DU help, please, Koran: Dabbah,the Beast, George "Wubya" the

[DebJ]

beast.

Just finished reading 'Osama's Revenge' by Paul L. Williams, copyright 2004.

At the end of the book in his epilogue, he describes Osama bin Laden and compares that to the Koran's description of the Mahdi, the mighty warrior of the Apocalypse who will free the Muslim world from the pagan oppression. The author's description of Osama, of course, fits right in with his excerpts from the Koran.

But what hit me right in the face on the second to last page was this statement:
"He (the Mahdi) will unite the believers to fight off the vast army of their oppressors - the army of Yajuj wa-Majuj ("the infidel unbelievers"), led by the Dabbah, or "the Beast".
How close is the pronunciation of "Dabbah" to that of a southern-drawl "Dubya"?
Can you name any other person in history who has decided to be called by his middle INITIAL? I can't; neither can my husband.
Almost looks like Bush is choosing to be called the Beast.

Of course, one can't always trust what one reads...can anyone debunk this book?
I tried to Google it but got sites in Spanish and other languages I can't even recognize. One was a Yahoo site for jihad messages...wish I could read and understand (almost wish).

[DebJ]

1. I tried Snopes but didn't get any Dabbah references, just

a lot of "Debbies", "Dubia", and then even more unrelated stuff.

[radwriter0555]

2. Williams is an avowed conspiracy theorist with little basis in fact.

I'd take ANYTHING he writes with a boulder of salt and chalk it up to entertainment, not fact.

No offense.

[DebJ]

3. thanks for the input.

[DebJ]

5. by the way, I made the Dabbah Dubya connection, not the

author

[Pepperbelly]

7. and I think it was a good catch ...

Bush as apocolyptic archtype.

[stellanoir]

4. just looked at a fairly simplistic reference book

on Islam. Mahdi appeared in the index, but it listed neither Dabbah, nor Yajuj wa-Majuj. As I said, this is a very simplistic book.

". . .The Imams-who are masum or free from error or sin-are twelve in number; and the last Imam, the Mahdi, is said to be in "occultation" or hiding and will reappear at some apocalyptic moment in the future. . ."

[starroute]

6. Mahdi stuff is Shi'ite -- Osama is Sunni

Note that Al-Sadr's militia is called the Mahdi Army.

I'm not an expert, but on the whole the Shi'ite side of Islam is where you find the wild, romantic fantasies -- martyrs, shrines, the apocalpyse, the hidden imam, the mahdi, and more.

The Sunnis are far more rational, legalistic, and austere. They don't go in for any of the really exciting stuff.

[Dob Bole]

8. Dabbah or not, fuck Osama!

And I don't think he's sunni...I'm pretty sure he's a shiite.

[starroute]

9. Sunnis and Shi'ites

http://hnn.us/articles/934.html

The Sunni branch believes that the first four caliphs--Mohammed's successors--rightfully took his place as the leaders of Muslims. They recognize the heirs of the four caliphs as legitimate religious leaders. These heirs ruled continuously in the Arab world until the break-up of the Ottoman Empire following the end of the First World War.

Shiites, in contrast, believe that only the heirs of the fourth caliph, Ali, are the legitimate successors of Mohammed. In 931 the Twelfth Imam disappeared. This was a seminal event in the history of Shiite Muslims. According to R. Scott Appleby, a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, "Shiite Muslims, who are concentrated in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon, had suffered the loss of divinely guided political leadership" at the time of the Imam's disappearance.

<snip>

... for Sunni Muslims, approximately 90 percent of the Muslim world, the loss of the caliphate after World War I was devastating in light of the hitherto continuous historic presence of the caliph, the guardian of Islamic law and the Islamic state. Sunni fundamentalist leaders thereafter emerged in nations such as Egypt and India, where contact with Western political structures provided them with a model awkwardly to imitate ... as they struggled after 1924 to provide a viable alternative to the caliphate.

<snip>

Osama bina Laden is a Sunni Muslim. To him the end of the reign of the caliphs in the 1920s was catastrophic, as he made clear in a videotape made after 9-11. On the tape, broadcast by Al-Jazeera on October 7, 2001, he proclaimed: "What America is tasting now is only a copy of what we have tasted. ... Our Islamic nation has been tasting the same for more eighty years, of humiliation and disgrace, its sons killed and their blood spilled, its sanctities desecrated."

[Disturbed]

10. Iran

Iran is at least 95% Sunni. Some Kurds are Sunni and some are Shi'ites. The Kurds, so far are very pro US Occupation. Al Sadr and al Sistani are Shi'ites yet many pundits are saying that Iran is funding and backing al Sadr. Al Sistani is actually an Iranian/Persian, not an Arab. Despite this most Shi'ites in Iraq consider al Sistani their top religious leader. It gets confusing doesn't it.

[starroute]

11. Iran is 93% Shi'ite

That's why most Iraqi Shi'ite leaders have close ties to Iran.

Oman, Bahrein, Azerbaijan, and Iraq also have Shi'ite majorities. The figures elsewhere are much lower.

[jdj]

12. he is a sunni and the Saudis are sunni

they are wahabi