As We Await the End Times

 

harun-yahyaThe art of writing a first paragraph is said to lie in the ability to draw the reader in.

I would say that Lily Lynch’s remarkable new piece in The Balkanist passes that test very well indeed:

Harun Yahya is said to be the messianic leader of an apocalyptic Islamic sex cult. He’s also the owner of a Turkish television station called A9, and the host of his own religious talk show, which just might make your eyeballs pop out of your skull. The entire set and everyone on it glow like irradiated ultraviolet rays. Five amazing looking women usually co-host the show, wearing things like false rainbow eyelashes, wigs, and diamond-studded Versace bondage gear. The backdrop is a blinding fake lavender cityscape. Conversations often focus on how materialism and Darwinism are dead, how to recognize the face of a real Muslim, and how Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan — with whom the host is rumored to enjoy friendly relations — is “one of the important figures for the End Times”.

This is a story with everything: murky political connections, the Huffington Post, creationism, “a pair of hunky twins named Onder and Ender”, a harem, Madonna, aliens (maybe), conspiracy theories, abandoned conspiracy theories, litigation and a zoo.

Wait, there’s more…

But you will have to read it for yourselves. 

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  1. bourbonsoaked Inactive
    bourbonsoaked
    @bourbonsoaked

    I’d watch MSNBC if it looked like this:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-vsIf_sI0g

    • #1
  2. bourbonsoaked Inactive
    bourbonsoaked
    @bourbonsoaked

    When the End Times come, plastic surgery and peroxide can only help:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRkJZ4931TQ

    • #2
  3. user_199279 Coolidge
    user_199279
    @ChrisCampion

    It’s a crazy world when beautiful women are sitting anywhere near that guy and his hair Titanic.  He is a tactile disaster.

    • #3
  4. user_124695 Inactive
    user_124695
    @DavidWilliamson

    “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam”.

    • #4
  5. tabula rasa Inactive
    tabula rasa
    @tabularasa

    bourbonsoaked:

    I’d watch MSNBC if it looked like this:

    I watched the whole thing and my only conclusions are (1) there are a lot more blondes in Turkey than I would have suspected and (2) I have no clue what he was trying to say.

    • #5
  6. user_428379 Coolidge
    user_428379
    @AlSparks

    tabula rasa:I watched the whole thing and my only conclusions are (1) there are a lot more blondes in Turkey than I would have suspected and (2) I have no clue what he was trying to say.

    Exactly. It’s Elvis!!! Who knew?

    • #6
  7. jameslileks Contributor
    jameslileks
    @jameslileks

    He will be giving a speech at Rutgers in a few months to ecstatic reviews of his sex-positive rethinking of Islam. Not that it needed any rethinking! But he does put a provocative face on how we might reimagine cross-cultural dialogue. 

    Do I have tenure yet?

    • #7
  8. Fricosis Guy Listener
    Fricosis Guy
    @FricosisGuy

    Don’t hate the playa, hate the game.

    • #8
  9. user_385039 Inactive
    user_385039
    @donaldtodd

    Whether it is the second coming or the 12th Imam, there is a strain of religious thought which desires a completion based on a returning Person Who is able to fix all the problems completely.  When I left evangelical Pentecostalism I left a realm where repeated efforts to recognize when Jesus would return had fallen flat. 

    Going back to William Miller and his misunderstanding interpreting scripture with a due date of 1843, and arriving at Hal Lindsay’s Late Great Planet Earth with its 1988 due date, there have been a host of expectations of exactly when the second coming would occur. 

    The expectations involving the 12th Imam note that Jesus will come with that personage and confirm that Islam is the right religion, that Jesus’ followers should get on board, and will vindicate Islam, all of which is convenient if one happens to be a Moslem, but doesn’t do much for a Catholic.

    However, the apocalypse is alive and well, yet God has not seen fit to make it happen on someone else’ schedule, no matter who those people are.  One suspects that the A9 guy will fare as well as his predecessors in other religions.

    • #9
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