people the path to the realization of God will be carried out at
a global level. But this task to be performed by the
Mahdi
will
have nothing to do with political revolution: it will be directed
rather to bringing about a revolution at man’s intellectual level,
to facilitate man in leading a God-oriented life.
The general perception of
Mahdi
is that his features will be
so easily identifiable that, the moment he appears, he will be
recognized by the people, and they will start following him in
great numbers. But the picture of
Mahdi
, or the believer, given
in the Hadith is totally different. According to the Hadith, when
Mahdi
appears, the influential religious leaders will not support
him. Moreover, people will throng to
Dajjal
in great numbers,
but
Mahdi
, or the believer, will not have many supporters. For
this reason,
Dajjal
and his men will feel emboldened enough to
oppose him and to indulge in his character assassination. Finally,
they will attempt to kill him. But thanks to the special divine
succour given by God to
Mahdi
, Dajjal and his men will not
succeed in their destructive plan.
Thus, people have changed
Mahdi
into
Hadi
and then gone
on from there to make the assumption that he will be the world
leader of his time, heralding a great political revolution. But
according to the Hadith, the path trodden by
Mahdi
will be a
path of guidance in the darkness of the misguidance prevailing
in the world. Once again, there will be that high degree of
realization, at a time when it would have become almost non-
existent.
Mahdi
, in short, will discover guidance rather than
enforce guidance.
40
The alarm of Doomsday
