Holiest Wars: Islamic Mahdis, Their Jihads, and Osama Bin Laden »

TIMOTHY R. FURNISH teaches world history at Georgia Perimeter College. He learned Arabic while serving in U.S. Army Intelligence and received his doctorate in Islamic History from Ohio State University. His specialty is Islamic eschatology, particularly modern Mahdism--Islamic "messianism"--and how such beliefs have influenced revolutionary political thought in the Muslim world.

The Mahdi, the rightly guided one, is the central messianic figure in Islam, explains Furnish (world history, Georgia Perimeter College), who will arrive near the end of historical time to usher in a worldwide Islamic state with the help of the prophet Jesus. Drawing from eight movements centered around a figure who was considered The Mahdi between 1130 and 1980 AD, he describes consistent features of the movement and resistance to it. To conclude, he asks who the next Mahdi will be. The study was his doctoral dissertation at Ohio State University. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR