{"id":25579,"date":"2020-02-24T10:22:25","date_gmt":"2020-02-24T09:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=25579"},"modified":"2020-02-24T10:44:03","modified_gmt":"2020-02-24T09:44:03","slug":"word-of-the-day-occultation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=25579","title":{"rendered":"Word of the day: occultation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I&#8217;m reading a new book on the recent history of the Middle East with particular reference to the rivalry between Sunni Islam Saudi Arabia and Shia Islam Iran. The work is called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Black-Wave-Arabia-Rivalry-Unravelled\/dp\/1472271092\/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Black+Wave&amp;qid=1582493309&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-1\">&#8220;Black Wave&#8221;<\/a> and it is written by the Lebanese Emmy award-winning journalist Kim Ghattas<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In one of the early chapters, there is an account of the 1979 occupation of the Holy Mosque in Mecca by Saudi zealots who included a man whom they declared to be the Madhi, a messianic figure who will emerge from occultation to signal the arrival of the end of times and the age of righteousness. Inconveniently, this so-called Madhi &#8211; who was supposed to be immortal &#8211; was killed on the third day of the siege.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Occultation<\/strong> in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Shia_Islam\">Shia Islam<\/a>&nbsp;refers to a belief that the messianic figure, or the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mahdi\">Mahdi<\/a>, an&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ismah\">infallible<\/a>&nbsp;male descendant of the Prophet&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Muhammad\">Muhammad<\/a>, was born and went into occultation and will one day return and fill the world with justice and peace. Some Shia, such as the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nizari\">Nizari Ismailis<\/a>, do not believe in the idea of the occultation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The groups that do believe in it differ on the succession of the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Imamah_(Shia)\">Imamah<\/a>, and therefore which individual is in occultation, with the largest Shia branch &#8211; the one dominant in Iran &#8211; holding it is&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hujjat-Allah_al-Mahdi\">Hujjat-Allah al-Mahdi<\/a>, the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Twelve_Imams\">twelfth Imam<\/a> who has been in hiding for the past eleven centuries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s been a long wait and I suspect that it&#8217;s going to be a whole lot longer ..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m reading a new book on the recent history of the Middle East with particular reference to the rivalry between Sunni Islam Saudi Arabia and Shia Islam Iran. The work is called &#8220;Black Wave&#8221; and it is written by the Lebanese Emmy award-winning journalist Kim Ghattas In one of the early chapters, there is an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25579"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25585,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25579\/revisions\/25585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}