Joel Rosenberg - The Twelfth Imam

Everyone in the room stood in horror, barely able to comprehend what they had just witnessed. The death angel had come, and Hamid Hosseini began to weep.

Hosseini faced Mecca, fell to his knees, and prayed silently.

But the prayer that entered his heart at that moment was one that surprised and terrified him. He had not planned to pray it. It just poured forth from his heart. It was a lament he had daily prayed as a child but one he never would have dared think-much less utter-within a thousand miles of the Ayatollah before now. It was a prayer that could have sent him to prison and the torture chambers had anyone close to his master ever guessed he was lifting it up to Allah. But he couldn’t help it. In his grief and despair, it simply became an involuntary plea.

O mighty Lord, he silently implored, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one who will fill this world with justice and peace. Make us worthy to prepare the way for his arrival, and lead us with your righteous hand. We long for the Lord of the Age. We long for the Awaited One. Without him-the Righteously Guided One-there can be no victory. With him, there can be no defeat. Show me your path, O mighty Lord, and use me to prepare the way for the coming of the Mahdi.

Samarra, Iraq

The news swept through the Iraqi city of Samarra.

As word of Ayatollah Khomeini’s death spread through the Shia Muslim stronghold, it eventually reached Najjar Malik and hit him like a thunderbolt.

Only ten years old, Najjar had long been sheltered from national and world events by his uncle and aunt, who had taken him in after his parents’ deaths in a tragic car accident several years earlier. They didn’t let him watch television or listen to the radio. They didn’t let him read anything but his schoolbooks. For little Najjar, incredibly bright but also small for his age, life consisted of mosque and school and nothing else. If he wasn’t memorizing the Qur’an, he was memorizing his textbooks.

But today was different. Suddenly it seemed as if every Shia in Samarra had heard what Najjar had just heard from a woman shrieking in the hallway.

“The imam has died! The imam has died!”

Najjar was too much in shock to cry.

It couldn’t be true. It had to be a vicious rumor, started by the Zionists or the Sunnis. Ayatollah Khomeini was larger than life. He simply could not be dead. Wasn’t he the long-awaited Mahdi? Wasn’t he the Twelfth Imam, the Hidden Imam? Wasn’t he supposed to establish justice and peace? How then could he be dead if he was, in fact, the savior of the Islamic world and all of mankind?

Every Friday night for years, Najjar’s aunt and uncle made him listen to the latest audiotaped sermon from Ayatollah Khomeini that had been smuggled out of Iran and into Iraq. Then his aunt would tuck him into bed, kiss him good night, turn out the light, and shut the bedroom door. When the apartment was quiet, Najjar would stare out the window into the moonlight, meditating on the Ayatollah’s words and on his fiery insistence that a Muslim’s duty was to perform jihad-holy war-against the infidels. It wasn’t exactly the stuff of childhood dreams, but it stirred something deep within Najjar’s heart.

“Surely those who believe, those who wage jihad in God’s cause-they are the ones who may hope for the mercy of God,” the Ayatollah would declare, citing Sura 2:218 from the Qur’an. Jews and Christians are the ones whom God has cursed, he would explain, saying the Qur’an taught that they “shall either be executed, or crucified, or have their hands and feet cut off alternately, or be banished from the land.

“Kill them!” Khomeini would insist, pointing to Sura 9:5. “Wherever you may come upon them, and seize them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every conceivable place.

“The Prophet and his followers are commanded to wage jihad against the unbelievers and the hypocrites and to be stern against them,” the Ayatollah argued year after year, “for their final refuge is hell.”

Infidels, he insisted-citing Sura 22-will spend eternity in a blazing fire, “with boiling water being poured down over their heads. All that is within their bodies, as well as their skins, will be melted away.

“Have nothing to do with them,” he argued. “Don’t befriend them. Don’t negotiate with them. Don’t do business with them.” After all, he loved to say-citing Sura 5:59-60-“Allah has cursed the Christians and the Jews, and those whom he has utterly condemned he has turned into apes, and swine, and servants of powers of evil.”

Najjar had been transfixed by Khomeini’s courage and conviction. Surely this man must be the Mahdi. Who else could it be? he had wondered. True, his aunt conceded when Najjar occasionally asked innocent questions, Khomeini had not yet brought justice and peace. Nor had he yet established an Islamic empire that would transform the globe. But all this, she said, was just a matter of time.

Now what? Najjar thought. If Khomeini had really died, who would lead the Revolution? Who was the real messiah, and when would he come?

No one else was home, and Najjar felt scared and alone. Desperate to learn more, he fled his aunt and uncle’s cramped high-rise flat and ran down all seventeen flights of stairs rather than wait for an elevator. He ran out into the dusty street in front of their dilapidated building, only to find huge crowds of fellow Shias pouring out of their apartments as well. Seeing a group of older men huddled on a nearby corner near a fruit stand, smoking cigarettes and listening to a small transistor radio, Najjar ran to their side and listened in.

“Radio Tehran can now confirm that the revered imam-peace be upon him-has died of a heart attack,” he heard the announcer say in Farsi, the man’s voice faltering as he relayed the news. “The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution has been in the hospital for the last eleven days. He was suffering from internal bleeding. But a government spokesman has confirmed what hospital officials indicated just a few minutes ago. Ruhollah Mousavi Khomeini is dead at the age of eighty-eight.”

Najjar’s mind reeled. How can the Promised One be dead? It was not possible.

With few other hard facts to report, Radio Tehran broadcast excerpts from Khomeini’s speeches. In one from 1980, Khomeini declared to his fellow Shias, “We must strive to export our Revolution throughout the world.”

Najjar heard a thunderous roar erupt from whatever crowd had been listening to the imam. He closed his eyes and pictured the scene and suddenly wished his parents had never left Iran. Perhaps then they would still be alive. Perhaps Najjar could have actually seen the Ayatollah with his own eyes. Perhaps he could have heard the master’s words with his own ears. Perhaps he could have even served the Revolution in some small way.

“The governments of the world should know that… Islam will be victorious in all the countries of the world, and Islam and the teachings of the Qur’an will prevail all over the world,” Khomeini bellowed in another radio clip. Najjar knew that line by heart. It came from a sermon the Ayatollah had delivered just after returning to Tehran, where he was greeted by millions of faithful followers shouting, “The Holy One has come! The Holy One has come!”

Disoriented by this turn of events, Najjar backed away from the crowd of men and out of earshot of the radio broadcast. He had heard more than he had wanted. His slight body trembled. His filthy cotton shirt was drenched with sweat, and he suddenly felt parched. He had no idea where his uncle and aunt were. But he desperately didn’t want to be by himself.

Perhaps they were at the mosque. He decided that was where he should be as well. He took off in a dead run for six blocks, slowing only when he could see the side door of the al-Askari Mosque just a few hundred meters away.