Islamic Totalitarians, the Apocalypse, and Terrorism

Editor’s Note: Since most of the news media ‘experts’ have no clue what they’re talking about when it comes to the context of the lives of the accused Boston Marathon bombers, we’re publishing this detailed backgrounder by researcher Chip Berlet. Part One explains the genesis of Islamic terrorism, the apocalyptic viewpoint likely connected to the Boston bombing, and a quick primer on how the history of Chechnya fits into this story.

By Chip Berlet / Talk to Action

Walk a mile in the shoes of those who claim to honor God and yet cheer the bombing of the Boston Marathon. They represent only a tiny fraction of the Muslims on our planet, yet they see themselves as carrying out the will of God. Fanatics such as these can be found in many of the World’s religions. They shoot abortion providers in the United States; blast apart buses in Israel; and murder Muslims in India (and vice versa).

These religious fanatics often combine a totalitarian political mindset with a belief in sacred prophecy that they are mandated by God to rule the world, and they must act now against their enemies because time is running out. In fact they believe that we are approaching the end of time itself, the literal end of the world as we know it.

This worldview is call apocalypticism. Sketchy details are emerging that suggests one of the motives for the alleged suspects in the Boston bombing may have been a belief in an obscure and contested Muslim prophecy about the apocalyptic End Times.

We may never know the full details of what motivated the Tsarnaev brothers, but if we want to understand the genesis of much Islamic terrorism by a small handful of Muslims around the world, a speculative tour of their apocalyptic worldview may help us design a more effective response.

A YouTube page reportedly created by Tamerlan Tsarnaev reveals a fascination with apocalyptic Islamic prophecy. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a battle with police early Friday morning; his brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested late Friday night. The two brothers were named as bombing suspects by authorities, but family and friends find it hard to believe they were implicated in the act of terrorism. Although at this stage it is just speculation, it is possible that the brothers taught themselves how to be Islamic terrorists for God by using online resources.

Apocalypticism is the belief in an approaching confrontation between absolute good and absolute evil about which a select few have forewarning so they can make appropriate preparations. During this confrontation, hidden truths are revealed, and afterwards the earth is transformed in a significant way.

Terrorism fueled by apocalyptic belief within Islam is a core element for the most aggressive and militant forms of Islam such as al Queda and Hamas, and it created one of the most ruthless resistance campaigns in Chechnya where the Tsarnaev elders lived during the equally brutal and murderous Russian invasions in the 1990s.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s YouTube page included a link to a 13 minute video, titled “The Emergence of Prophecy: The Black Flags from Khorasan,” claiming that an Islamic holy war has already started. The apocalyptic video is by renegade cleric Shaykh Feiz Mohammed. The video begins with the statement that “The prophet said when you see the black flags coming from the direction of Khorasan, you will join their army. That army has already started its march.”

Khorasan is the name of an ancient region, just to the south and east of Chechnya and incorporating parts of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan.

A rare old map illustrates its dimensions https://www.raremaps.com/gallery/detail/29426/

The brothers Tsarnaev were raised in a broader region bordering Khorasan among Muslims where the Black Flag prophecy says God will raise a mighty army. Straddling the territory from Chechnya to Iran and Afghanistan are the Caucasus, a mountain range from which the term Caucasian is derived.

The Black Flags from Khorasan prophecy tells of a massive army of non-Arab Muslims marching on Jerusalem to prepare the way for the return of the Mahdi, the figure in Islamic apocalyptic narrative who signals the end of time and the global triumph of Islam.

The video claims that in the forthcoming End Times Allah “will rise up a group of people, which will give their allegiance to Imam Mahdi and Eesa (Jesus)….” Along with the Mahdi, Jesus of Nazareth is a prophet in Islamic religious tradition who precedes the Mahdi and tells of the forthcoming victory of Islam. According to the video, “We now know that the army of Mahdi will come out of Khorasan with their black banners….”

The text then claims that the “last hour would not come unless seventy thousand persons” from the region led an attack. The “last hour” also refers to the End Times in Islamic apocalyptic prophecy as well as Christian versions of the prophecy.

On the video a speaker appears who claims the lineage of these people from Khorasan traces to the early Israelites. A subtext here is that these Muslims from the Khorasan region are one of the lost tribes of Israel and thus have an original unbroken covenant with God.

The text resumes, stating: “The appearance of Imam Mahdi…is that he has deep wheatish complexion, light stature, medium height, beautiful broad complexion, long straight nose, eyebrows round like a bow, big natural black eyes….”

Following this there are video images of men and women with rifles and automatic weapons. The video claims that “no power will be able to stop them and they will finally reach Jerusalem where they will erect their flags.” The narrator then says that the Jihad is already in process “across the Holy Land,” and that “nothing can stop that Jihad, No one can stop it….”

As of Friday night, a copy of the video was still on You Tube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJknGtKV34I

The prophecy outlined in The Black Flags from Khorasan is part of a scary messianic and apocalyptic movement within Islam is called Mahdism. According to Professor Timothy R. Furnish, apocalyptic Mahdist movements are to fundamentalist uprisings what nuclear weapons are to conventional ones: triggered by the same detonating agents, but far more powerful in scope and effect.”-^{1} Mahdist movements are tightly wound around apocalyptic frameworks giving form to the future of all humanity at the end of time.

Chechnya

The Chechen Republic, with a predominantly Muslim population, is a reluctant part of the Russian federation. Chechnya lies between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea along with Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, all surrounded by the much larger territories of Russia, Turkey, and Iran The repression and human rights atrocities committed in Chechnya by invading Russian troops were brutal and deadly.

In 2002 Human Rights Watch issued a report stating that “Russian forces in Chechnya arbitrarily detain, torture, and kill civilians in a climate of lawlessness.” Some Chechen Muslims suggest that Russia and the United States reached an understanding whereby the U.S. would not pay attention to human rights abuses in Chechnya as long as Russian forces were fighting radical Muslims.

Richard H. Schultz, Jr. and Andrea J. Dew in Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat, note “the growing significance of Sufi Islam in the social, political, cultural, and economic life of Chechnya.”

The Sufi form of Islam around the world is a pacifist religious movement, and Sufis generally stay out of politics, and sometimes are persecuted by the more orthodox Muslims.

According to Schultz & Dew, in Chechnya an aberrant form of Sufism developed.

Schultz & Dew suggest that after the Russian invasion of the North Caucuses, the “idea ofghazzavat or holy war made it easier for Chechens to take on” the Russian invaders.

“By labeling the Russians ‘infidels,’ the ghazzavat doctrine” infused the Muslim fighter with a “feeling of worthiness and moral supremacy.” In addition, it “provided fighters with safe passage to the afterlife” by “eliminating fear of death and the unknown.” The guarantee of entering the afterlife as heroes and martyrs to God’s just cause helps generate a constant flow of terrorists.

What began as a resistance by Chechen nationalists seeking independence from Russia eventually morphed into a religious campaign dominated by Muslims. According to Shultz & Dew, “radical Islamists from various Arab and Muslim countries” joined the Chechen resistance, and saw the fight as “part of the international holy war.” In 2003, the authors note, “the U.S. State Department designated three Chechen groups as terrorist organizations and charged they had links to al-Qaeda.”

This has been disputed by some experts. Clearly, not all Chechen resistance fighters were Muslim; some were simply nationalists opposed to the vicious Russian campaign against Chechnya. And not all resistance fighters turned to terrorism.

Why Patriots Day?

Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts, although celebrated on a Monday, is dedicated to the colonial Minutemen patriots of Lexington and Concord and surrounding towns who on April 19, 1775 launched the revolution that gave birth to the United States. This is an important date for right-wing movements in the United States, and there are numerous posts on the Internet explaining why.

Early speculation as to the perpetrators of the bombing centered on domestic right-wing militants. As someone who for forty years has studied domestic right-wing militias and neonazi groups (not the same thing) I had trouble imagining how such groups would explain targeting Boston on a day that was an iconic part of their anti-regime philosophy.

What if you believe in the Islamic prophecy? Imagine that you are a devout Muslim who has been drawn into a fanatical totalitarian sociopolitical movement that sees the United States as the Great Satan. Attacking civilians on Patriots day is an act that glorifies God.

Bombing the Boston Marathon punishes a country bent on crippling global Islam. A colleague who is a filmmaker pointed out that blowing the legs off of marathon bystanders was symbolically cutting off America at the knees. Boston, once heralded by devout Christians as the apocalyptic New Jerusalem is exposed as the wellspring of evil, not the location where Jesus of Nazareth returns in triumph with a Christian millennium.

Bombing a celebration of Patriots Day in Boston not only targets the claim that America stands for democracy, but also reveals the weakness and powerlessness of the imperial juggernaut helping despoil Muslim lands from Chechnya to Mecca and beyond. This doesn’t have to make sense to the average American, it just has to make sense to two young Muslim men on a mission for God and glory who perhaps are on their way to a hero’s welcome in the afterlife.

 Part Two tomorrow: The Devil Is In the Details

= = = = = = = = = = = =

Chip Berlet, an investigative reporter and scholar, has studied repression, right-wing movements, and political violence for over forty years. He was an associate editor of the Encyclopedia of Millennialism and Millennial Movements and recently authored the study “The United States: Messianism, Apocalypticism, and Political Religion” collected in The Sacred in Twentieth Century Politics. Berlet also coordinated and co-authored the revisions for the entry on “Neo-Nazism” in the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica.

Originally published at Talk to Action. Reprinted by permission of the author.