Mubarak's fall spawns End of Times prophecies

Amid predictions that the world will end tomorrow, some Egyptians ask if the ousted president wasn't, in fact, the Anti-Christ

Egyptians, especially those that participated in the recent revolution, hold many grudges against ousted president Hosni Mubarak. Now, however, they've taken their animosity to a whole new level, accusing the deposed leader of being nothing less than the Anti-Christ himself.
The Anti-Christ, or Meseekh Al-Deggal in Arabic, is the man whose arrival on earth will signal the end of days, in which, according to scripture, everyone and everything will ultimately perish.
The idea of Mubarak as Anti-Christ has caught fire on social networking sites, with many users presenting Muslim Hadiths,sayings of the Prophet, in support of the theory. While others dispute the notion, they nevertheless posit Mubarak's very existence as a sign that the end is indeed nigh.
One website noted that, according to certain Islamic beliefs, doomsday will come after Egypt is ruled by a leader whose first name is "Mohamed" and second name is "Hussein," of which "Hosni" - Mubarak's middle name - is a variation. This, say doomsday-watchers, constitutes further proof that his existence - and recent fall - represented a sign that the end of time can be expected any day now.
One theory currently making the rounds on the web suggests that the world will end on 26 September - this Monday - due to massive earthquakes caused by a rare planetary alignment. The quakes, believers say, will make Japan's recent disaster look like a walk in the park.
Even Egypt's Coptic Patriarch, Pope Shenouda III, referred to the prediction, joking at the end of his last weekly sermon, "We'll meet again next Wednesday after the earthquake, God willing."
After the theory was savaged by local and international scientists, however, the public's attention has shifted again to the year 2012 - only three months away - which many fatalists fear will be our last year on earth, since the Mayan calendar ends on 21 December of next year.
The internet abounds with 2012-themed websites, including several official "countdown" sites that offer tips and survival gear for those hoping to escape the cataclysm by building underground shelters.
Predictions of the end of the world are nothing new. Every year, new end-times prophecies pop up with predictions of impending doom.
Earlier this year, US religious leader Harold Camping said the world would end on 21 May. Camping asserted that the date had been revealed to him through numerological calculations drawn from biblical texts.
Needless to say, Camping's predictions did not come to pass.
Many Egyptians, meanwhile, now appear to be jumping onto the doomsday bandwagon. Not only is Mubarak the Anti-Christ, they say, but the Mahdi El-Muntazar - who Muslims believe will come at the end of time to establish peace and justice on earth - had even visited Tahrir Square at the height of the revolution. He apparently made a stop in revolutionary Tunisia as well.
According to Hany Henry, assistant psychology professor at the American University in Cairo, doomsday theories typically stem from a general disaffection with modern life.
"Society is progressing quickly and people often can't adjust to the changes,” he says. "There's globalization, capitalism… many people feel they're falling off the wagon and so they look for a way to escape from the fact that they haven't achieved their goals or solved their problems."
Here, says Henry, is where doomsday theories - which he calls a form of "justified suicide" - come into play. "People feel, 'Well, my life, with all its problems, will end, but it will be a justified ending because it was done by God," he explains.
Nor is it surprising, in light of the political timing, that Egyptians are embracing such theories with increasing enthusiasm.
The ouster of Mubarak, an unpopular leader who ruled Egypt with an iron fist for 30 years and who most Egyptians believed would never relinquish power, took everyone by surprise. Now he's behind bars, along with his sons - a reality that most Egyptians, even months after the revolution, are still struggling to process.
"The impossible has happened: Mubarak and his regime are gone, and now people are starting to think that this is a sign that the end is near," says Henry. "This is especially the case in the Middle East, where leaders generally stay in power until they're ousted or assassinated."
But according to Amena Nosseir, professor of Islamic theology and philosophy at Cairo's Al-Azhar University, the true date of the "final hour" will never be revealed to mankind.
"God has not bestowed knowledge of the final hour to any of his prophets or worshippers, and there's a holy wisdom behind his decision to withhold this information," she said. "God created humans to create life on this planet, so it doesn't make sense that he would give them the knowledge of when the end of time will be."
Nosseir added that most major signs of the Last Days, mentioned in the Koran and hadith, still haven't come to pass. These include, among other things, the return of Jesus Christ, a planetary shift causing the sun to rise in the west, and the arrival of the Anti-Christ - who, Nosseir believes, was hardly personified by Egypt's ailing president.
"People are only saying he's the Anti-Christ because they hate him; because they're shocked at the level of corruption that took place under his regime," she says. "Nothing more."