Ottoman Cavalry and its elite Janissaries (center). The Islamic terror of Nostradamus' Christendom.

Friends,
Twentieth-century America had its national fits of “red” Bolshevik scares. The worst promoted in the late 1940s early 1950s by US Senator Joseph McCarthy’s inspired witch hunt under the congressional auspices freely effected mostly by innuendo a pogrom against communists in the Hollywood movie and television industry. The Soviet Union in the 1960s fell sway to a red scare in yellow peril when Russian Marxists differed with Mao and Red China’s Confucian model. The Soviet scare was a collectively Russian throwback to the 1300′s when Mongol Hordes conquered and subjugated European Russia for centuries. The new “yellow peril” had become Mao Zedong’s Red China with newly acquired atomic bombs in 1964. Border clashes on the Chinese-East Siberian Soviet frontiers nearly lead to all-out nuclear war in 1969.

From Red to Islamic scares, we in the West know the jihadist jitters well but nothing like in Nostradamus’ day. I believe the great 16th-century prophet from Provence suffered at times from seeing his world through a conditioned socio-political and religious filter of fear of an Islamic peril. Like all collectivized scares, red, yellow or Islamic, they are founded on some fact. Communism made it clear it wanted to spread all over the world and take down the capitalist imperial countries and their middle-class bourgeoisie. Russia, ever successful in overthrowing invasions from the West always easily fell to invasions from the East. The rise of a nuclear, belligerent and massively populated red giant in the East frightened the Politburo in Moscow. Scenarios for preemptive, unilateral nuclear war with the People’s Republic of China in the late-1960s were seriously considered. The odds were 2 to 1 that it could happen. Jeane Dixon foresaw it. Richard Nixon (a secret client) prevented it in the early 1970s with his brilliant gamble of trilateral diplomacy.

Nostradamus in the mid-16th century lived in a Christian Europe seriously divided by the Protestant Reformation at a time when the Islamic Ottoman Empire was at its peak of power. Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent was Islam’s Alexander the Great, gobbling up Mediterranean outposts of Christendom and Christian kingdoms in Eastern Europe. More than once he threatened to sack Vienna, capital of the Holy Roman Empire, with his vast armies. The coast of Nostradamus’ native Provence was frequently raided by the 16th-century terrorists of his day. Rather than hijack planes and set off truck bombs, these Barbary Corsairs hijacked Christian ships and sacked coastal towns in South France.

It was enough to make Nostradamus fall into fits of prophetic hyperbole about Muslims conquering Europe no less ginned up than McCarthy’s prophecies of imminent communist takeover of Hollywood and the world, or the Soviet Politburo’s forecast of Red turning pale yellow perilous if Mao’s China kept going against the Marxist-Leninist path.

Nothing masks a prophetic bias better in a prophet then an accurate vision of threat in the future. For example, the vision of Century 1 Quatrain 56 had elements that were definitely fulfilled:

Vous verrez tost & tard faire grand change,
Horreurs extremes & vindications:
Que si la lune conduicte par son ange,
Le Ciel s’approche des inclinations.

You will see, sooner and later, great changes made,
Extreme horrors and vengeances:
For as the moon (of Islam) is thus led by its angel,
The heavens draw near to the reckoning.

Gabreel (Gabriel) is the avenging angel of the Christian and the Islamic Apocalypse. Nostradamus often uses the scales of Justice as a symbol for democracy. In this verse, the French inclinations can mean reckoning and balance as in Justice’s scales.

Another reoccurring theme is terror coming out of the heavens. In my book on Mabus, I wrote a whole chapter explaining how Nostradamus’ famous “1999″ prophecy (10 Q72) could describe the terror of the Middle Eastern Antichrist coming from the skies (the heavens). I have wrestled as far back as the mid-1980s in articles with a theme. Back in 1995, I proposed in Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies (published in 1997) that the Great king of terror from the skies (10 Q72) would descend on the Western democratic powers, as early as July of 1999 or no later than 2001.

The quatrain indexing may target the year 1956, which witnessed the first successful victory of Pan-Arab Nationalism against the West during the Suez Canal incident, when Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal and forced French and British forces to withdraw.

The West waging a struggle with Muslim jihadist is an accurate prediction but there are other quatrains where Nostradamus may have misread his visions because of his own primal fear of militant Islam colored in the real threats to Christendom of his own times.

For example, we have 1 Q71:

La tour marine trois fois prise & reprise,
Par Hespagnols, Barbares, Ligurins:
Marseille & Aix, Arles par ceux de Pise,
Vast, feu, fer, pillé Auignon des Thurins.

The marine tower three times seized and recaptured,
By Spaniards, Barbary raiders, and Ligurians:
Marseilles and Aix, Arles by those of Pisa,
Devastation, fire, steel, Avignon pillaged by the Turinese.

I wrote the following interpretation for Nostradamus the Complete Prophecies:

Prophetic bias may have caused Nostradamus to interpret Allied Landings on the French Riviera in August 1944 as a future Islamic invasion.

“The prophet saw Spain and Genoa, allied with the Turks and Barbary Corsairs, embarked on an expedition against Provence. I don’t doubt he peered through the mists and shadows of his vapor-beclouded bowl of water and saw ships invading the Riviera, or Italian troops plundering Avignon. But at what time? I think Nostradamus would sometimes misread the images when coming out of a trance. The process of moving from a subjective experience to objective writing made it easy for his mind to cloak what he experienced in more familiar garb. He probably saw an invasion of southern France but projected Muslims, Genovese, and Spaniards onto a vision that more adequately describes Provence during its occupation by the Axis and during the Allied landings of World War II. The Italians pillaging Avignon were not Turinese mercenaries but Mussolini’s Italians, who marched through Avignon, Aix, and Arles in November of 1942 to assist German troops in occupying Vichy-controlled southern France. For the next year the Italians occupied the French Alpine regions as far west as the Rhône River and as far south as Avignon. Later, in August 1944, the Allied invasion fleet did set sail from bases in Italy. One could say by synecdoche that they are those of Pisa. Marseilles in particular, Aix, and Arles endured vicious street fighting or devastation, fire and steel, during the Allied invasion.”

This accurate prophecy may suffer from Nostradamus Islamophobia.

Keep the above preamble in mind while I share an interchange I had with “Laura” on Islamic perils and Caucasian population declines back on 30 April 2009.

LAURA
Just watched a YOU TUBE video about the decline of western culture because of very low birth rates.

HOGUE
You mean, the birthrates of Caucasians in Europe.

LAURA
According to this, Western Europe, Britain, Canada and the US are already past the point of no return…

HOGUE
Caucasians, yes, but America expects to replenish its population with new immigration. It will certainly change the nature of Western Culture. Indeed the world is changing from national-oriented and regional cultures towards a global culture. The spread of immigrants is the key.

LAURA
And that, with the much higher rate of Muslim births, Muslims will dominate the populations of those places in around 2050. What does Hogue see?

HOGUE
Nostradamus kept talking about an invasion of Europe by a Muslim horde. I think he misread his prophecies and mistook the appearance of Muslims and Mosques in future cities of France as some post-occupation vision.

What you say is not going to happen to America, but has some prophetic merit about Europe. The question to ask is, what will be the nature of the new Muslim communities in Europe? Will they assimilate more completely than they do now? Will the times be different and less bitten by the bug of religious extremism in the future?

It may very well be that in 36 years, when oil is no longer the chief fuel source of the global civilization, the Middle East economies will completely collapse from the strain of population, loss of oil revenues, and the drying out of the water tables from global warming. A huge host of refugees could bear down on Europe. Not an army but an army of refugees looking for work, water and food. This is a future possibility Nostradamus may have misread because he could not see beyond his contemporary fears of the rising tide of Muslim hegemony in the Mediterranean during his lifetime.

There are other potential future destinies which once engaged will depopulate the world to such an extent that this discussion about demographic hegemony of one culture/race over another has no future.

I see coming a future reformation of the Muslim religious creed after the Ummah (community of believers) passes through what the Christian community passed through back in the 16th and 17th centuries — an era of religious civil wars. The Muslim world could avoid this tendency, if lessons are learned from the mistakes of Christians.

I foresee a far more Sufi-like and tolerant Islam 50 years hence, once the fire of intolerant fundamentalism flames out as it always does in the life cycles of religions.

John Hogue

(27 August 2010)

Abraham sacrificing Isaac, by Rembrandt.

A great mushroom cloud ascended into Iraqi skies from a massive truck and car bombing in Baghdad on October 25. It expolded on an intersection of many key Iraqi government ministry buildings, which include the Iraqi Ministry of Justice and the headquarters of the Baghdad Provincial Council, rendering them windowless shells. Days later, the bodies are still being pulled out of the debris. At the time of this writing the death toll rises to more than 160 people, including dozens of children and over 500 are seriously wounded.

This was a direct Sunni insurgent attack on the Shia Iraqi controlled Nuri al-Maliki government. Prime Minister al-Maliki blamed it on Saddam Hussein die-hards aided and abetted by al-Qaeda trying to disrupt the country’s upcoming parliamentary elections.

I had proposed in Predictions for 2009 that progress to bring the three quarrelsome Shia, Sunni and Kurdish communities that make up Iraq into a national coalition would falter by 2010. Though the dictator Saddam Hussein is dead, his evil ghost haunts Iraq’s efforts to forge a sustainable future. In death, Saddam will indeed gain more prophetic capital as Nostradamus’ Third Antichrist, as we will see below.

Ray Mabus Antichrist, Part 2

I want to share more of your comments and reflections stirred by the appointment of Ray Mabus as Secretary of the US Navy in President Obama’s cabinet. Although Mabus has the dubious coincidence, perhaps, of having a name exactly like the code name for Nostradamus’ Third and Final Antichrist, I, like a Muslim reader of my blogs named “Sultan,” tend to lean towards a candidate already dead as chief candidate hidden under Nostradamus’ anagram, see: Mabus antichrist.

Reverse the letters of Mabus and you get Subam. Reverse the b to d and you get Sudam. You can add or subtract redundant letters and get Suddam. Nostradamus’ rules of anagram allow one new letter replacement to finish the letter puzzle. Therefore, you could change the u for an a and get Saddam. However, the Arabic would allow the u to remain because the pronunciation is like a long a for awh or uh: Sawhdam or Suh-dam Hussein. Quatrain 62 of Century 2 in Nostradamus predicts the Antichrist, code named Mabus, achieves his evil destiny after death, causing a “terrible undoing of people and animals”.

At the time of this writing, the dead Saddam Hussein has fulfilled more elements of the Third Antichrist prophecies than any other living candidate. Sultan begins by reminding us to be aware of Muslim perceptions regarding the death of Saddam in this interchange below — which I will enlarge upon for the public:

SULTAN
Sudam Hussein was killed around a day or two before Eid ul Adha, I remember this because I was mad at why they did not kill him after Eid ul Adha.

HOGUE
I posted an article about that on 31 December 2006, the day after he was hung, saying it was a Shiite government’s slap in the collective Sunni faces of Sunni Iraqis. Beyond that, an indelicate gesture against the civility of all Muslims, especially because of what Eid ul Adha represents to all members of the Ummah (the community of 1 billion Muslims around the world).

SULTAN
See on Eid ul Adha Muslims sacrifice sheep to God, to commemorate how prophet Abraham was allowed to spare his son, and instead sacrifice the sheep, and I guess this is what Nostradamus saw. He probably saw Muslims sacrificing sheep or cattle and that is why he said there would be a great slaughter of animals, but I can’t explain the human part.

HOGUE
Sultan, that is a unique take on the Mabus Prophecy. I’m not sure Nostradamus meant it that way, since he was a Jew whose family became Christian just before he was born. Yet, he indeed being Jewish might use the biblical metaphor of Abraham and Isaac to date Saddam’s death on Eid ul Adha. Maybe it is one of his double entendres. He dates the death of Saddam on a festival of animal sacrifice that would lead later to the wholesale sacrifice of people if Iraq. A peaceful resolution of pent up Sunni and Shia Iraqi sectarian passions is key in preventing the war of the Third Antichrist. Were Iraq to unravel, it could take the entire Middle Eastern region down with it in a future religious civil war. Then would come the terrible destruction of people after the sacrifice of animals, if that is how to interpret the famous Mabus prophecy. Thus, the death of the dictator who suppressed these passions let the genie out of the noisome bottle.

Nostradamus was definitely aware of Islamic ideas and had some knowledge of Arabic as it appears in his prophecies. However, he did view Islam with the prejudices of 16th-century Westerners fearful of Ottoman Suleiman the Magnificent’s attempts to expand his conquests into Christendom. I do believe Ottoman encroachment colored his view of the Ummah in the future.

SULTAN
Maybe he saw a riot that broke out in Iraq, over power, I don’t know.

HOGUE

I don’t know either. I know this, I pray that Iraq will find its way, and the various brothers and sisters of different understandings of the Prophet Muhammad can live in peace there. I have hope now that there is a chance, Inch Allah (God willing).

Salaam (Peace)

John Hogue

(28 October 2009)

President Obama escorted by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on his arrival at Riyadh last week.

From Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s offices comes a threat to Iran of biblical proportions. If taken literally, it means an Israeli strike on Iran must wipe every living person, cow and lamb thereof, to appease the Lord of Hosts. The Israeli Prime Minister through his aide, bids us to divine his thinking by reading 1 Samuel’s passages about ancient Amalek, an avowed enemy of Israel, to gander what Netanyahu is threatening for Iran. The story goes that the Lord God himself told Samuel to order King Saul to go out and kill everything Amalekite in sight. Saul disobeyed preserving the choicest livestock for ritual sacrifice to God and any valuable booty. He also left one Amalekite alive, King Agag of Amalek, as his personal prisoner.

Saul lost his crown because he failed to follow The Lord of Hosts holy order to the Hebraic letter. His holocaust was incomplete. After which, he descended into madness, attempted the assassination of God’s chosen successor, King David. Then before the battle of Gilboa against the Philistines, Saul broke his own proscribed rule made when king against committing the cardinal sin of witchcraft. On eve of battle, he conjured a glimpse of the outcome with the aid of a witch. She raised the spirit of Samuel to describe Saul’s forthcoming defeat. Saul added eternal damnation’s insult to sinful injury. Carried off in the chaos of the rout, Philistines bearing down, Saul was about to be captured. He called upon his armor bearer to pull out his sword and run him through. The man baulked. Saul then committed one of the worst sins of all, suicide, falling on his own sword.

The lesson for past and future leaders of the Tribes of Israel: when you think Amalek, read complete destruction of your enemy and its property or go down accursed for ever.

(Is it just me? The biblical God really needs more brand in his diet. Enlighten up, Yehovah!)

Some believe, perhaps even the US President himself, that Netanyahu waxing biblically apocalyptic is a bluff. He is not known as a religious fire breather, however, I have been warning since 2006 about the likelihood of Netanyahu becoming prime minister of Israel a second time and I have never considered him an idle bluffer. I have looked into his eyes when he talked about bombing Iran as one of his first priorities once reelected. There is no Bible-BS about it. If Iran’s nuclear program continues he will bomb it if he decides Israel can politically and strategically survive the backlash.

If in a few days the Iranian President should be reelected, Netanyahu’s desire to bomb will be stronger. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the same man who openly and officially played King Agag of Amalek when he mused that Israel should be wiped off the map. This man begins every public speech invoking a prayer for the return of the 12th Imam, the leader of the final jihad against Jewish held Jerusalem in the foretold Islamic version of the Apocalypse. Netanyahu by invoking Amalek has matched Ahmadinejad with his own apocalyptic threat.

The important subplot of Nostradamus: the War with Iran (see Nostradamus predictions) exposed the dangerous spirit of Christian, Hebrew and Islamic apocalyptic programming underpinning the statements and actions of those three American, Israeli and Iranian heads of state who might send their people down a calamitous path to the next great regional conflict foreseen in the prophecies of Nostradamus.

I have some hope that Ahmadinejad may be defeated in the forthcoming election and be replaced by a more moderate voice, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who might follow the path of diplomacy, not Amalek. Then again, my oracle’s intuition sees a close election and the chances of a second term for Ahmadinejad looks likely with the 12 June election in Iran just three days from the time of this article’s posting. Ahmadinejad in a national debate with Mousavi let it be known that even the Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei was against his reelection. Given that he and his supreme council of Ayatollahs are a power overlording presidents and their elections, perhaps they will fix the election and it does not then matter if Ahmadinejad wins the popular vote. This election may turn out to be an Iranian version of Al Gore winning the popular vote but losing the US Supreme Court vote in the 2000 Presidential Elections.

If Ahmadinejad wins, what will another four-years of his apocalyptic saber rattling against Netanyahu government rants of Amalek’s extermination bear forth?

There is some good news. The most powerful man in the world who also talked to God, the same God who told him to invade Iraq and plan a war for Iran, etc., is currently taking out the garbage and glad handing kids on the suburban block of his new home in Dallas, Texas. G.W. Bush no longer has the power to influence this doomsday triumvirate.

I hold some hope that Obama’s thrilling oratory in Cairo will induce real results towards a diplomatic solution. I hope that the windows for Israeli strikes between August and October pass without incident and the year 2009 ends any further discussion in the Knesset of Amalek for at least five years, according to Nostradamus’ astrological prophecies.

Last week was full of symbolism; threats of an Amalek final solution from Israeli leaders came on the eve of the 42nd Anniversary of the Six Day War. Then Obama retorted with his own symbolism. The first step in his high-risk diplomatic outreach to the Muslim, Middle Eastern world with visits to Saudi Arabia and a speech directed to the Ummah (the community of 1 billion Muslims around the world) delivered in Cairo Egypt.

It was from Cairo, 42 years earlier, where President Abdul Nasser threatened to drive all Jews to drown in the sea. The warriors of Israel promptly surprised and destroyed his forces before they could launch their attack. Obama then flew to Germany and visited Buchenwald concentration camp to pay his respects to those millions of Jews who had died in the Holocaust. Netanyahu opened the week with threats of Amalek on Iran. Obama ended the week reiterating before a memorial of the Jewish Holocaust that America was and would ever remain Israel’s most powerful friend and defender. Then he flew to Normandy to pay his respects on Saturday, June 6, to the fallen Americans of D-Day, on the 65th anniversary of the Normandy allied landings in the Second World War.

The symbolism of Obama speaking to the Muslim world in Egypt has another meaning not overlooked by a majority population of Muslim moderates around the world. Obama spoke as a guest of the first Arab government to recognize Israel’s existence and make peace with her. The day before he was visiting King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, a man who has worked diligently to unite Arabs behind the idea of a two-state Israeli-Palestinian solution — the lynch pin to peace at least descending on the Middle East and not the biblical fires of nuclear bombs out of some near-future Iran-Israeli war.

Either a Middle East crisis or breakthrough to peace is coming this year.

John Hogue
(09 June 2009: two days after the 18th anniversary of Israeli jets destroying Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor outside of Baghdad)