The Emergence of Widespread Slaughter
Most hadiths about the Mahdi's advent focus on the prophecy
that turmoil, insecurity, and disorder will rule the world
before his coming. Massacres, wars, and confrontations are
one of the major features of such a period. Besides, the
hadith draws attention to the fact that massacres will occur
all over the world.
During the two world wars of the twentieth century, an
estimated 65 million people were killed. The number of the
civilians slaughtered for political reasons during the same
century is estimated to be well over 180 million. This is
an extraordinarily high figure compared with previous centuries.
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(left) A photograph taken in one of
the Nazi death camps (Nordhausen, Germany) in 1945 evidence
the savagery of the Second World War.
(right) This photograph of the Nuremberg city in Germany
in 1945 reveals the dimensions of the massacre and destruction
people went through during the Second World War. |
In fact, the wars used to be fought as a front fighting
most times until the twentieth century, i.e., wars would
be between the fighting armies along a certain line. However,
the weaponry technology and the consequently developed military
strategies in the twentieth century introduced the concept
of "an all-out war," with wars taking at not only
the soldiers on the front, but also the civilians in the
back of the front to a large extent. Concepts such as the
bombing of cities, chemical, biological or nuclear weapons,
genocide and concentration camps emerged in the twentieth
century.
Such atrocities still continue; today in the 21st century,
bloody wars and combats are at full swing all over the World.
The common feature of such wars is that as indicated by
the hadith above, these are the wars during which massacres
take place. Commencement of use of mass destruction weapons
on the one hand and the ideological domination of those
views encouraging confrontation and blood shed have caused
massacres to be very comprehensive.
A look at the recent history will point to the examples
of many massacres in which so many people lost their lives.
For instance, the Bosnian War went down in history as a
war which targeted at the civilian population heavily, resulting
in the murder of thousands of people without discrimination
including women, children and the old aged. The mass graves
uncovered after the war are a striking evidence displaying
the dimensions of such massacres.
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(left)
In Ruanda, the clashes between Hutus and Tutsis
that began in 1960s turned into a great civil
war which caused the death or plight of hundreds
of thousands of people. (Below) A Hutu stoned
to death by Tutsis. (Right) Soldiers from
the Tutsi tribe murdered everyone without
making any discriminiation. |
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Another "ethnic cleansing" campaign being carried
out against the Palestinian people since the 1940s is a
long term policy of massacre. The exemplary massacres of
Sabra and Shatilla as part of this policy fully expose the
exact dimensions of the drama.
There are also violent fighting between various ethnicities
in Africa so frequently and thousands of people die as a
result. In Spring 1997, a large scale ethnic war broke out
between 2 major tribes, Hutu and Tutsi, covering 5 big countries
– Zaire, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania. About half
a million people lost their lives in this war. Tens of thousands
of people had to fight poverty, misery and contagious diseases
in the jungles and a big portion of them died. Even children
and babies were savagely murdered just because they were
from the rival tribes.
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(left) A mass grave in
the countryside of the Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992.
(right) The Sabra and Shattilla massacres made during
the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 went down in
history as one of the cruelest and greatest massacres.
More than 3000 people, most of them women and children,
died in this massacre carried out by the Christian Falangist
groups who were steered and supported by the Israeli
soldiers. |
