The latest Pew survey of worldwide Muslims show a great deal of superstition in the Middle East:
People talk about Jewish and Christian messianism as a great stumbling block to peace, making the assumption that zealots would purposefully provoke a cataclysmic war in order to bring about end times. But these results indicate that we should be much more afraid that Muslims would act in accordance with their own superstitious beliefs.
Think about it: hundreds of millions of Muslims are expecting the Mahdi not just to come - but to come in the very near future. Combine that with the amount of other supernatural beliefs and we have an explosion just waiting to happen.
It is also stunning that Mahdiism is not only a Shi'a belief, as it is usually portrayed in the West - the poll makes clear that a significant number of Sunnis believe in his arrival as well.
This is very scary stuff.
(h/t @WarpedMirrorPMB)