Red flag over Iranian Mosque at Soleimani funeral has eschatological overtones, means all-out war
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – An extremely portentous symbol was raised over one of Iran’s holiest mosques in the city of Qom Sunday for one of the myriad funeral rallies of fallen IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani, says a researcher at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University.
A red flag with the words “those who want to avenge the blood of Husayn” ascended the flagpole at Jamkaran Mosque as the nation mourned Soleimani, which Dr. Mordechai Kedar, an Arabic scholar at Bar-Ihlan, said was a clear clarion call to all Shi’ite Muslims the world around to rise up for the eschatological struggle against the forces opposing Shia Islam.
“Husayn is the symbol of all the oppressed Shia for all time,” Kedar said, referring to the martyred grandson and successor to Muhammad, Husayn Ibn Ali, who perished in 680 A.D. at the hands of the faction that would later evolve into Sunni Islam, and whom Shia Muslims believe the rightful heir to the role of Caliph, the leader of world Islam.
“This red flag is a call for the deaths of anyone who opposes Shiite Islam, equating anyone today with the killers of Husayn in 680 CE. This is a global call to all of Shia for what they see as an eternal and neverending conflict,” Kedar explained.
Worse still, the choice of the Jamkaran mosque for the flag-raising added another dimension to the symbol and the call to arms, since the mosque itself was dedicated at its founding to the “Final Imam” or Mahdi, who in the Shi’ite Muslim mythos returns at the end of time to kill Christians, Jews, and Sunni Muslims.
For Iran to attach this significance to the death of Soleimani, who was killed Friday in a US drone strike at Baghdad International Airport, is extremely ominous, Kedar said.
“The Shia think of this conflict in terms of eternity. There is a verse in the Koran that says that Allah is with those who have patience,” he explained. “Shiite Muslims have a lot of patience. They waited for thirteen centuries until they finally rose up in 1979 in the Iranian Revolution.”
His analysis echoed the words of Esmail Ghaani following his appointment to the role of the head of the Quds Force formerly occupied by Soleimani, who told followers of the slain leader to “be patient, and you will see the bodies of Americans all over the Middle East.”
Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps helicopters flew over the flag-raising Sunday, seeming to give official sanction to the gesture to the world from the Ayatollah.
“To say that what happened last week is huge is an understatement,” Kedar said.
“The red flag means they are going to sink their enemies in a sea of blood.”