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Islamic Iran's Declaration of International Quds
Day and the Advent of the Mahdi ('atfs)
(Abstract)
By Mansoor Limba
Posted: June 28,
2007
The victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979
not only marks the triumph of the Islamic
movement in Iran, but also heralds the dawn of a
new phase in the Palestinian struggle against
Israel. Barely a half year after the
establishment of the Islamic government, the
Great Leader of the Islamic Revolution, founder
of the Islamic Republic and magnificent
idol-breaker of the 20th
century, Imam Khomeini (may
his soul be sanctified)
made the historic consecration announcement of
the last Friday of the majestic month of
fasting, Ramadan, as “Quds Day” to signify the
global Muslims’ gesture of solidarity and
support to all the oppressed peoples of the
world as epitomized by the Palestinian people
under the Zionist regime.
This paper, which attempts to examine the role
of this declaration of the Islamic Republic of
Iran in paving the ground of the advent or
reappearance [zuhur]
of the Imam of the Time (‘atfs),
is organized through the following headings:
(a) Introduction
(b) International Quds Day
(c) International Quds Day: From Street Marches
to Cyber-Demonstrations
(d) The Cyberpower of International Quds Day
(e) International Quds Day and the Mahdi’s (‘atfs)
Advent
(f) Conclusion
Since Imam Khomeini’s consecration of the last
Friday of Ramadan as “International Quds Day” in
August 1979, in major cities from Mindanao in
the East to the United States in the West, from
Scandinavia in the North to the Horn of Africa
in the South, fasting demonstrators and marchers
chant similar slogans of sympathy to the plight
of the Palestinians and condemnation of the
crimes unabatedly perpetrated by the occupier
regime in Tel Aviv.
From the 1990s, thanks to the unprecedented
surge of the information technology as embodied
by the computer and Internet, Quds Day has found
the information superhighway (as a noteworthy
extension of the
real
streets) as a new-found locus of protests. And
in many ways access to the virtual world of the
Barlovian cyberspace has provided a remarkable
assistance to the marches, rallies and
demonstrations in the real world. In the
cyberspace, International Quds Day acquires
power in the form of an emergent social order.
Given this cyberpower of Quds Day that may even
turn into a higher social order, the goal of the
said declaration could play a pivotal role in
the advent of al-Mahdi (‘atfs)
and his confrontation in the Holy City of Quds
(Jerusalem) with the anti-Christ or ad-Dajjal—the
epitome of falsehood, injustice and
oppression—as prophesied in the corpus of
hadith
literature.
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