EllenMaksoud Posted December 30, 2013 Posted December 30, 2013 Have you seen the 1966 film "Khartoum," in which Sir Laurence Olivier played the role of an actual Mahdi at war with the British in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1885. Charlton Heston played the part of his nemesis, General "Chinese" Gordon. A very good film, and Olivier made a very convincing Mahdi. Here is a taste of it, which you can appreciate -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZL_TOV9-m0It is possible that I did see the movie back then, but at that age, I would not have appreciated the significance of action. Of course being American in High School at the time, I doubt that we spent more than a day or two on the history of the Middle East. So, in looking at the movie clip, and trying to put it in perspective with what I now know about the Middle East from a Muslim perspective, this certainly provides incentive for me to watch the entire movie. I looked briefly at British Colonial actions in the Middle East, and India. It does appear as if those who ran the British empire in the 1800s and early 1900s meant to dominate the world economically. I had vaguely remembered the Bolshevik revolution happened in 1917, but really had no idea that the whole of the Middle East was also involved in a series of bloody actions And then when one brings in the animosity between the Shia and Sunni Muslims, good heavens, what a boiling witches cauldron ! The Mahdi is a Shia (Persian) Muslim character, and in my ignorance am surprised to find him driving conflict in the Sudan. All this conflict in that area almost makes the action in WW1 in the European theatre seem like a tea party, by comparison. The Saudi educated Muslims I encountered as Muslim seemed to have little awareness of these incidents, and as you might suspect, they see all of history from a perspective that is very different from Western thought.
volgadon Posted December 30, 2013 Posted December 30, 2013 Got it. Lineage wasn't important, at least to them; it was the role to be played that took presidence. But doesn't that defeat the very language of "ben" meaning "house of"? Or was that just not a critical factor in their thinking? Ben can also mean "a member of," or "belonging to."
Ahab Posted December 30, 2013 Posted December 30, 2013 Allen E. Goldenthal (aka Kahana "Priest") provides some very useful and accurate information there, Ahab. He is a member of the Qaraite community. The Qaraites were the Massoretes who transmitted the normative version of the Hebrew Bible which we have today. They have communities in Israel in Mazliah and Ramleh, and do not intermarry with rabbinic Jews, and they eschew the Talmud. They are the heirs of the Qumran Essenes, with whom they share many legal concepts. At one time, they nearly took over Judaism, but that is a thousand years in the past.I meant their idea that there are 2 Messiahs isn't true. There is only one, and his name is... well, you know it as well as I do.
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