From the Islamic State to the Messiah's Global Government: Structures of the Final World Order According to Contemporary Sunni and Shiíte Discourses The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Khadem, Babak (Ali) Rod. 2017. From the Islamic State to the Messiah's Global Government: Structures of the Final World Order According to Contemporary Sunni and Shiíte Discourses. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42061520 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA FROM THE ISLAMIC STATE TO THE MESSIAH’S GLOBAL GOVERNMENT: STRUCTURES OF THE FINAL WORLD ORDER ACCORDING TO CONTEMPORARY SUNNĪ AND SHĪ’ITE DISCOURSES A dissertation presented by Babak (Ali) Rod Khadem to The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Harvard University Cambridge Massachusetts October, 2016 © 2016 Babak (Ali) Rod Khadem All rights reserved. Advisors: Baber Johansen and David Cook Babak (Ali) Rod Khadem From the Islamic State to the Messiah’s Global Government: Structures of the Final World Order According to Contemporary Sunnī and Shī’ite Discourses Abstract This dissertation exposes a genre of Islamic thought that has remained unstudied in academic scholarship: Islamic conceptions of “final world order.” At the intersection of political and apocalyptic thought, “final world order” refers to the theories that Islamic movements posit regarding the future global government to be established during the final chapter of history. The theories of four movements (ISIS, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Iraqi Ṣadrists, and the Egyptian ‘Awaited-Mahdī Party’) are compared across the following domains: (Chapter I) the final political structure, especially political form, geography, and administration; (Chapter II) the final legal system, including law, policy, and jurisprudence; (Chapter III) the final economic system, including science, technology, and transactions, and (Chapter IV) the final social order, including individuals, groups, and the collective. Overall, it is argued that apparently similar movements can have starkly differing theories of final order, and that two debates therein have especially high existential stakes: first is whether the structures of the final order will be regressive or progressive, and second is whether the final order (and humanity) will survive for merely a few years prior to apocalyptic destruction, or will endure for longer horizon. It is argued that Islamic movements approach these debates according to four patterns (reversionism, progressivism, revanchism, and idealism) which correlate primarily to each movement’s ideological orientation rather than its current political or socio-economic status. iii Table of Contents Introduction Exposing Islamic Theories of “Final World Order”: Objective, Methodology, and Source Selection………………. 1 Chapter I The Final Political Structure: Form, Geography, and Administration……………………….. 51 Chapter II The Final Legal System: Jurisprudence, Law, and Policy………………………………. 111 Chapter III The Final Economy: Science, Technology, and Transactions………………………. 158 Chapter IV The Final Society: The Individual, Group, and Collective………………………... 211 Conclusion Overall Summary: Framework, Patterns, and Further Questions…………………. 255 Appendix A The First Problematic: Analytic Framework………………….. 269 Appendix B The Third Problematic: Analytic Framework………………… 271 Appendix C Outline of Contents of Tārīkh mā ba'd ul-ẓuhūr by Muḥammad Ṣādiq Ṣādiq al-Ṣadr…………………………... 273 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………… 275 iv “First there will be Prophethood… Then Caliphate, on the Prophetic model… Then harsh kingship… Then tyrannical kingship… Then Caliphate again, on the Prophetic model…”1 “Our government will be the final government; All other rulers will already have ruled before us; Tthus, when they witness our method of governance, They will be unable to claim: ‘If only we had been given the opportunity to rule, We, too, would have ruled in this manner!’”2 1 A Sunnī tradition located in numerous compilations, see e.g., M. Nāṣir a-Dīn Albani, al-Silsilah al-ṣaḥiḥah (2004) at Vol. 1, no. 5. 2 A Shī’ite tradition located in numerous compilations. See, e.g., M. Bāqir Majlisī, Biḥār al-anwār (2007) at vol. 52, p. 244. v —INTRODUCTION— EXPOSING ISLAMIC THEORIES OF FINAL WORLD ORDER: OBJECTIVES, METHODOLOGY, AND SOURCE -SELECTION A. Objectives This study introduces an area of contemporary Islamic thought that has thus far remained unexamined in the secular academic context, namely Islamic conceptions of the final world order, in its multifaceted dimensions of political, legal, economic, and social structures. Situated at the intersection of Islamic political and apocalyptic thought, the concept of final world order refers, in the first instance, to the theories that Islamic movements and thinkers posit regarding the future global government to be established during the final chapter of humanity’s history. Nearly all such thinkers and movements presume that this future world order will be inaugurated after the successful completion of global apocalyptic battles, that this world order will then endure for some stretch of time, and that it will subsequently collapse as part of the universal destruction of Judgment Day. As such, “final world order” represents the final chapter in humanity’s history, and theories thereof are tantamount to utopian (or dystopian) conceptions of humanity’s grand destiny. Given its apocalyptic dimension, this topic of final world order may, ostensibly, appear to be a purely esoteric dimension of Islamic thought and might therefore be easily dismissed as irrelevant to immediate political, social, or religious concerns. This, however, would constitute a grave misunderstanding of the topic at hand, for two reasons. First, many theories of final order—including several of the ones examined in the present study—are espoused by thinkers or movements that are not only prominent but often 1 quite disruptive in the scene of contemporary world politics. Second, and more importantly, most theories of final world order not only posit visions of the ultimate utopia, but also address precursor forms of world order insofar as they are understood to be teleological antecedents to the final order. Foremost among these precursors is the contemporary, Westphalian order of nation-states, the legitimacy of which is fiercely contested within overall discourses on the final world order. Indeed, these debates reveal fundamental differences in the contemporary landscape of political Islam, but insofar as academic and policy analyses neglect discourses on the final world order, these distinctions are necessarily conflated and thus passed over. Although Islamic theories of final world government are remarkably varied, several topoi are nearly ubiquitous, invoked by groups as disparate as ISIS and the Islamic Republic of Iran, both of which claim to be harbingers of the final order: - First is that the final order will be established by two messianic protagonists: the Mahdī and Jesus Christ (upon his second coming). ISIS, for instance, predicts that it will pass its “banner” to Jesus Christ,3 and elsewhere claims to be the “army” that will eventually “pass on the banner to the slave of Allah, the Mahdī.”4 Similarly, the Islamic Republic of Iran asserts that “we place this Revolution in the hands of the Mahdī…[to] pave the way for his arrival”5 and predicts that “the Mahdī will appoint Jesus Christ as his representative...”6 3 Abū Muḥammad al-Adnānī, This is the Promise of God (2014) at 8. 4 Dabiq, Issue 4 (September, 2014) at 35. See also, Dabiq Issue 5 (October, 2014) at 40, quoting the tradition reported in Ṣaḥiḥ Muslim (“if there were not left except a day from the world, Allah would lengthen that day to send forth on it a man from my family whose name matches my name [Muḥammad] and whose father’s name matches my father’s name [‘Abdullāh]. He will fill the Earth with justice and fairness as it was filled with oppression and tyranny”). Likewise, in Issue 5, ISIS quotes Abū Mus’ab al-Zarqāwī’s claim that the movement has lit the “spark” that will lead to the End Times battle of Dābiq (“The spark has been lit here in Iraq, and its heat will continue to intensify – by Allah’s permission – until it burns the crusader armies in Dābiq”). 5 Statement made by Ayatollah Khomeini shortly after the Islamic Revolution of Iran. 6 Tabasī (see Footnote 85, infra) at 86. 2 - Second is the universal jurisdiction and justice of the final world order, enshrined in the tradition, cited frequently by both ISIS and the Islamic Republic of Iran, that the Mahdī will “fill the earth with justice and fairness as it was filled with oppression and tyranny.”7 - Third is social harmony and egalitarianism, exemplified in ISIS’s depiction of final government as “a state where the Arab and non-Arab, the white man and black man, the Easterner and Westerner are all brothers”8—or the Iranian theorists’ explanation that the Mahdī will “reform the entire world…defeat of the forces of tyranny in their entirety…remove