J. E. Dyer writes for the Hot Air Green Room ~
The rush of global events – toppled governments, civil wars, earthquakes, tsunamis, the threat of reactor core meltdowns – serves to put a recent “documentary” video from Iran in a unique context. Assembled by the council of religious scholars in Qom, Iran, the video, which outlines signs of the coming of the 12th imam (or Mahdi) looked for by Shi’a Muslims, is making the rounds on the web.
Its content is worth being aware of; Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have both spoken publicly in the last three years of the need to prepare for the Mahdi-related events predicted in the video. Yet the documentary is simultaneously eerie and unimpressive. The video, with subtitles, is available to readers courtesy of Yid with Lid. It’s about 28 minutes. I have three observations on it:
1. The subject matter isn’t a joke, and the video certainly isn’t intended to be funny – but it is. It begs for an Onion satire. For one thing, the production values are basically PBS ca. 1970. But more importantly, the case made in the video draws on the symbols and spooky cachet of Freemasonry, which, for Americans who weren’t aware of this theme in contemporary interpretations of Hojjatieh Mahdism (see the Yid link above), will be variously illuminating, hilarious, and tiresome.
The dollar’s “eye in the pyramid” makes an early appearance, in a series of fleeting images set to a portentous sound track; the Magen David is compared – inevitably, perfunctorily – to the Masonic hexagram; a parade of photos depicts various Western leaders (including, in a touch of awe-inspiring artistry, Laura Bush) giving the fabled Freemasons’ hand signal. The warning is clear: the Masons are coming! Save all your data! Shore up the sandbag berm!
Of course, if you’ve ever done more than a half hour’s worth of web research, you probably know that Ahmadinejad himself has been pronounced a Mason by inveterate Mason spotters. We may take it that the clerics in Qom would disagree, however, since they clearly regard Masonry as inimical to Islam and the return of the Mahdi.
Its content is worth being aware of; Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have both spoken publicly in the last three years of the need to prepare for the Mahdi-related events predicted in the video. Yet the documentary is simultaneously eerie and unimpressive. The video, with subtitles, is available to readers courtesy of Yid with Lid. It’s about 28 minutes. I have three observations on it:
1. The subject matter isn’t a joke, and the video certainly isn’t intended to be funny – but it is. It begs for an Onion satire. For one thing, the production values are basically PBS ca. 1970. But more importantly, the case made in the video draws on the symbols and spooky cachet of Freemasonry, which, for Americans who weren’t aware of this theme in contemporary interpretations of Hojjatieh Mahdism (see the Yid link above), will be variously illuminating, hilarious, and tiresome.
The dollar’s “eye in the pyramid” makes an early appearance, in a series of fleeting images set to a portentous sound track; the Magen David is compared – inevitably, perfunctorily – to the Masonic hexagram; a parade of photos depicts various Western leaders (including, in a touch of awe-inspiring artistry, Laura Bush) giving the fabled Freemasons’ hand signal. The warning is clear: the Masons are coming! Save all your data! Shore up the sandbag berm!
Of course, if you’ve ever done more than a half hour’s worth of web research, you probably know that Ahmadinejad himself has been pronounced a Mason by inveterate Mason spotters. We may take it that the clerics in Qom would disagree, however, since they clearly regard Masonry as inimical to Islam and the return of the Mahdi.
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