It’s been a while since I last submitted anything to your blog. This comment has nothing to do with burning the Qu’ran, although it is related to the Qu'ran. I have tried discussing this topic with other fellow Christians, but either they didn’t appreciate the significance of it, or else they weren’t curious enough to want to explore it. Hopefully, you will.

You probably saw in the news a couple of weeks ago that Iran’s president Ahmadinejad gave a speech at the United Nations in New York. He opened the speech with a prayer in which he said, “O God, hasten the arrival of Imam al-Mahdi and grant him good health and victory to us, his followers, and to those who attest to his righteousness.” His prayer caused quite a stir in the international media, not just because of the inappropriateness of it in such a setting, but also because he invoked the name of the Mahdi.

In Arabic, al-Mahdi means “The Anointed One.” Muslims believe that an imam (a priest) called al-Mahdi will appear at the End of Days to set up a trans-national Islamic government and wage war on Jews and Christians. To the Christian, which character in the Bible does that sound like?

I have known about the Mahdi for a long time. Several years ago I decided to read the Qu'ran out of curiosity, to try to understand why so many people around the world find it appealing enough to convert to Islam. The Qu’ran describes the Mahdi in much detail, right down to his physical appearance so that Muslims will recognize him when he comes (including a mole on his face and a gap between his front teeth, of all things). The Christian writer Joel Rosenberg provides further clarification of the Mahdi’s role according to Muslim beliefs, as their equivalent of an Islamic messiah.

Rob, I have become increasingly convinced that the Mahdi described in the Qu’ran, and the Antichrist described in the Bible, are one and the same. The Qu’ran says that the Mahdi will be a political and military leader unparalleled by any other throughout world history, just like the Antichrist is described in the Bible. Both the Mahdi and the Antichrist are viewed in the Qu'ran and the Bible, respectively, as supreme religious leaders as well.

But the Bible is the infallible word of God and the Qu’ran isn’t, right? So what would cause a Christian (like me) to think that the Qu'ran's Mahdi and the Bible's Antichrist have anything to do with each other whatsoever? The Bible certainly doesn’t need corroboration from some other religious book. It would be like comparing an apple to a rock.

Consider the following. The Bible says the Antichrist will have world dominion. But how did the writers of the Bible define "world” when they said the Antichrist would have world dominion? In today’s world, it’s hard to imagine the United States, Canada, any Latin American country, Asia, India, western Europe and especially Italy, ever accepting the political and religious leadership of some Muslim cleric in the Middle East. Therefore, I think the answer must lie in the biblical definition of "world" at the time the Bible was written.

Clearly, the Bible is Jerusalem-centric. From the book of Joshua onward, the Bible consistently makes reference to the spiritual importance of Jerusalem. Joel Rosenberg calls it the epicenter of the world. So a practical definition of "world" to the writers of the Bible might have meant the contiguous regions that encircle Jerusalem. If the biblical prophets who wrote about the latter days (notably Ezekiel, Daniel and John) had a view that the only part of world that was significant were the lands surrounding Jerusalem, then what you would have today are all the Arab states in the Middle East. To a country, each of these Arab states’ legal framework today is based on Islamic law. So is it possible that the biblical definition of "world" when describing the Antichrist’s world influence was referring to these Arab countries, since they are all within proximity of Jerusalem? If so, then it isn't very difficult to see how a leader could rise to power with political, military and religious dominion over the "world" as the Bible defined it. That, to me, is far more plausible than presuming the Antichrist will have dominion over the entire earth. That just doesn’t seem logical, given the presence of so many other dominant religions throughout the rest of the world that simply aren’t going to capitulate to a Middle Eastern imam.

So now comes the tougher question. Why should a Christian even consider that the so-called prophecies in the Qu'ran have anything to do at all with the true prophecies contained in the Bible? Why wouldn’t we assume that the similarities between the Mahdi in the Qu'ran and the Antichrist in the Bible are mere