The Remembrance and the Return

Arabic dh-k-r (ذ-ك-ر) and Hebrew z-k-r (ז-כ-ר) are cognates from Proto-Semitic *dh-k-r. The phonological correspondence is regular: Proto-Semitic *dh yields Arabic ذ and Hebrew ז. The Akkadian form zakaru means “to speak, to name, to swear”; the Ugaritic dkr means “to invoke.”¹

Krebernik, writing in the Reallexikon der Assyriologie, suggests the original meaning may be “to call/invoke” rather than “to remember”—which makes the Sufi use of dhikr (invocation through repetition of divine names) closer to the Proto-Semitic root than the Hebrew cognitive sense. The Sufi practitioner performing dhikr is not merely “remembering” God. The practitioner is calling God into presence.

فَاذْكُرُونِي أَذْكُرْكُمْ

“Remember Me, and I will remember you.”
— Quran 2:152

Hebrew mazkir (מזכיר, “the one who causes to remember”) and Arabic dhakir (ذاكر, “one who performs dhikr”) share the same root. Al-Ghazali, in the Ihya ʿUlum al-Din, describes four stages of dhikr: remembrance of the tongue (mechanical repetition), remembrance of the heart (presence with meaning), remembrance of the innermost secret (where the practitioner can no longer distinguish dhikr from self), and annihilation in remembrance—where the dhikr, the one who remembers, and the One remembered collapse into unity.²

Muhammad ibn Hasan al-Mahdi, the Twelfth Imam, entered occultation (ghayba) in 874 CE. For sixty-seven years, communication continued through four successive deputies (the Minor Occultation). Since 941 CE—the Major Occultation—there has been no deputy. The Imam remains alive but hidden, guiding the faithful spiritually until his return.³

Khomeini’s innovation of Velayat-e Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist) transformed centuries of Shia quietism into revolutionary activism. The Supreme Leader governs as steward of the Hidden Imam until his return. The IRGC functions as the Mahdist instrument. Hojatoleslam Ali Saeedi, the Supreme Leader’s representative to the IRGC (2012): “The IRGC is one of the tools for paving the way for the emergence of the Imam of the Age.”⁴

Sunni Mahdism, by contrast, lacks the doctrine of occultation. The Mahdi is acknowledged in hadith collections (Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi, Ibn Majah) but is notably absent from Bukhari and Muslim—the two most authoritative. No specific historical figure is identified.

Quran 53:19–20: “Have you then considered Al-Lat and Al-ʿUzza? And Manat, the third, the other one?” The verse names them to deny them—but the naming itself preserves their memory permanently in the most recited book in the Arabic language.⁶

Al-Lat (اللات) is the feminine form of Allah—“The Goddess.” Her cult center was at Ta’if; Herodotus identified her with Aphrodite Urania. Al-ʿUzza (العزى), “The Mighty One,” was venerated by the Quraysh at Nakhla, where three acacia trees were sacred to her. Manat (مناة), “Fate”—from the Semitic root M-N-Y, “to apportion”—was the oldest of the three, with her shrine at Qudayd between Mecca and Medina.⁷

All three shrines were destroyed in 630 CE: Manat’s idol by ʿAli ibn Abi Talib, Al-Lat’s shrine at Ta’if by al-Mughira, Al-ʿUzza’s acacias by Khalid ibn al-Walid. This mirrors the Deuteronomistic destruction of Asherah’s poles (2 Kings 23:4–7)—the same suppression pattern across 1,300 years and 1,500 miles.

Al-Jallad’s Safaitic evidence (Religion and Rituals of Pre-Islamic Arabia, 2022) shows ʾlht (“the gods”) invoked 1,437 times in inscriptions—the word itself is the feminine plural. The “gods” of pre-Islamic Arabia were, grammatically and theologically, goddesses.⁸

The Fusus al-Hikam (“Bezels of Wisdom”) comprises 27 chapters, each the kalima (logos) of a prophet. Ibn Arabi (1165–1240) articulates a three-seal typology: Muhammad as the Seal of Prophecy (the last prophet), Jesus as the Seal of Universal Sainthood (completing the arc of sanctity across all traditions), and Ibn Arabi himself as the Seal of Muhammadan Sainthood (the greatest saint within the Islamic dispensation).⁹

In the Futuhat al-Makkiyya (Chapter 366), Jesus descends at the white minaret east of Damascus, but his function is ontological, not primarily political. He prays behind the Mahdi, submitting to Muhammadan law—confirming that while universal sainthood is sealed by Jesus, legislative finality belongs to Muhammad’s dispensation.

The Perfect Man (al-Insan al-Kamil): “When he shall depart and his seal shall be removed from the treasury of this world, there shall no more remain in it that which God stored therein, but the treasure shall go forth, and every type shall return to its antitype, and all existence shall be transferred to the next world.”¹⁰ This is eschatology as ontology—the end of the world is the withdrawal of the Perfect Man.

Henry Corbin (1903–1978) coined mundus imaginalis to translate Arabic ʿalam al-mithal (عالم المثال, “world of images”). The imaginal is not the imaginary. The imaginary is unreal. The imaginal is a real ontological realm—an intermediate world (barzakh, برزخ) between the purely intelligible and the sensible.¹¹

Suhrawardi and Mulla Sadra articulated a three-world cosmology: ʿalam al-jabarut (the world of divine power, pure intelligences), ʿalam al-malakut (the imaginal world, where spiritual realities take form without becoming material), and ʿalam al-mulk (the sensible, material world). The Hidden Imam “exists” during his occultation in the imaginal world. Prophetic visions occur there. The Dajjal, the Mahdi’s return, the resurrection—all “take place” in the mundus imaginalis.

This does not make them less real. Corbin: “The events of the soul take place in a real world that is neither the physical world of the senses nor the abstract world of the intellect. To say that these events are ‘imaginal’ is not to say that they are ‘imaginary’ in the pejorative sense.”¹¹ The Sufi contemplative framework resists both literalist apocalypticism and secular dismissal.

David Engels, writing in LEO Magazine (March 8, 2026), identified the convergence: “The most surprising common ground among adversaries may lie precisely in this shared conviction that history itself is approaching a decisive and transformative climax.” Three traditions—Jewish messianism, Christian Zionism, Shia millenarianism—all interpret the current conflict as potential fulfillment, creating “a paradoxical situation in which several influential actors—despite their theological differences—share a belief that dramatic escalation might ultimately serve a higher historical purpose.”¹²

The Sufi contemplative tradition resists this convergence. The Qutb—the axis around which the spiritual cosmos revolves—operates invisibly. Ibn Arabi’s mundus imaginalis places eschatological events in an intermediate realm: neither literal apocalypse nor metaphor. Rabi’a al-Adawiyya’s prayer strips away both fear and desire: “If I worship You for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell. If I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise. But if I worship You for Your own sake, do not withhold from me Your everlasting beauty.”¹³

The deepest Islamic response to this war is not messianic but contemplative: dhikr as the antidote to forgetting. The root that connects mazkir to dhakir across the Semitic family says that the recorder and the one who remembers God are performing the same act. Both call something into presence that would otherwise be lost.