Summary Article: A Comparative Study of the Economic Condition in the Times of Both Occultation and Debut
Shiekh Maher Al-Hajaj
Many researchers have been paying great attention to Mahdism, in which lies the future of the world. It is somehow a complex case, which is also directly related to the life of the Shias. It is the standard upon which, the quality of a Shia’s faith is measured. In fact, it is related with many occultation cases, as the Debut that is related to the divine will, the signs of the Debut that are described by Ahlulbait (PBUT), the resurrection, and the miracles that will happen by the Imam after his Debut like the staff of Moses that is among the possessions of the Imam to be used the same way it was used by Moses himself. Thus, these issues led the researchers to write thousands of books and studies about various topics of Mahdism. However, I did not find a specific study that concerns the economic side of Mahdism that covers both periods of Occultation and Debut.
This study, then, seeks to shed some light on the economic side of Mahdism that is considered one of the most fundamental factor of the life of any society. It also encounters the fall of the global economy and its fatal features, compared with that of the utopia that Imam Al-Mahdi will establish. It, moreover, discusses the reasons that lead to disastrous ending of any economic system and how we can avoid such an ending, depending on the one that Imam Al-Mahdi plans to initiate.