the emergence of the Mahdī are sound; they were transmitted by Abū Dāwūd, al-Tirmidhī, Aḥmad, and others.” End quote.
The Mahdī’s name will be Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh. He is a descendant of al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (may Allah be pleased with them). He will appear near the end of time, when the earth has become filled with tyranny and injustice, and he will then fill it with fairness and equity.
Al-ʿAllāmah al-Saffārīnī said, “So many statements have been voiced about the Mahdī that some went so far as to say, ‘There is no Mahdī except Jesus.’ The correct view held by the people of truth is that the Mahdī is other than Jesus, that he will emerge before Jesus descends, and that the reports concerning his appearance are so numerous that they achieve recurrent mass-transmission in meaning (tawātur maʿnawī). This has become well-known among the scholars of the Sunnah to the point that belief in it is counted among their creeds…” End quote.
I say: People’s stances on the Mahdī fall into two extremes and a middle path.
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The first extreme is represented by those who deny the Mahdī’s emergence outright—some contemporary writers who are unfamiliar with the textual evidence and the statements of the scholars, relying instead solely on their own opinions and reasoning.
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The second extreme is found among deviant groups that exaggerate about the Mahdī, each sect claiming that its own leader is the awaited one. The Rāfiḍah, for instance, maintain that the Mahdī is their hidden Imām, whom they expect to emerge from an underground passage; they call him Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī, asserting that he entered the cellar of Sāmarrāʾ as a small child more than a thousand years ago and that they are still awaiting his return. The Fāṭimiyyah likewise allege that their leader is the Mahdī, and so on.
Thus, anyone who seeks dominion over people and wishes to deceive them can claim to be the awaited Mahdī, just as certain impostors among the Ṣūfīs claim descent from the Prophet’s Household and that they are sayyids.
As for the balanced position on the Mahdī, it is the stance of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah, who affirm