Children of the Dust Bowl by Jerry Stanley

Author:Jerry Stanley [Stanley, Jerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Education, California, Juvenile Nonfiction, Juvenile Literature, 20th Century, Southwestern States
ISBN: 9780785716754
Publisher: San Val
Published: 1993-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

4

Abu Bakr Siddiq, the first Caliph, became the second most important figure in Islam, because after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, he fought the false prophets Musaylima the Liar and Tulayha son of Khwaylid. Siddiq’s jihad against those pretenders assured Islam’s permanence.

Abu Bakr Ramaq, the successor, the great-grandson many times over, also had a pair of false prophets he had to fight. One of them was usurping the role of the messiah from within Islam, and the other was inviting believers to secularism.

Their names were Osama and Salman.

My first encounter with the ideas of Osama bin Laden was in the form of a news story from 1998 entitled “Muslim Fury: ‘War of Future’ Claims First Victims.”* It discussed the views of bin Laden and his supporters in the aftermath of Clinton’s Tomahawk missile strikes at various training camps in eastern Afghanistan. The strikes had been launched from two nuclear submarines in the Arabian Sea as retaliation for bin Laden’s blowing up two American embassies in Africa. After a long survey of various opinions, the article concluded: “Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden—deprived of his Saudi citizenship but now elevated to the status of folk hero in the minds of many Muslims—appears secure in his Afghan fastness, promising to answer Mr. Clinton ‘in deeds, not words’ and keeping in touch with his international network by satellite fax and phone.”

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,

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