Muslim Apocalypse: Between the Book of Revelation and Modern Mahdis
Professor Filiu started his presentation by setting the dogmatic and historical stage. The Qur’an mentions repeatedly the Judgement Day and all the natural catastrophes that will announce it. It also presents Jesus, the eleventh envoy of Allah, as the “science of the (last) Hour”, and mentions the doomed nation of Gog and Magog. But it is only through the traditions (hadith) that the Mahdi and the Antichrist (Dajjal) appear in the Muslim discourse and faith. This narrative evolved during the Middle Ages, through the influence of writers like 
, while numerous revolutionary movements used the messianic propaganda to rally their followers, until the Sudanese Mahdi at the beginning of the Islamic fourteenth century.
Our fifteenth century of Islam opened in November 1979 with the storming of the Mecca sanctuary by “Mahdist” insurgents. This political earthquake was followed years later by the development of a new apocalyptic genre, importing massively non-Islamic elements: Christian and Jewish prophecies, European anti-Semitic pamphlets, and even UFO and Bermuda triangle literature. Those booklets became increasingly popular in the nineties, while the Islamic establishment tried to restore some kind of orthodox narrative. But in 2000, the Saudi sheikh Safr al-Hawali produced a new interpretation of the Book of Revelation, presented as a providential road map to fight “Christian Zionism” (with Mecca being the New Jerusalem, the Abomination of Desolation being Israel and Rome being America).
Filiu then discussed contemporary developments, mostly related to the invasion of Iraq: Moqtada Sadr significantly called his militia “Mahdi’s army”, while a true apocalyptic militia appeared in Southern Iraq under the leadership of a self-proclaimed “Yemenite” (al-Yamani, head of the Mahdi’s vanguard in Shi’a traditions).
The Q and A session was quite lively, with interrogations about the actual threat of these kinds of movements and a discussion about the similarities and echoes between the different apocalyptic movements, whether they are Christian or Muslim.