Apocalyptic Islam and Iranian Shi’ism
It is the last Sunday of the month which means it’s time to look at another religion, making this weeks book Apocalyptic Islam and Iranian Shi’ism by Abbas Amanat. So let’s do this.
I am not quite sure what I expected with this book but what I got were some...let’s go with interesting...connections. I mean, on one hand, it’s everything you would expect from a religion that expects the end of days to come at any time. Like the Christians who gave away all their stuff in September 2025, because they believed the Rapture was about to happen.
Only Amanat traced the Islamic belief through Islamic texts, of the Islamic version of the Rapture. Which is what led to the ultimate religious justification for Ayatollah Khomeini taking over Iran after the Shah fell in 1979.
Now, why is this belief oddly specific to Shia Islam and not Sunni Islam. For that, I’m jumping over to Google AI for a minute to explain the differences between the two sects.
In 632 CE when the Prophet Muhammad died, the religion split. The Sunni Muslims, who are in the majority, believe leadership should be chosen by community consensus. Much like the Pope in Rome is not an inherited seat, but rather passes to whoever the College of Cardinals determines is the next holiest of holies, the Sunni Muslims hold their religious councils and decide from there. Sunni’s are the majority sect, representing between 85 and 90% of Islam and, subsequently the most widespread.
Shia Muslims believe leadership should pass through descendants of Muhammad’s bloodline. Don’t have to be direct descendants, since the first one after Muhammad was Muhammad’s cousin/son-in-law, but his bloodline does have to be represented in your family tree for you to be eligible as mosque leader. This is between 10 and 15% of the Islamic population and according to Google AI, primarily located in Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Bahrain. Not so sure about that, since we know from Nadia Murad’s story earlier this year that it was Sunni Muslims who orchestrated her heartbreaking story, and she was Iraqi Yazidi. But sure, Google, let’s go with that. The book mentions Iran, Azerbaijan, and even Bahrain, but Iraq is mostly only mentioned in context of the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980’s.
Now that that’s explained, this book is primarily about an even tinier subset of Shia Islam, Twelver Shia Islam. And it’s from here, we get the apocalyptic visions of the future. So what is Twelver Shia Islam? Twelver’s believe that an Imam is divinely appointed, infallible spiritually, and the political successor to Muhammad. They possess special knowledge and authority in interpreting the Quran and Islamic law.
Even more specifically, the Twelver’s believe there are twelve specific Imams, beginning with the first after Muhammad, Ali ibn Abi Talib and ending with Muhammad al-Mahdi, who has not yet appeared, but his appearance will herald the end times.
Side note here—Sunni Islam also believes when Muhammad al-Mahdi appears, the end times will happen, more specifically, he will appear before the Day of Judgment. They just disagree on when that day will be.
Armed with this information, it becomes a lot easier to follow the information as laid out by Amanat. And a lot more horrifying, because he includes the break away of the Bab, which eventually led to the Baha’i faith. Kind of like how Episcopalian is considered Catholic Lite, the Baha’i faith is a lot more forgiving and welcoming than the wider Islamic faith.
Like, retrospectively, when people claim that Islam recognizes Jesus as one of gods prophets, I feel like their probably describing Baha’i, which includes the belief of unity of all religions and unity of humanity, and includes divine truth through messengers which include Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhmmad. So yeah...pretty sure Baha’i is what people mean when they say “Religion of Peace.”
So the Babi faith came first, and was founded by the Bab in 1844 who declared the imminent arrival of a greater prophet. Which in Islam can pretty much ONLY mean the Mahdi. And about 20 years later, in 1863, Baha’ullah, one of the Bab’s followers, claimed to be that prophet.
Which pretty much explains why the Baha’i faith is so heavily persecuted in Iran. Basically, someone with a bigger gun said “Nope, you ain’t the next prophet.” and forced the religion underground. Baha’ullah was persecuted throughout the rest of his life, but his and the Bab’s religion hangs in there to present.
A pretty heavy chunk of the book was dedicated to tracing the Bab, books he read, books he wrote, and how that has influenced modern apocalyptic thought in Iran, and push back against the Baha’i faith, and then bridging the gap between the Baha’i being pushed out and the early 20th century which would eventually give rise to the Ayatollah’s being in control of everything, and the expectation that the Mahdi was coming. Any day now he’s coming.
Do note, I don’t think this is what the author believes. He is merely laying out how we go to President Ahmenijad in 2005/2006 making noises like maybe HE was the Mahdi. This book was published in 2009...and given the state of affairs in Iran, it would not surprise me if the Ayatollah’s are looking at each other like “YOU! Maybe YOU are the Mahdi and why the apocalypse is happening now!”
I’m not going lie guys, this one was a rough read for me. It’s only 251 pages and I fought tooth and nail to read it all. It was hard to keep my interest focused on what was in front of me. A definite part of me was notations. Like, instead of just saying 1256 for the year, he would write it as 654/1256. Because Iran counts the year from the year Muhammad moved from Mecca to Medina, which was like 622 CE. So there’s double dates throughout.
And he would include Arabic phrases followed by English translation or English, followed by Arabic translation. There was no real rhyme or reason behind why he would flip them back and forth. Which is why like the first half of this review is notes from Google AI as I had to look up things that made no sense to me from the book. But that and the dates things marked this as “Katrina, you are not the target audience of this book.”
Which is ok! Not every book has to be written for everyone. If I had to guess, his target audience is religious scholars, Iranians living in Diaspora who want to know how Iran came to be this theocratic hell hole, and political wankers who want to claim expertise after reading one book.
Since I am none of those things, this book was a slog to read through. But, if you fit the categories outlined above, you’ll probably get more out of this book than
