Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [72]
After reading this article I came upon an interview that bin Laden had given to an unnamed reporter. In it he defended those who had attacked the American embassies in Africa. He also referred to Muslims as a “nation” that didn’t need to recognize the nation-state borders and urged Muslims, all of them, to fight on behalf of God against the United States.
I was astonished that bin Laden, without any formal religious training, would hold himself out as a scholar of Islam. I considered such arrogance treacherous to the faith. When I expressed my concern, however, Aslam took me aside.
“You have to take this man very seriously,” Aslam said.
“Why? He just seems like a fighter,” I replied.
“Are you not familiar with the signs of the Last Hour?” Aslam asked in astonishment.
“The arrival of the Day of Judgment?” I said. “Of course I am. My mother taught them to me when I was just a boy.”
“You must not know them very well, because Osama bin Laden was predicted in the prophecies of the Holy Messenger.”
I was irritated by Aslam’s implication that he was more knowledgeable about Islam than I was, but I was also curious. “And what did the Prophet say?” I prompted.
“There’s a prophecy he made which says that, at a time when Muslims were thoroughly defeated, around the time of the arrival of the one-eyed Antichrist named Dajjal, there would arise from the region of Khorasan a group of Muslims with black flags. First they would conquer toward the east and then head west and liberate Jerusalem. At that point the messiah, or mahdi, would be revealed. That mahdi would then destroy Dajjal, and the entire world would fall under the heel of Islam, a period of power that would last forty years. Then the Muslims would be comprehensively defeated yet again, and that would signal the end of the world, bringing about the Day of Judgment. Do you know when that time is?”
“That could refer to any time,” I said.
“It refers to now,” Aslam replied. “The group of Muslims with the black flags are the Taliban. They’re from Afghanistan, which was called Khorasan. When they go east it means that they will fight against India for occupied Kashmir. Then they’ll head westward and liberate Jerusalem from the Israelis.”
I was skeptical. “What about the mahdi?”
“Bin Laden is the mahdi! That’s why I told you to take him seriously.”
“How can that be?”
“The mahdi was prophesied to be from Arabia, just like bin Laden, and he’s supposed to be tall and thin, just like bin Laden, and he’ll have a mark on his back, which bin Laden probably has. Most important, though, bin Laden is with the Taliban and they have black flags. By the time he’s forty, I think bin Laden will reveal himself.”
“Who is Dajjal then?” I asked.
“America.”
“Dajjal is supposed to be a one-eyed man on a donkey,” I countered.
“Yes,” Aslam said, “but Dajjal is a metaphor. The one eye refers to the camera, or media, which is what America uses to take over the world. And the donkey, that’s easy. America’s president is Clinton, and he’s a Democrat. Their symbol is the ass.”
Bin Laden’s promises of deliverance rang hollow to me. He seemed like nothing more than an opportunist. Another in a long line of pretender messiahs. The worst thing about him was that he turned Islam into a shooting star. Into fireworks. Into a gunshot. He touched believers by the light of the faith but then encouraged them to become a flame, which he fanned into a conflagration. Such an affirmation of Islam was utterly pointless. It soon fizzled out. As Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad said in his