MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

By Joel Richardson

“A documentary that ties the current events in the Middle East to the soon coming of the Islamic messiah figure known as the Mahdi has just been released in Iran. The video contains one of the most overt calls to war yet seen in the Iranian media, perhaps pointing to the anxiety and desperation of the present regime in the midst of the many regional uprisings, including one in its own country.

The documentary claims to have been made by the Iranian Muslim scholars (ulema) who presently control the country, including the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

The film intermixes various Islamic sacred traditions (hadith) with a hodgepodge of chanting, passages from the Quran and graphic imagery portraying the Islamic world as collectively yearning for the coming of the Mahdi to deliver them from the “oppression” of the United States and Israel.

The documentary begins with the words, ‘Greetings to Mahdi, the one who all beings on earth and in heaven love without end. Here’s the one that mirrors Allah’s soul, the perfect human, the inheritor of all prophets.’

The narration then moves on to the words of Imam Bahger, Shi’a Islam’s fifth imam, who is quoted as saying, ‘The messiah [Mahdi] will not arise unless fear, great earthquakes and sedition take place.’ Imam Bagher (most often transliterated Baqir) is viewed as being among the ‘infallible’ imams of Shi’a Islam.” Read more.