to get the capital and to win it from the other in the era of liberal industry, so that why the Americans who were converted to Islam were no longer called Americans, but Moslems or quasi-Americans. In this context, national identity marker is politically dealing with the religious identity to win the capital. In the discourse of global politic, the West and Americans are identical with Christianity; Egyptians are identical with Islam, and India is identical with Hindu. Therefore, the native people identify themselves with the religion they have followed. The social riot is easily busted out, when the certain religion is either abused or used by all means to maintain the self-identity of its followers. The strategy to regulate how to omit such as understanding can only be managed by an effort to produce a wise regulation about the relationship between the religion and politics. On the one hand, the religion is used as an instrument to reach the political purpose; and on other hand, the politics can be used as an instrument to reach the religious purpose. The social violence in the capitalist global world is still tied closely with the religion as the instrument of self-identity of the certain social group.
