
@nybooks 5/ Any intervention capable of addressing Mahdist legitimacy would have to arise from within the tradition itself—from Twelver Shia’s own eschatological terms of absence, return and justice—confronting the Republic’s capture of the occultation as permanent institutional warrant.

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Text-image attached to tweet here: As Corbin observed, according to Ismaʿili thought, “it is the function of the Imam, at the time of his appearance, to reveal the esoteric sense of all the Divine Revelations; it is precisely this which is the Qiyāmat (resurrection).” This function is perhaps best captured in titles the Ismaʿili authors used for the qāʾim, such as khudāvand-i rastakhīz (lord of the final rising of liberation), khudāvand-i qiyāmat (the lord of the final rising), qāʾim al-qiyāma (the qāʾim of the resurrection or simply, the resurrector), ṣāḥib al-qiyāma (the master of the resurrection), and ṣāḥib dawr al-kashf (the master of the Cycle of Unveiling). Rather than bring a new sharīʿa, the qāʾim ushers in “the day the interpretation (of the Book) (taʾwīluhu) comes” (Q 7:53) signaling the end of one era and the commencement of another. “And the earth will shine with the light of its Lord. The Book will be laid open. The Prophet and the witnesses will be brought forward. It is judged between them with truth and they will not be wronged.” (Q 39:69). The qāʾim and the qiyāma are two sides of the same coin: the latter a Quranic symbol for the former. The qiyāma is the qāʾim’s universal initiation. Omid Ghaemmaghami “And the Earth will Shine with the Light of its Lord” (Q 39:69): Qāʾim and qiyāma in Shiʿi Islam. Roads to Paradise: Eschatology & Concepts of the Hereafter in Islam. []
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@NoyOrly The deeper lesson is how Iran repeatedly scales the death penalty to reconstitute political order from within. While different in magnitude from 1988's mass executions, the 2025 surge held to the same template—eliminating those cast as threats to the regime's theocratic mandate.

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9/ Benjamin may find his closest contemporary counterpart in the Iranian, Ali Shari’ati, who similarly affirms that neither politics nor religion alone suffice to furnish the world a means of liberation and redemption involving the fusion of their respective messianic traditions. Images: The Iranian revolutionary religio-socio-political philosopher Ali Shari’ati Mazinani composed his thought in the 1960’s through 1970’s. An uncompromising critic of the Shah’s regime, his ideas blurred the distinction between religious and political realms by fusing Islamic tradition, Western secular social science, and contemporary anti-imperialist sentiment in a revolutionary dialectic that powerfully shaped the ideological foundations of the Iranian Revolution. Repeatedly jailed by Iranian authorities, he died a year before the 1979 Revolution, at the age of 43. One of the most beloved and popular individuals in Islamic radicalism and socialism, his portraits were widely present during the marches and protests and his nickname as "mo'allem-e enqilab" (revolutionary mentor) chanted by millions. Though he “is justly credited as the main intellectual, even the Fanon, of the Islamic Revolution.” (Abrahamian), his ideas did not end up forming the basis of the Islamic Republic. In this, and in many other ways, his theo-political objectives and reception echo that of Christian Liberation theologians. Educated in both in the ancient depth of Islam and the Western Enlightenment, Shariati mined both for core elements bending history towards justice in the name of the oppressed. Though typically understood as a theorist of “political Islam” focused on the sociology of religions, his contributions as a scholar-practitioner of esoteric Islam are also notable. He played a key role within contemporary Islam, for example, defining the manner in which inner transformation defines a vital, animating complement to an immanentized, theo-political conception of messianic political liberation. A fierce critic of both materialist and religious fundamentalism, he prompted accusations of heresy from their respective camps. Shari’ati meanwhile viewed himself a radical theorist who found his inspiration in Shi’ism and his tools of political analysis in Western Social science. Subtweet: 1/ Yes, Schmitt avers modernity's central political concepts are theological analogs, secularized: Taubes, less famously, the inverse. Alert, then, to a truce already functional as a planetarian ecology of symbiotic consciousness? Well, purblind Islamophobia doesn't exactly help.
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