The Position, Religious References and Social Functions of the Sunni Pretenders of being Mahdi in the last two hundredyears (With Emphasis on Mahdism Mohammad Ahmad Sudani)

Mahdism is a witness to the historical changes of the Islamic world and has an influential role in Shiite and Sunni communities and will be able to play a role in the coherence of the Islamic Ummah and in preventing the opportunism of foreign politicians. This research, regardless of the theoretical subjects in the definitions and characteristics of the Mahdi, and the emphasis on the opportunities and threats that this doctrine can create in the Sunni community, seeks to answer the question that Sunni scholars in the last two centuries in the case of Mohammad Ahmad Sudani (1302 AH), what religious positions and reliance on which religious sources and religious doctrines have been invoked and in which areas of different social aspects have been affected. The present research, with emphasis on library resources and descriptive-analytical approach, after identifying and introducing the religious positions of the Pretenders of being Mahdi, especially Sudanese Mahdi, examines religious references in the form of religious references and religious teachings and social functions of the emergence of the Pretenders of being Mahdi. Assignment to the Ahl al-Bayt (as), Sufi, Mujtahid, Missionary, Wali and Khalifa is one of the most important religious positions regarding them and the Qur’an, hadith, history, and revelation on the one hand and asceticism and loneliness, the command to the good and forbidding from negation, negation of stranglehold of foreigners, the formation of an Islamic government and jihad, on the other hand, have been the main sources and teachings being cited by the Pretenders of being Mahdi. In the field of social functions, to overcome the theoretical challenges of Sunni political thought in the fight against the rulers, redefine cultural and religious traditions, social spectrum formation, epistemic and scientific conflicts, as well as theorizing the Orientalists and Muslim scholars on the subject of Mahdism are the results of the emergence of the Pretenders of being Mahdi, especially Sudanese Mahdi.