His loyalists found a fertile recruiting ground across much of the Mideast, in part due to their theme that to many appeared to be an unassailable: An ideal world of justiceandrighteousness was being perverted by authoritarian governments in the region and infidel governments in the West interested only in their own gain rather than the public good.
He stands on the shoulders of all those people who have incessantly prayed for a day when "justice will run down like waters andrighteousness as a mighty stream" (Amos 5:24).