What Reading Leaves Open

Khalid al-ʿAḍḍāḍ says that Latifa al-Shaʿlan’s book *The Stranger*, particularly its fourth chapter, led him back to reading Irvin Yalom and raised questions for him about how belief shapes a person’s understanding and sense of responsibility. He compares those who made waiting for the Mahdi a justification for suspending action with Juhayman, whose belief that al-Qahtani was the Mahdi led him to take up arms. He also discusses the experience of Shukri Mustafa’s group: Shukri was executed in March 1978, and his execution may have shifted the group’s outlook from awaiting the Mahdi in the person of its leader to awaiting his appearance. Al-ʿAḍḍāḍ concludes that Mahdism differs between Sunni and Twelver Shiʿi conceptions, and that belief itself can give a person a mission or become a pretext for excusing inaction. He cautions, however, that the testimonies he cites about the spread of these ideas are not, on their own, enough to establish how they were transmitted.

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