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In Iran, Apocalypse vs. Reform

(Washington Post) Jackson Diehl - Near the Shiite holy city of Qom, Iran, cranes hover over two soaring concrete minarets and the pointed arches of a vast new enclosure at a once-humble yellow-brick mosque. The expansion is driven by an apocalyptic vision: that Shiite Islam's long-hidden 12th Imam, or Mahdi, will soon emerge - possibly at the mosque of Jamkaran - to inaugurate the end of the world. The man who provided $20 million to prepare the shrine for that moment, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has reportedly told his cabinet that he expects the Mahdi to arrive within the next two years. Mehdi Karrubi, a rival cleric, has reported that Ahmadinejad ordered that his government's platform be deposited in a well at Jamkaran where the faithful leave messages for the hidden imam. "Some of us can understand why you in the West would be concerned," a young mullah told me in Qom last week. "We, too, wonder about the intentions of those who are controlling this nuclear work." Ahmadinejad's own spiritual adviser, Ayatollah Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, recently suggested that future elections were superfluous because a true Islamic government had arisen.
2006-05-12 00:00:00
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