LEGEND OF THE IMMORTAL

ASSALAMULAIKUM, I HAD SPEND THE ENTIRE SEPTEMBER TRYING TO COMPLETE MY ARTICLE ABOUT KHIDIR BUT WAS UNSUCCESSFUL TO DO SO. I JUST LOST INTEREST AND FOCUS TO WRITE ABOUT IT. HOWEVER, SINCE IT'S ALREADY 1/4 DONE, THEN I'VE DECIDED TO POST IT HERE TO START OF THE OCTOBER UPDATE OF MY BLOG)

Greetings to all my readers and my friends the Malaysian watchers.

There's a guy who sent me an email condemning my last article about Khidir. In case you haven't got a clue of who Khidir was, then kindly peruse me previous article 'the Immortals'. But if you are too lazy to read it, then I shall accommodate your laziness by briefly telling you that Khidir is an immortal who was born during the day of Alexander the Great and is prophesied to be killed by Dajjal (Anti Christ) in the future.

So this guy who dare to condemn me actually said he had never heard of Khidir before. Therefore he accused me of being full of shits. His reasons? Well, he said that it's impossible for any immortal to have live under the radar for thousands of years, avoiding detection by the rest of mortal beings.

Initially, I was quite surprised to hear that. But then again I shouldn't be surprised with the Y generation of today. I mean, most of them might have heard of Nameewee and his film Nasi Lemak 2.0, and yet they haven't even heard about 'As-Sufyani' and 'The Black Banners'.

Ehem.. Clearly some Malays in this country doesn't read books that much.

I would understand how someone would think it is impossible for immortals to have walk on the face of the earth. Logically speaking, if such immortal do exist, then there ought to be slips and mistakes here and there revealing his presence in the course of human's history. Take Lucifer for example, this immortal condemned creature had been know to try his hardest to conceal his existence (ever heard "Devil's greatest lie is that he didn't exist"?) up to the point of concealing his existence from some of the elite members of the Illuminati. But still Lucifer made a slips now and then, didn't he?

Being human and all, I think Khidir did made a few slips throughout centuries. Legends about mysterious men wearing green outfit are abundant all over Europe and the rest of the world even though it rather odd that these legends has never made it into the silver screen.

In continent where Muslims is dominant, this man is quickly rumoured to be Khidir and therefore there's no real mystery there of where he got his supernatural power from. However, in most region in Europe where non-Muslims were not familiar with his history, his exploits there inadvertently caused certain myths such as him being a spirit, a ghost, a saint and even a green spirit of the forest.

Through a brief period of time my group have compiled stories from various sources. In conclusion we believe Khidir is still the same old Khidir who once joined Alexander the Great (Iskandar Zulkarnain). Khidr I believe, is still the same old warrior who wanted to die in battle as Jihadist. This attitude doesn't seems to abate by time. Yes, he does have a bit sense of humour which I think only a Klingon warrior could find funny. And yes, his sense of fashion also haven't change that much because he still prefers green over any other color (even though he also occasionally appears in white).

Now, there are actually several immortals who walked the earth as we speak. There Dajjal (Anti-Christ), Khidir and Ilyas. Then there are immortals who didn't go anywhere such as Harut and Marut whom I recently I learned from an article in Insan-Insan Pendakwah. The immortals who walked the earth probably caused a legend to be born here and there.

Because "legend" by definition is a literary genre that is somewhere between a myth, a tall tale and history, then the story about these immortals had suffered larger-than-life exaggeration and even tailored to fit the situation in the place where it happened. Therefore in order to identify the legend which hinted the presence of Khidir or other immortals, one must not take the entire story as the truth. Instead, we just note the necessary "elements" in order to consider that "Khidir was probably there even though he might not be doing what the legend said he did.

A good example is about the legend of the invincible green warrior St-George. From the onset, a lot of Muslims wouldn't like to like the idea that St.George might be Khidir. This is because St.George is a character in Christian legend. In what best known as the ‘Golden Legend’, a princess was about to be sacrificed to the dragon when St George, who was conveniently passing by, came to her rescue by killing the dragon with a single blow from his lance. The legend goes on about him then delivered a powerful sermon and converted the locals to Christianity.

Now, reading legend like this would certainly make you uneasy because we know Khidir would never choose Chritianity over Islam. However, people often failed to realize that the story about St-George as portrayed by the Christians actually refers to the period before Islam. The Golden Legend itself is a story of which allegedly occured 300 years before the birth of Prophet Muhammad. Therefore it would be unfair to prejudice all those who embraced Christians before the coming of Islam. Furthermore, we all have learn that there's Christians prior to the coming of Islam who are truly "Ahl al-Kitāb" (أهل الكتاب) for example Waraqah Bin Naufal and King Najasyi. As in the case of Najasyi for example, as a true Ahl al-Kitāb he had 'upgraded' his faith from Christian to Islam in a blink of an eye immediately upon learning about Muhammad.

There has been a few stories which suggested Khidir's presence during the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979–1989). These stories were once distributed through email when Internet in Malaysia was still dial-up at 56.6 kbps. However, these stories are no longer searchable via Google today. Apparently the Illuminati had made sure it's wiped out from the world wide web. There's a story about 25 Mujahideen ambushing 200 Russian armies in Syahturi. After only four hours of battle 70 Russian were dead, 26 were captured alive and the rest of Russian advancement stopped and withdrawn. The Mujahideen actually were puzzled why the Russian fled so soon. It was during interrogation that the Russian prisoners were surprised to learn that they were surrendering to such a small group of Mujahideen. They've swore they have been ambushed from four different directions by what they thought thousands of Mujahideen. They're clearly telling the truth because the injured and dead Russians were suffering gun shoot wounds at different angle of their bodies too. When asked whether any of them have seen these other 'groups' of Mujahideen, they replied they did not but two soldiers did recalled briefly seeing a green clothed man up hill pointing his AK-47 shooting towards the Russian. No Mujahideen had seen the mysterious green man.

Coincidentally enough, that the place where this story took place actually was quite near to a place in Afghanistan named "Khawaja Khidr" (Khawaja Khidr is Khidir's other name in India). How this remote places came to be named "Khawaja Khidr" is beyond me and it doesn't make sense considering that from satellite it can be seen that there's generally nothing there except for hills and forest. This place also one of many few places which had never been attacked by the Russian forces.

(Note: In fact, there's quite a numbers of this place in this world named after him.. I wonder why..)

It is worthy to note that the appearance of mysterious guy in white is quite abundant during the Afghan War. His presence is even reported in Chechen War. Most people said that he's an angel. That's possible, and it is also possible that he's either Ilyas or Khidir. When Moses met Khidir (as told in Al-Quran) Khidir actually was wearing a white robes. Therefore it's apparent that his wardrobe (if he has any) isn't not consist only with green design. In fact, the association of 'green' with Khidir actually is more about the legend that his presence can cause grass to grow. However in most legend he did appeared in green, for example the story about him appearing before Syeikh Abdul Kadir Jailani.

There's a good example of possible hint in the British legend about him. In the 14th-century Arthurian poem Sir Gawain, a mysterious Green Knight appears before King Arthur during a feast being completely green: skin, hair, dress, and all.

It is saif that the green knight holds a bough of holly in one hand, and an enormously menacing battle axe in the other. He appeared before King Arthur and issued a challenge: he will allow one man to strike him one time with his axe, under the condition that he be allowed to return the blow the following year by New Years.

At first, King Arthur stood up to the challenge but other Knight by the name Sir Gawain pulls Arthur aside and accepts the challenge himself. In one swoop, Sir Gawain beheaded the Green Knight only to have the strange Knight calmly stand, retrieve his head, and tell Gawain to meet him at the Green Chapel at the stipulated time (this is one reason why the watcher's think this knight is Khidr because there's a clear indication of immortality here).

A year later Sir Gawain departs to the Green Chapel where Gawain saw the Knight sharpening his axe. Gawain honorably bends to have his head cut off, only to have the Green Knight fake two blows, then barely nick him on the third. The Green Knight then reveals that he merely wanted to test Arthur's court. He and Gawain then part on good terms.

It is possible that Khidir inspire almost a similar legend in Ireland in the 8th century. This time he was a warrior King in Munster located in the south of Ireland with superhuman abilities and a master of disguise possessed of magical powers. When three Irish warrior came before him to be judged of whom amongst them is the true warrior, he devised a brilliant way to test these warriors. He disguised himself as a green giant who offered to have his head beheaded by these warriors. But there's a condition, if he didn't die then he will have his turn to cut their head off the next night.

Each of the three warrior beheaded the giant's head but to their horror saw the giant simply pick up is head and put it back to where it was once. The night after, only a warrior by the name of Cúchulainn came to honour the agreement while the other two cowards had ran away fearing death. Similar to what happened to Sir Gawain, the Giant revealed his true face and declared Cúchulainn as the true warrior for his honorable conduct.

In S.E Asia, the appearance of Khidir can be traced during the Java War. According to an article presented by an Indonesian friend in the Group, during the war the Dutch had killed almost 6000 ulama. Now, the situation in Indonesia with the Dutch East India Company (VOC) has one stark contrast with Tanah melayu and the British. Unlike the British, the VOC is somewhat similar to the Portuguese who came to Malays Archipelago not only because of greed, but also because they're spreading Christian. During the war, the stories about how several religious figures were visited and guided by Khidir is quite common.

There are quite a lot of people in this world who had taken interest on profiling Khidir. Of all these people, the one who had spent the most money (billions) and years (hundreds) tracking down Khidir is the Illuminati themselves. Nowadays, one of the task of NSA supercomputers is gathering intels on possible location of Khidir. The computers roamed the world wide web and telecommuniation network trying to pick up bits and pieces which may led to his where about. Naturally, words like "khidir", "green men", "men in green", "green ghost", "green wizard" etc etc had become part of triggering keywords which led the NSA to point their satellite on that exact location.

This "leave-no-stone-unturn" searches sometimes even went overboard. For example when report first emerged about vegetation blooming in the arctic due to global warming, the NSA sent their military over the place to check things out ahead of the scientists. Even today whenever there were report about vegetation appears in places where it shouldn't be, the Illuminati will check these places out. The reason? Well, because it is widely believed that whenever Khidir hang around in one places for a while, grass and other vegetation started to bloom.

There were probably some truth in this legend because that would explain why sightings of the legendary "green man" mostly happens in the woods. I mean, what's better way to hide a leaf if not in the forest, right? If he inadvertently caused grass to grow wherever he went, then it's good strategy to journey in the forest where there's already plenty of bushes around to camouflage the trace.

In Europe, the legend has been around about a mysterious green man who walks alone in the forest. Because of his mystical power, The Green Man was thought as spirit the vegetative realm. The legend goes back many centuries. Usually mistaken as a pagan deity, the "Green Man" artwork can be found carved on buildings and even churches dating from the 11th century through to the 20th century. However there are no examples of the Green Man on any buildings or in any artwork pre-dating the 11th Century, supporting the idea that it was actually an imported motif, most likely from India brought over via Silk Route traders in the 11th century.

In India, he is known as Khwaja Khizr, or Pir Badar, or Raja Kidar, and is the object of a still surviving popular cult common to Muslims and Hindus. Iconographically from the Indian legends, Khwaja Khizr is represented as an aged man, having the aspect of a faqir, clothed entirely in green and moving in the waters with a ‘fish’ as his vehicle. In Indian legend, Khwaja Khizr is said to be the the guardian of the Water of Life (amrta) and Master of all jungle creatures. Therefore when the princess of Indian serpents went to get the water, Khwaja Khizr ordered her to reveal her human form first before allowing her to get some.

You might be wondering by now what's the point of trying to collect stories about Khidir around the world. What's the need of trying to learn about this immortal man?

Actually, I'm not sure why myself. I can speculate why the Illuminati is looking for him though. I bet they're thinking that if they locate where he is, than that could hinted to the location of Al-Mahdi too. It makes sense, from our profiling we began to see some patterns in all his previous appearances. This man who have mastered the knowledge on how to see the future, had developed a habit of visiting some of the most prominent figures who later cause a ripple in the fabric of time. Whether this appearance were caused by his curiosity or simply an urge to approach and guide the people he perceived as historical figures, that I don't know. From Salehuddin Al-Ayubi to Sunan Kalijaga (Indonesia) to Imam Shamil (Chechnya).

I would like to share a few stories about what I believe the involvement of Khidir in Chechnya. These are stories told to me by a Chechen friend. Now, for those who have watched 'Jejak Rasul 2011' in TV3 this year, they would no doubt familiar with Imam Shamil whom untill today is hailed as the ultimate freedom fighters from Chechnya. According to legend, the said Imam was

(AT THIS POINT, I COMPLETELY LOST THE JUICE TO WRITE MORE ABOUT THIS TOPIC. IT'S LIKE SOMEONE SWITCH OFF THE BUTTON INSIDE ME.. SO SORRY ABOUT THE INCOMPLETE ARTICLE ABOVE..)