Sufyan And The Mahdi-Messiahs – OpEd

March 15, 2026 
By Rabbi Allen S. Maller


The Mahdi (“the Guided One”) is a messianic figure in Islamic eschatology, believed to be a descendant of Muhammad who will appear at the End of Times to rid the world of tyranny, evil, and injustice. He will establish a just, unified Islamic world before the Day of Judgment.

In more than 15 Ahadith (Islamic Traditions) found in the Sahih of Imam Bukhari, Sunnan of Imam Abu Dawwud, Jamii of Imam Tirmidhi and others, Prophet Muhammad said that Islam has a specific lifespan on earth, These Ahadith state that Allah gave Islam 1500 years; and we are now in the years of the 1440’s.

The Sufyan is a descendant of Abu Sufyan who will emerge before Imam Mahdi from the depths of Damascus (or Iran). The Ahadith regarding the Sufyani specify that he is a tyrant who will spread corruption and mischief on the earth before Imam Mahdi comes. Sufyan will kill children (Demonstrators) and rip out the bellies of women (for singing music) for during the Iranian Revolution, Khomeini said: “…music is like a drug, whoever acquires the habit can no longer devote himself to important activities. We must completely eliminate it.”

So human society changed more rapidly, violently and fundamentally in the last century of the second millennium than ever before in history. Doctors saved the lives of millions. Dictators sacrificed the lives of millions. Populations exploded and birthrates declined. Technology produced both worldwide prosperity and pollution at the same time.

Knowing all this, should we look upon the first century of the third millennium with optimistic hope or with fatalistic trepidation? Are the world and our society heading towards a wonder-filled new age, or toward a doomsday; or are both occurring concurrently because breakdown is always a prelude to breakthrough?

Many who believe in the Biblical vision of a Messianic Age use the insights of the Prophets of Israel to provide guidance in understanding the social, economic, scientific and cultural upheavals sweeping society. Usually it is the dramatic dangers of the pre-Messianic tribulation that are emphasized. I will focus on the positive signs developing throughout the world that accord with the Messianic vision of the Biblical Prophets.

In most religious traditions, redemption is defined only in terms of individual enlightenment or personal salvation. However, the Biblical Prophets of Israel conceived redemption as a transformation of human society that would occur through the catalyst of the transformation of the Jewish community. This transformation, which will take place in this world at some future time, is called the Messianic Age.

The transition to the Messianic Age is called the birth pangs of the Messiah. The birth of a redeemed Messianic world may be the result of an easy or difficult labor. If everyone would simply live according to the moral teachings of his or her religious tradition, we would ourselves bring about the Messianic Age.

But, if we will not do it voluntarily, it will come through social and political upheavals, worldwide conflicts and generation gaps. Messiahs refer to agents of God who help bring about this transformation. The Jewish tradition teaches that each agent of God (there may be two or three such agents) will be a human being with great leadership qualities similar to Prophets Moses and Mohammed.

The arrival of the Messianic Age is what’s really important, not the personality of the agents who bring it about, since they are simply the instruments of God, who ultimately is the real Redeemer.

The majority of Christians, Jews, and Muslims do not believe that all of humanity is moving closer and closer to a catastrophic Judgement Day. The minority who do think that Judgement Day is coming soon share the usual negative, fear-filled views of most end-times thinkers: Christians, Jews and especially Muslims, who do believe that: “The hour (of Judgement) is near” [Qur’an 54:1]; and ˹The time of˺ people’s judgment has drawn near, yet they heedlessly turn away.” [Qur’an 21:1]

According to a 2012 poll by the Pew Research Center, at least half of Muslims in nine Muslim-majority countries believe that the coming of the Mahdi is “imminent,” and could happen in their lifetime. Another world-wide Pew Research Center poll found that belief in the Mahdi’s imminent return was; 57% in Southeast Asia, 60% in South Asia, and 51% in the Middle East and North Africa.

The Messianic Age is usually seen as the solution to all of humanity’s basic problems. This may be true in the long run but the vast changes the transition to the Messianic Age entails will provide challenges to society for many generations to come.

For example, the Prophet Isaiah, 2700 years ago, predicted that someday there would be a radically new world in which Jerusalem would be fulfilled with joy for “no more shall there be in it an infant that lives only a few days.” (65:20) Before the mid 19th century the annual death rate for humans fluctuated from year to year but always remained high, between 30 and over 50 deaths per 1,000 individuals.

A century ago, the infant mortality rate in Jerusalem (as in most of the world) was 25-30%. Now it is less than 1%. For thousands of years almost every family in the world suffered the loss of at least one or two infants; now it happens to less than one out of a hundred babies. If this radical improvement had occurred over a few years, it would have greatly impressed people. But since it occurred gradually over several generations, people take it for granted.


Also, it seems to be part of human nature that most people focus on complaining about the less than 1% that still die (an individual family tragedy heightened by the fact that it is unexpected because it is so rare) rather than be grateful that the infant mortality rate has been reduced by over 95%. These improvements in human health are unprecedented in human history.

Truly we will be coming close to Isaiah’s prophecy, “One who dies at 100 years shall be reckoned a youth, and one who fails to reach 100 shall be reckoned accursed.” (65:20) such radical change will necessitate major changes in the way we think and act when faced with decisions about life and death. Yet who among us would want to return to the high mortality rates and early deaths of previous centuries? The challenges we now face are not those of survival, but of opportunity.

The fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy has thus gone unnoticed and uncelebrated. But even when the events are rapid and dramatic, people rarely connect them to their Messianic significance for very long.

The amazing rescue of 15,000 Ethiopian Jews in an airlift lasting less than 48 hours stirred and inspired people for a few weeks. Subsequently, the difficult problems the newcomers faced (similar to those of the 900,000 recent Soviet immigrants) occupied the Jewish media. Now both are taken for granted. The miracle has become routine. But if you had told the Jews of Ethiopia two generations ago that they would someday all fly to Israel in a giant silver bird, they could only conceive of this as a Messianic miracle.

If you had told Soviet Jews a generation ago that the Communist regime would collapse, the Soviet Empire disintegrate, and hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews would emigrate to Israel, they would have conceived it only as a Messianic dream.

In our own generation therefore we have seen the dramatic fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy: “I will bring your offspring from the (Middle) East and gather you from the (European) West. To the North (Russia) I will say ‘give them up’ and to the South (Ethiopia) ‘do not hold them’.

Bring my sons from far away, my daughters from the end of the earth.” (43:5-6) In 1948 only six percent of a global Jewish population of 11.5 million lived in Israel. Today 45% of the world’s 15 million Jews reside in the Jewish state.

Isn’t it amazing how people adjust to living in a radically new world and forget the past. Indeed, the Prophet Isaiah himself said, “Behold, I create a new Heaven and a new Earth, and former things shall not be remembered.” (65:17)

Where does the final Messiah fit in with all of this? He will still have lots to do when he arrives. Most Orthodox Jews would not commit themselves to any individual as a Messiah unless he successfully rebuilds the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, fulfilling the prophecy of Zachariah, “He shall build the Temple of the Lord, and he shall bear the glory, he shall sit on the throne and rule, there shall be a priest before the throne, and peaceful counsel will exist between both of them.” (6:13)

Now that a large part of the Jewish people have returned to the Land of Israel, and resurrected a Jewish State, one might think that rebuilding a temple of the site where Solomon originally built one almost 3,000 years ago, would be relatively simple.

But a Muslim Shrine presently occupies the site called, The Dome of the Rock. Often erroneously called the Mosque of Omar, it is not a mosque, and it was not built by Omar. It was built in 691 by Abd-Al-Malik and it is regarded by Muslims as the third holiest site in the world. Any attempt to replace the Dome of the Rock would provoke a Muslim Holy War of cataclysmic proportions.


There is, however, a lot of vacant land on the Temple Mount, and a Jewish house of worship could be built adjacent to the Dome of the Rock provided the Muslims would cooperate.
Most observers agree that anyone who could arrange such Jewish-Muslim cooperation would really be the Messianic Ruler of Peace (Isaiah 9:5) Christian support for such a cooperative venture would also be very important, and anyone who can bring Jews, Christians and Muslims together in mutual respect and cooperation would surely fulfill the greatest of all Messianic predictions:

“They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning knives; nation shall not take up sword against nation, they shall never again teach war.” (Isaiah 2:4)

Indeed, such Jewish/Christian/Muslim cooperation would not be possible without great spiritual leadership in all three communities. Thus, each community could consider its leadership to be the Messiah. The Mahdi for example, “…will judge among the people of the Torah according to the Torah; among the people of the Gospel according to the Gospel; among the people of the Psalms in accordance with the Psalms; among the people of the Qur’an in accordance with the Qur’an.” Says a Hadith from Imam Mohammad Baqir from Nu’mani, Kitab al-ghayba, p.237.

This would fulfill the culminating verses of Isaiah’s Messianic prophecy as enlarged upon by Micah (4:3-5), “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning knives. Nation shall not take up against nation, they shall never again teach war, but every man shall sit under his grapevine or fig tree with no one to disturb him, for it is the Lord of Hosts who spoke. Though all peoples walk each in the name of its God, we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever.”

Perhaps the Abraham Accords in the Mid-East will start a swing towards optimism and the fulfillment of another prophecy of Isaiah: “In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt, and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. In that day Israel will join a three-party alliance with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing upon the heart. The LORD of Hosts will bless them saying, “Blessed be Egypt My people, Assyria My handiwork, and Israel My inheritance.”…(Isaiah 19:23-5)

There will be no peace until both Palestinians and Israelis declare the chant ‘From the river to the sea’ becomes an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, and not death, destruction, or hate. We can make it truly aspirational by making it focus on both peoples first, and the land second. “From the river to the sea Palestinians and Israelis should be freed of hatred and suffering by ‘a two state for two peoples sharing of the land peacefully solution.'”

If each religious community truly follows the best of its own religious teachings; the final Messiah and Mahdi will surely have arrived, and peace will be established worldwide.


Rabbi Allen S. Maller

Allen Maller retired in 2006 after 39 years as Rabbi of Temple Akiba in Culver City, Calif. He is the author of an introduction to Jewish mysticism. God. Sex and Kabbalah and editor of the Tikun series of High Holy Day prayerbooks.

Eight Reasons to Oppose the Death Penalty This Hanukkah

Michael Zoosman

 December 16, 2025

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Photo by Gary Sankary

To the Esteemed Members of the Knesset,

For each of the eight nights of Hanukkah this year, we, the thousands of members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty,” invite you to consider these eight facts (plus one for the Shammash – Helper candle) about capital punishment as we call upon you to vote against the death penalty bill currently before you for non-Jewish convicted terrorists. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but rather some points to keep in mind as you weigh the sacred and lethal decision now before you. May these points of light help illuminate your consciences:

1) The death penalty will increase – not decrease – terrorist attacks. 

First and foremost, the myth that killing captured Hamas terrorists will save Israeli lives is patently false. Instead, it would only create more shahids – “martyrs” – among Israel’s enemies. As 19th-century philosopher Eliphas Levi famously wrote: “Every head that falls upon the scaffold may be honored and praised as the head of a martyr.” A mandatory death sentence for Palestinians who murder Jews will almost certainly increase the number of terrorist attacks. Why would Israel want to encourage potential terrorists? On a purely practical level, this proposed legislation is insane.

2) The death penalty risks executing the innocent. 

There is rightfully no tolerance for the execution of an individual who is innocent of an alleged capital crime. The reputable Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) writes that, given the fallibility of human judgment, there has always been the danger that an execution could result in the killing of an innocent person. Since 1973 in the United States, over 200 death-row prisoners have been exonerated of the charges related to the wrongful convictions that had put them on death row. (This includes one individual, Elwood Jones, whose exoneration from Ohio Death Row became news while we are writing this very letter.) DPIC adds the following grim statistics about these human beings, which speak for themselves:

“These individuals have collectively spent 2,621 years in harsh prison conditions for crimes they did not commit. On average, death row exonerees spent 13 years under the sentence of death before their exonerations, with some individuals spending more than 40 years fighting to prove their innocence. 65% of exonerees are people of color, and of them, 54% are Black, highlighting systemic racial disparities. Florida has the highest number of death row exonerations of any state (30), followed by Illinois (22) and Texas (18).”

How many more innocent individuals must be released before any society – including Israel – recognizes the fallibility of any human-crafted system of justice and stops the possibility of executing an innocent human being?

Jewish tradition, to be sure, forbids the execution of someone where there is any level of doubt about guilt or fairness. It is for this very reason that rabbinic tradition placed prodigious safeguards to ensure that no innocent person was put to death. Arguably, the most famous comment comes from one of the most renowned Jewish sages: the Rambam, Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204). Maimonides, as he is often called, was a Sephardic Jewish physician and philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah scholars of the Middle Ages. As he famously wrote of capital punishment in Sefer HaMitzvot, Prohibition 290:

“It is better to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.”

Maimonides’s charge for the protection of the innocent must inform the decision now before you in the Knesset.

Image: The grave of George Stinney, Jr., a boy executed in 1944 and exonerated in 2014. South Carolina recently has added the firing squad to its approved methods of executions. How many more innocent deaths will it take? (Source: South Carolina Department of Archives and History)

3) Jewish tradition makes the death penalty virtually impossible.

Speaking of Jewish tradition, let there be no doubt: the safeguards that traditional Jewish law established rendered capital punishment essentially impossible to carry out. For murders to be eligible for death, two eyewitnesses needed to have caught them in the act and warned them ahead of time that their action would result in the death penalty. Many of the most powerful and brilliant rabbinic voices reflect this impossible standard.  Let us recall the words of some of the loftiest figures among them: Rabbi Eliezer ben Azariah, Rabbi Tarfon, and Rabbi Akiva, as found in the Talmud:

“A Sanhedrin [Rabbinic court] that affects an execution once in seven years is branded a destructive tribunal. Rabbi Eliezer ben Azariah says: once in 70 years. Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiva say: Were we members of a Sanhedrin, no person would ever be put to death.[Thereupon] Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel remarked, they would also multiply shedders of blood in Israel!” (Mishnah, Makkot 7a)

Indeed, there were dissenters. — like Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel above — who were pro-death, citing similar deterrence factors and other now antiquated notions of “justice.” Posterity can forgive them for their views, which reflected the understanding of their times, including in the realm of deterrence.

4) The death penalty does not cause “deterrence.” 

Recent meta-studies have concluded that when it comes to deterrence, there is no demonstrable link between the presence or absence of the death penalty and murder rates. Advocates for death invoke deterrence as a veil for what truly underlies the desire for executions: vengeance. 

5) The death penalty is racist. 

Applying different standards to Jewish and non-Jewish terrorists is inherently racist. This undeniable racist implementation in Israel is reminiscent of the current reality in the United States, where racial bias against defendants of color and in favor of white victims has a strong effect on who is capitally prosecuted, sentenced to death, and executed. Those convicted of murdering white victims are much more likely to be given the death sentence. Capital punishment has long come under scruti­ny for being racial­ly biased. Earlier in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, when it was applied for the crime of rape, 89 per­cent of the exe­cu­tions involved black defen­dants, most for the rape of a white woman. In the mod­ern era, when exe­cu­tions have been car­ried out exclu­sive­ly for mur­der, 75 per­cent of the cas­es involve the mur­der of white vic­tims, even though about half of all homi­cide vic­tims in America are black.

A bias towards white-vic­tim cas­es has been found in almost all of the sophis­ti­cat­ed stud­ies explor­ing this area over many years. These stud­ies typ­i­cal­ly con­trol for oth­er vari­ables in the cas­es stud­ied, such as the num­ber of vic­tims or the bru­tal­i­ty of the crime, and still found that defen­dants were more like­ly to be sen­tenced to death if they killed a white person.

A similar trend will no doubt develop in Israel in cases involving Jewish versus non-Jewish victims.

6) The death penalty often results in physical torture, and always is psychological torture for individuals counting down to their execution day. There is no humane way to execute human beings against their will. 

The death penalty is in direct violation of Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Our correspondence with the Jewish and non-Jewish condemned reveals this. Telling a human being the date and time on which she or he is to be put to death is a level of inhumanity and torture without comparison in this world. Albert Camus is another individual who witnessed this firsthand. As early as 1957, in his book Reflections on the Guillotine, he concluded:

“But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.”

7) Many execution methods are direct Nazi legacies, including firing squad, gassing, and lethal injection.

The execution methods of lethal injection, gassing, and the firing squadare unquestionable and unconscionable direct Nazi legacies. This fact makes capital punishment particularly anathema for L’chaim members who descend directly from Holocaust victims and survivors. More than most people, we know that one cannot conflate executions with the singularly horrific genocide of the Shoah. And yet, the shadow of the Holocaust is inextricably linked to our firm rejection of the death penalty in all cases, including for convicted Hamas terrorists, as well as the Washington, DC, Israeli Embassy and the Pittsburgh Tree of Life shooters.

The most common form of execution that the US federal government and multiple states employ is lethal injection, and it is precisely this method that Israel now seeks to use for state killings. Most people do not realize that lethal injection is a direct Nazi legacy, first implemented in human history by the Third Reich as part of their infamous Aktion T4 protocol used to kill people deemed “unworthy of life.” Dr. Karl Brandt, Adolf Hitler’s personal physician, devised that program. This abject abomination is the legacy that this death penalty bill would perpetuate.

Image: Adolf Hitler’s authorization for the euthanasia program (Aktion/Operation T4), signed in October, 1939, but dated September 1, 1939. The Nazis were the first to implement lethal injection, which the Knesset now is debating to use as Israel’s execution method of choice. (National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD, public domain)

L’chaim’s abolitionist position applies as well to Israel’s only other execution, that of infamous Nazi mass murderer Adolph Eichmann in 1962. L’chaim carries the torch of renowned Hebrew university philosophers Samuel Hugo Bergmann and Nathan Rotenstreich, scholar of Kabbalah Gershom Scholem, and Jewish theologian and philosopher Martin Buber, all of whom opposed Eichmann’s state killing, which Buber called a great “mistake.” Other Holocaust survivors themselves, such as Nobel-prize-winning author Nelly Sachs, voiced strident opposition to Eichmann’s execution.

Image: Headlines of the June 5, 1962 New York Times article about Martin Buber’s objections to the execution of Nazi perpetrator Adolph Eichmann.

8) From Adolph Hitler to Trump to Ben Gvir, the death penalty is used as a political tool, particularly for election campaigns. 

After his study of Adolph Hitler’s use of executions for political gains, Donald Trump went on an unprecedented federal execution spree that led to the deaths of thirteen inmates toward the end of his first term as president in the hope of gaining popularity for future elections. Now, his second term, he has directly called for the execution of his political opponents. Meanwhile, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, as he eyes his political future, has already executed 18 individuals and will ensure the state’s killing of the nineteenth human being on the fifth night of Hanukkah this year. National Security Minister Itamar Ben G’vir’s recent political act of sporting a noose-shaped lapel pin glorified killing and sanctified revenge in a manner that is reminiscent of Machiavellian politicians like Hitler, Trump, and DeSantis and other tyrants throughout the ages. Executions inevitably become a political tool, creating a recipe for disaster for any so-called “civilized” society.

9) For the Shammash – the 9th Helper Candle: The death penaltyviolates the human right to life.

As outlined in the Third Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person.”Over 70% of nations have realized this and abolished the death penalty in law or practice. It is time for Israel to join civilized nations on this crucial issue. Let this light of life be the value that, like the Shammash, ignites all eight other lights of reason regarding the death penalty.

Image: A list of some enlightened figures throughout history, as well as current leaders, who are death penalty abolitionists. 

On this Hanukkah, we ask that you recall the words of Elie Wiesel, whose views encapsulated the stance of L’chaim’s members. When quesrioned about his feelings on capital punishment, Wiesel resolutely stated, “Death is not the answer.” By the end of his life, Wiesel publicly said that he madeno exception to this rule, stating: “With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory, I oppose the death penalty in all forms. I do not believe any civilized society should be at the service of death. I don’t think it’s human to become an agent of the angel of death.”

Twenty-first-century Judaism must hold by the red line that Wiesel set forth. It cannot lower itself to the status of enemies such as Hamas, Iran, and Yemen by violating its moral obligations and ethical standards and engaging in state-sponsored killings of defenseless prisoners. With Wiesel’s neshama – spirit –  in mind and heart, and on behalf of all L’chaim members, we respectfully implore you to join civilized humanity and abolish the death penalty once and for all. The first step toward doing so is voting against the abject abomination that is the death penalty bill before you now.

Two Hanukkahs ago, L’chaim released out interview with with Sister Helen Prejean, famed author of Dead Man Walking. Sister Helen thanked us for keeping the torch of Elie Wiesel lit with the light of abolition. May you find it in your hearts to do the same this season as we light the Hanukkah candles, and as you ponder this ultimately Divine power of creating – and extinguishing – the light of life.

L’chaim!

A version of this column first appeared in the Times of Israel.