Lackland AFB Prepares for the Mahdi (is this credible?)

Lackland AFB Prepares for the Mahdi (is this credible?):

On August 7, 2011, at an as-yet undisclosed location on Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas, the U.S. government officially became a sponsor of the Mahdi.

No, not Barack Hussein Obama, but a much more serious and overt candidate: Adnan Oktar, a.k.a. “Harun Yahya,” the Turkish Creationist whose followers consider him the “rightly-guided one” of Islamic tradition, expected to come before the end of time to make the entire world Muslim.

Mahdism was my original area of academic specialization within Islamic history (about which I wrote my doctoral dissertation, first book and numerous articles); I interviewed Oktar in Istanbul a few years ago; and, finally, I spent time in the military as both enlisted and commissioned, the latter training to be a chaplain.

So I have some familiarity with all aspects of this troubling story, which came to my attention early on 14 August 2011 via photos posted to my Facebook page by contacts within Oktar’s organization:

(Excerpt) Read more at gatesofvienna.blogspot.com ...