The Blessed Virgin Mary - venerated by Catholic and Orthodox Christians and even by some Muslims - has been Heaven's chosen vessel in modern times to guide the human race with the light of faith in the darkness of a world of deep, irreconcilable conflicts and hatreds.
On July 13, 1917, Mary made a famous prophecy in an apparition to three child visionaries in Fatima, Portugal, that many Catholics believe to hold the key to understanding the history of the 20th century. Specifically, she referred to the rise of communism in Russia on the eve of the Bolshevik revolution, which would ultimately trigger a cataclysmic conflict greater than the then-raging First World War (1914-1918) - that is, the Second World War (1939-1945) - and also unleash a terrible persecution of the Christian faith worldwide at the hands of a violent brand of atheism; she gave assurance, however, that in the end this evil would be defeated, that Russia would return to faith, and that a period of peace will be granted to humanity.
The end of the Cold War in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later were widely seen by Catholic devotees of Our Lady of Fatima as the fulfillment of her 1917 prophecy, especially in the optimistic early years of the post-Cold War era; now, however, with the world apparently descending into a new era of conflict, the dissenting voices which have never been completely silent have grown louder.
However, even the small minority of practicing Catholics who have ever cared about the Fatima message and prophecy have been unable to piece together the historic and current facts of our world to gain a sufficient understanding of where we really stand in light of the Virgin's stupendous promise of a peaceful world a century ago. There is some realization that recent events concerning Vladimir Putin's Russia - his aggression against Ukraine and intervention in Syria - are highly significant, but no clear conception of just what exactly this is.
Russia, for its part, has never officially accepted the Catholic Fatima revelation: not surprisingly, the Russian Orthodox Church has never welcomed Our Lady of Fatima's word in the early 20th century that of all countries in the world, Russia specifically had to be recalled from apostasy and back to the Christian faith. Even so, it is proud of its role in ending the atheist totalitarian Soviet empire: a revived Orthodox identity was the fundamental reason why Russia first refused to crack down on the empire's eastern European subjects in 1989, before leading the Soviet republics themselves to dissolve the USSR in 1991. And in 2004, Putin's Russia welcomed the return of its holiest Orthodox icon, that of Our Lady of Kazan, from a long and tortuous exile in the West in the aftermath of the 1917 revolution.
But today in 2016, the message and prophecy of Fatima have taken on a new relevance and urgency with the dramatically unfolding events in the Middle East.
Fatima itself is the name of none other than the beloved daughter of the Prophet Mohammed. She married Ali, the Prophet's cousin and the first professor of the creed he preached, with whom she bore the line of the twelve imams of Shia Islam. She was at the very heart of the succession struggle for leadership of Islam - "Caliph" - upon her father's death, which pitted her husband Ali's faction, "Shi'atu 'Ali" or "Shia", against Mohammed's other early followers who were not so immediately related by blood but more numerous and powerful as members of the broader community which adhered to the "Sunnah", or practices, prescribed by the Prophet, and hence "Sunni".
This history ultimately lies at the root of the sectarian unrest that has engulfed the Middle East, with the breakup of the formerly unitary states of Iraq and Syria, the rise of ISIS, and a virtual proxy war between a Sunni bloc led by Saudi Arabia and the Shia coalition headed by Iran. The epicenter of this proxy war is Syria: the dictatorship there is run by an offshoot of Shi'ism, the Alawite sect, which Iran along with its sectarian sub-state surrogates throughout the region, notably the powerful Lebanese extremist group Hezbollah, has propped up in the nearly five-year-old civil war against various rebel groups, including Sunni jihad groups, heavily backed by Saudi Arabia in league with the other oil-rich Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf and also the other great Sunni regional power, Turkey.
In 2014, this wider Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict dramatically escalated with the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a virulently extreme brand of Sunni fundamentalism whose violence proved too great even for its erstwhile ally against the Syrian government, Al Qaeda; from a large operating base in the desert hinterland of eastern Syria, ISIS quickly spread to the vast, disaffected Sunni areas of neighboring Iraq, which since the 2003 American overthrow of Sunni strongman Saddam Hussein have never been content under the new Shia-dominated national government. While ISIS officially seeks to displace the established Sunni states in the region and has been in open warfare with the less extreme Sunni opposition groups against the Syrian regime as well as the regime itself (including even Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate Al Nusra Front), it poses a greater long-term threat to Iran and the Shia bloc, which have accused Saudi, Turkey, and the Gulf states of surreptitiously aiding and abetting it.
In the fall of 2015, a dramatic new dimension of the conflict emerged with the intervention of Russia in Syria on behalf of the Shia-Alawite regime and its Iranian-led allies with an airstrike campaign. In no small part because ISIS is heavily manned by Russian-speaking, ethnically Turkic Sunni Muslims from Russia's southern and Caucasian mountain regions - which have been restive ever since the Soviet breakup - Moscow saw it imperative to strengthen the Syrian state, which by then had become increasingly vulnerable to both ISIS and the anti-ISIS Sunni rebels. Not only would the fall of Syria rob Russia of its only naval outpost on the Mediterranean, but it would likely create a haven for Russian jihadists from which to launch and direct an insurgency in their homeland - against Moscow.
Thus, an "Axis of Fatima" has emerged: Russia, the nation specifically tied to the Fatima prophecy of last century, and the world of Shia Islam - which reveres Fatima the daughter of Mohammed in much the way that Catholics and Orthodox Christians venerate Mary - are now aligned together in a regional conflict in the Middle East with strong eschatological undertones. Indeed, Iraq and Syria are not only the cradles of civilization; Syria is intimately tied to the history of the chosen people of neighboring Israel, it is where Christ's followers were first called "Christians", and has always been a crucial crossroads of Islamic civilization. All three great monotheistic faiths - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - have a tremendous interest in the unfolding events in the Middle East as it has undeniable implications for the prophetic end-time destiny of their creeds.
Adding more complexity to the situation is that Russia has just been engaged in a strategic confrontation with the West over bordering Ukraine. From early 2014 to early 2015, Russia-West relations reached their lowest point since the Cold War over Moscow's annexation of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine and support for a separatist insurgency in the east of that country - actions regarded as naked aggression by the European Union and United States but as legitimate national security interests by Russia. Although the Minsk peace accord to stabilize the eastern Ukrainian front has generally been observed for nearly a year, Ukraine and Russia have all but severed traditionally intimate economic ties - a divorce whose fallout, if not contained, could greatly undermine the Russia-West understanding so necessary for global security.
As of January 2016, hopes for peace rest heavily on a kind of grand bargain between the two great camps vying for strategic influence in the Middle East: on the one hand, the United States, NATO, and the Sunni Muslim regional powers of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies; on the other, the "Axis of Fatima" of Russia, Iran, Syria, and Iran's Shia Muslim regional allies and proxies, especially in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen.
Should this peace be attained - even if it can only come through further purification by war and bloodshed - it will truly be the peace of Fatima.
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