The Joels and their Islamic Antichrist

Heard the one about the Islamic Antichrist?

That’s the latest story seeking to grant American Christians a license to hate in the name of love. Muslims, the story goes, are willing dupes of Satan, anxiously waiting for the arrival of their messiah, called the “Mahdi.” This mighty ruler is the person identified in the Bible as the Beast and the Antichrist.

Just ask Joel Richardson. Haven’t heard of him?

Joel Richardson is a painter and lay preacher who has turned out books arguing that the Antichrist will be Muslim. Islam, therefore, is evil. He often remembers to add that all Muslims are not necessarily evil. It’s just that they follow an evil belief system that serves the Devil.

Richardson seems to think he has been chosen by God to “release new prophetic understanding concerning the end times.”*1 Mostly this understanding consists of reading the books of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation as if they explicitly refer to Islam.

Of course, no one had heard of Islam until A.D. 622, nearly six centuries after the New Testament was finished.*2 People would probably give Richardson a hard time if he claimed to find references to Coca-Cola or NASCAR in the Bible.*3 How then does Richardson justify finding Islam in there?

Well, he says he did a lot of reading about Islam. Books about “Islamic eschatology.” But more important, Joel Richardson has a personal hotline to the Lord.

How do you suppose that Satan has planned to include the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims in his grand end-time deception? Did Satan fail to foresee and strategize regarding the global spread of Islam? Or has Satan included the Muslims of the world in his end-time strategy? Will Islam, the world’s third monotheistic religion, also undergo the persecution of Satan along with Christians and Jews as they all resist the Antichrist together? Or will Islam — the religion that prides itself on resisting any form of idolatry — simply submit to a demonic and false religious leader without putting up any real fight? For years, I questioned the Lord about these issues. In time, as my knowledge of Islam deepened, the answers to my questions became very clear.*4

After all, a prophetess told Joel’s wife she would marry a man with privileged knowledge of the end times. There were seven thousand people in the room. So there.*5

The other Joel

Richardson is not the only Joel working the Islamic Antichrist beat. Joel C. Rosenberg is a political organizer, filmmaker, and fiction writer who, like Richardson, has vaulted onto the New York Times bestseller list with a book about an Islamic Antichrist. The difference is that his books, The Twelfth Imam and The Tehran Initiative, are fictional thrillers about a super-scary Iranian nuclear weapons program aimed at bringing about the end of the world.

It’s only fiction, right? Well, yeah, except that Rosenberg’s publicity touts him as “a modern Nostradamus” who cranks out books that seem to anticipate real events. And like his fellow Joel, he distorts Muslim beliefs into a yearning for a “Twelfth Imam” who is identical with the Antichrist.

I’m convinced that both these authors are out to deceive Christian readers who crave reliable information about Islam. Under the guise of “love for Israel,” and even “love for Muslims” (if they convert to Christianity), the Joels peddle a vicious stereotype of what Muslims actually believe.

Shall I try to set the record straight? I’ll keep it short.

1. The Mahdi is not the Antichrist. We know this because Islamic traditions (hadiths) mention both of them. You can’t have one without the other. The Mahdi (“Guided One”) is always the enemy of the Antichrist (Masih ad-Dajjal, “false Messiah”).
2. The Mahdi is not the Twelfth Imam. One of the two Joels (Rosenberg, the fiction writer) pretends that the Mahdi is identical with the “hidden imam” that most Shia Muslims believe is the legitimate successor of Muhammad. To be fair, the other Joel (Richardson) seems to know the difference and has not made this claim (as far as I know). Anyway, only about 10 percent of Muslims believe in the existence of this Twelfth Imam.
3. The Mahdi is a servant of Jesus. Neither of the Joels is willing to reveal that Muslim belief about the end times is a lot like Christian belief about the end times. According to the hadiths, Jesus will return to earth to defeat the false Messiah. The Mahdi, acting as Jesus’ lieutenant, will begin the wars, but Jesus will end them.
4. Not all Muslims believe in the Mahdi. The Joels portray Islamic belief as monolithic. Muslims are supposed to be something like robots, all obeying the same instructions. Yet the “end times” beliefs in Islam are based on traditions that not all Muslims accept as valid. Neither the Mahdi, the False Messiah, nor the Twelfth Imam are mentioned in the Quran, which is the only text accepted as sacred by all Muslims.

In other words, these beliefs about the end of the world are comparable to Christian disagreements about the Second Coming of Christ and the timing of the Rapture, or whether there will be a Rapture at all. None of these disagreements are considered grounds for excluding a person from the faith — at least not by sane Christians.

Likewise, Muslims do not have to accept any particular belief about the end times in order to be acknowledged as Muslims. Virtually all Muslims do believe in Judgment Day, as do virtually all Christians. Muslim traditions about Judgment Day state that Jesus will descend from heaven and bring justice and peace to the world. Sound familiar?

The principal difference between the Christian and Muslim traditions is — not surprisingly — that Muslims believe Jesus will establish Islam as the universal religion, while Christians believe it will be Christianity. It would be surprising if either religion agreed with the other on this point.

Without honor

Both of the Joels are best-selling authors whose fans regard them as modern-day prophets. I believe they have attained their success dishonestly, by deliberately distorting what they know about Islam.

Both men are subtle. Rosenberg, for instance, sets up fictional Muslim characters who behave in wicked, hateful ways — but he would never say we should hate Muslims. Richardson proclaims his love for Muslims while denouncing their religion.

Both men have political agendas that seem to wrestle with their Christianity for prominence. Rosenberg, for example, begins with the principle that Israel can do no wrong. Israel’s large nuclear arsenal is a force for peace, while Iran’s hypothetical weapons program is an implicit threat to Israel’s survival — indeed, to the whole world. Gosh, who could blame the Israelis for launching air strikes against Iran?

Richardson, meanwhile, proclaims that he does not — repeat, not — believe that President Obama is the Antichrist, as some have said. It’s just that Obama’s career is a perfect example of the kind of techniques that God told him the Antichrist will use to rise to power.

“Over half of the American people fell for it this time,” Richardson warned in 2009. “When the soon coming imposter messiah arrives, will we be any wiser?”*6

No sign of a political agenda there. Just pure Christianity.

Their methods vary, but the objective is the same for both Joels. Brethren, fellow Americans — you should choose what to believe about Muslims, not according to what’s true, but according to what makes Islam appear mad, bad, and dangerous.

It’s what Jesus wants from you. Just ask his prophets, Joel and Joel.

Further reading

• Books’ most hateful bestseller, by Jordan Michael Smith, Salon (Jun 1, 2012)
• Beck’s End-Times Prophet Joel Richardson, Media Matters (Jun 3, 2011)

Notes

1 ;”Joel Richardson on Islamic prophecy, end times,” YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaDTShXtYek. Sid Roth goes further, describing Richardson as “hand-picked by God.”↩
2 ;This quirk is probably not apparent to many of Richardson’s followers. Many people in the youth-centric U.S. assume that Islam is older than Christianity. ↩
3 ;Although finding the Bible in NASCAR is another story. See: Hugh Pyper, The NASCAR Bible, SBL Forum Archive, SBL Publications. ↩
4 ;Joel Richardson, The Islamic Antichrist, pp. 11-12 (q. in Who is Joel Richardson, Beck’s End Times Prophet?, Media Matters (Feb 17, 2011).↩
5 ;Again, see “Joel Richardson on Islamic prophecy, end times,” YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaDTShXtYek.↩
6 ;Joel Richardson What Obama and the Antichrist have in common, WorldNet Daily, Aug. 5, 2009. Richardson dredges up obscure hadiths to portray the Islamic Antichrist as a socialist. (“Good heavens! Just like Obama!”) Among the “techniques” the Antichrist is supposed to share with Obama is “a shallow appeal to class envy.” I guess that detail is somewhere in Revelation, right after the verse about the Antichrist taxing the capital gains of the people of God.↩

ACT for America has an agenda for Congress

ACT for America, an activist group opposing “radical Islam,”1 is pushing a ten-point agenda for the 112th Congress.

Let’s take a look.

Letter to the White House

I cannot sleep, I cannot eat. I’m scared to walk to the bathroom because I’m afraid they will hunt me down.… I’m not the same. — An American citizen trapped in Kuwait

Here is my letter:

Go green, inshallah

The Birmingham Islamic Society is holding a “green” community dinner tonight: Everyone who brings their own plate and utensils will get a free meal. The idea is to reduce waste from discarded paper and plastic products — and not least important, to dispel any idea that environmental concerns are just another form of Western secularism, and nothing for believers in God to be concerned with.

Friday prayers were unusually free from the noise of mobile phones and pagers. The etiquette of jumma (Friday prayer) requires that everyone listen silently and attentively to the sermon, whether or not one finds it entertaining. Muhammad taught that even whispering “be quiet” to your neighbor will cause you to lose all the benefit of attending Friday prayer; in other words, there is no excuse for talking. And it turns out that, even when the speaker fails to deliver a message of profound spiritual insight, well, there is no lasting harm in listening patiently to thoughts that are not your own. It’s a discipline akin to courtesy, and one well worth cultivating.

Today, though, our imam had to call attention to the fact that people have been texting during the Friday sermons. This, he said, is tantamount to talking, and it really must stop. Those who cannot control the urge to thumb-type had better leave their phones in their cars.

And so it goes, the perennial negotiations between timeless forms of worship and the demands of the day.

I might as well mention that the Islamic center has a wireless router.

Ask me about the Muslim Mafia

Well, there’s no hiding from the facts. According to several members of Congress, I am a terrorist sympathizer. As an American Muslim and a member of my local Islamic society, I am ipso facto an agent of the “secret underworld that’s conspiring to Islamize America.”

You know, I had no idea.

The myth of Obama’s “apostasy”

Historical myths and simplifications about a monolithic “Islamic world” are a besetting problem in the U.S. media, and I think professional historians should be concerned — especially when a member of the profession is responsible for sowing confusion in the first place, as in this case.

The story, in brief, is that the world’s Muslims see Barack Obama as an “apostate” who deserves to die for abandoning their religion. Acceptance of the story relies on the assumption that Muslims are irrational savages. It also overlooks the fact that the media in the Muslim world are uninterested in this alleged issue.

I have a feeling this story won’t go away, so here are some links for my own reference, and for anyone else who’s interested. (All URLs are shortened via snipr.com.)

• Edward N. Luttwak, “President Apostate?” http://snipr.com/2diw8 This is the New York Times opinion article that first stirred the pot.
• Readers’ comments were generally unfavorable. http://snipr.com/2diy1
• Emory professor Abdullahi An-Na‘im responded with “Misrepresenting Islam” http://snipr.com/2dj9c (Religion Dispatches).
• Clark Hoyt, “Entitled to Their Opinion, Yes. But Their Facts?” http://snipr.com/2dity After canvassing Islamic scholars, the NYT public editor criticizes Luttwak’s piece.
• Svend White, “Who’s Smearing Obama?” (Religion Dispatches) http://snipr.com/2dj4k traces the rumor campaign back to Daniel Pipes, the Chicken Little of Muslim fright tales. White mentions how this story serves the aggressive propaganda strategy of “swiftboating,” or telling fibs in order to recast an opponent’s political strengths as weaknesses.

P.S. Dr. An-Na‘im’s insightful (and historically aware) new book on Islam and the secular state is reviewed at the SSRC blog: http://snipr.com/2djbu. Great read.

P.P.S. This post started out as a Facebook note; hence the written-out URLs.