regardless of their religious affiliations, have learnt to await a day when heavenly mission, with all their implications will achieve their final goal and the tiring march of humanity across history will culiminate satisfactorily in peace and tranqulity.
This consciousness of the expected future has not been confined to those who believe in the supernatural phenomena but has also been reflected in the ideologies and cults which totally deny the existence of what is imperceptible. For example, dialectical materialism which interprets history on the basis of contradictions believes that a day will come when all contradictions will disappear and complete peace and tranqulity will prevail. Thus we find that this contradiction experienced throughout history is one of the widest and the commonest psychological experience of humanity.
The religion when it endorses this common consciousness and stresses that in the long run this world will be filled with justice and equity after having been filled with injustice and oppression, gives it a factual value and converts it into a definite belief in the future course of humanity. This belief is not merely a source of consolation, but it is also a source of virtue and strength. It is a source of virtue because the belief in Mahdi means the total elimination of injustice and oppresion prevailing in the world. It is a source of inexhaustabile strength because it provides hope which enables man to resist frustration,
howsoever, hopeless and dismal the cir*****stances may be. The belief in the appointed day proves that it is possible for the forces of justice to face the world filled with injustice and oppression, to prevail upon the forces of injustice and to reconstruct the world order. After all prevalance of injustice, howsoever dominant and extensive it may become is an abnormal state and must in the long run be eliminated. The prospect of its elimination after reaching its climax, infuses a great hope in every persecuted individual and every oppresed nation that it is still possible to change the state of affairs.
Although the concept of the Mahdi is more wide spreadthan the Muslim community, yet its detailed features, as determined by Islam, meet more fully aa the aspirations attached to it since the dawn of history. They are in greater conformity with the feelings and sentiments of the oppressed and the presecuted of all times. It is Islam which has given a concrete shape to an abstract idea. It is no longer necessary to look forward to an unknown saviour who may come into the world at a distant future.
The saviour is already here and we simply have to look for the day when the cirstances are ripe for him to appear and begin his great mission. The Mahdi is no longer an idea. He is no longer a prophecy. We need not wait for his birth. He already exists actually and we only wait for the inaugration of his role.
He is a specific entity living among us in his real human form and shares hopes and disappointments and our joys and griefs. He witnesses all the acts of oppression and presecution which are prepuated on the face of the earth and, somehow or other, he himself is affected by them. He is anxiously awaitng the moment when he will be able to extend his helping hand to everyone whom any wrong has been doneand be able to eradicate injustice and oppression completely.
