More on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Mahdaviat

In follow up to my article four days ago, "The Mystical Menace of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad," here is further news of Ahmadinejad and mahdaviat:

Anton La Guardia concludes in a similar article in London's Daily Telegraph, "'Divine mission' driving Iran's new leader," the sneaking suspicion among Western officials that "Iran's president actually relishes a clash with the West in the conviction that it would rekindle the spirit of the Islamic revolution and - who knows - speed up the arrival of the Hidden Imam." (In Twelver Shi'ite doctrine, the Hidden Imam returns just before the appearance of the mahdi.)

May 11, 2006 update: Jackson Diehl provides more information on this topic in "In Iran, Apocalypse vs. Reform," which I excerpt below:

QOM, Iran—In a dusty brown village outside this Shiite holy city, a once-humble yellow-brick mosque is undergoing a furious expansion. Cranes hover over two soaring concrete minarets and the pointed arches of a vast new enclosure. Buses pour into a freshly asphalted parking lot to deliver waves of pilgrims.

The expansion is driven by an apocalyptic vision: that Shiite Islam's long-hidden 12^th Imam, or Mahdi, will soon emerge—possibly at the mosque of Jamkaran—to inaugurate the end of the world. The man who provided $20 million to prepare the shrine for that moment, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has reportedly told his cabinet that he expects the Mahdi to arrive within the next two years. Mehdi Karrubi, a rival cleric, has reported that Ahmadinejad ordered that his government's platform be deposited in a well at Jamkaran where the faithful leave messages for the hidden imam.

Such gestures are one reason some Iranian clerics quietly say they are worried about a leader who has become the foremost public advocate of Iran's nuclear program. "Some of us can understand why you in the West would be concerned," a young mullah here told me last week. "We, too, wonder about the intentions of those who are controlling this nuclear work."

Qom is a place where the possible ends of Iran's slowly crumbling Islamic regime can be glimpsed—both the catastrophic and the potentially benign. There is the rising, officially nurtured last-days cult at Jamkaran, and the extremist rants of Ahmadinejad's own spiritual adviser, Ayatollah Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, who recently suggested that future elections were superfluous because a true Islamic government had arisen.

Apr. 22, 2007 update: In "Cracks show under Iran's strongman," Marie Colvin provides more evidence of Ahmadinejad's mentality. Here is one example: He

has taken to regaling his inner circle with a startling anecdote from his travels around the country to bolster domestic support for a nuclear programme that has generated vociferous international opposition. Flying back to Tehran one day from a western province, he realised that he would not reach the capital in time for a scheduled prayer and ordered his helicopter pilot to land. As Ahmadinejad tells it, he had just laid out his prayer mat on the flat, fertile terrain of rural Zanjan when three shepherds appeared and began to chant. "Nuclear power is our inalienable right," they cried in faithful unison.

May 30, 2007 update: A. Savyon and Y. Mansharof have written an important study for MEMRI, "The Doctrine of Mahdism: In the Ideological and Political Philosophy of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Mesbah-e Yazdi." A few excerpts:

From the establishment of the Islamic Regime in 1979 to Ahmadinejad's rise to power in August 2005, Mahdism had been a religious doctrine and a tradition that had no political manifestation. The political system operated independently of this messianic belief and of the anticipation of the return of the Mahdi. It was only with Ahmadinejad's presidency that this religious doctrine has become a political philosophy and taken a central place in politics....

Immediately upon assuming the presidency, Ahmadinejad began to assert his belief in the imminent return of the Mahdi as the basis for his political activities. Despite the traditional belief that no one can foresee the hour of the Mahdi's return, Ahmadinejad frequently stated that his coming was nigh. ... Not only has Ahmadinejad wished to proclaim the imminent coming of the Mahdi, and thereby to legitimize his policy and actions by associating them with Hidden Imam - but he has also presented himself as being directly connected to God. ... The messianic doctrine of Mahdism is also manifest in Iranian foreign policy, especially in its attitude towards the Western superpowers and towards the nuclear program.

Jan. 1, 2008 update: In an erudite, readable, and fascinating study, Apocalyptic Politics On the Rationality of Iranian Policy, Mehdi Khalaji goes into depth into the background of mahdaviat and its role in the current crisis. Excerpts from his conclusion:

While the survival of the regime is the most important priority of the Supreme Leader, [Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i,] the president's priority is to pave the way for the reappearance of the Hidden Imam. For the president, the Hidden Imam sanctions his aggressive and defying policy toward the West. More worryingly, certain Shiite traditions state that the Imam's return will come at a time of world chaos, and Ahmadinezhad seems at times to promote chaos for that end. Meanwhile, for the Supreme Leader, there is no theological or ideological restraint for producing weapons of mass destruction or waging offensive wars. …

Contemporary Islamic fundamentalism in Iran—and even generally in the Islamic world—finds its representatives not in the traditional seminaries but among modern educated engineers and doctors. One of the remarkable consequences of this fact for Western policy makers is that while Shiite traditionalist theologians are thinking and acting within a specific theological framework which makes their behavior highly predictable, the new fundamentalists do not follow any established theological system and model. Therefore, understanding their rationale as well as predicting their political actions becomes very difficult.

May 20, 2008 update: Nazila Fathi writes from Tehran that "Iranian Clerics Tell the President to Leave the Theology to Them." Among the issues involved are Ahmadinejad's goal to "hasten the emergence" of the mahdi. In response, he used a news conference last week, to criticize those who were "insulting and mocking" him about mahdaviat. "To deny the help of the imam is very bad. It is very bad to say that the imam will not emerge for another few hundred years; who are you to say that?"

Also in a speech last month, he claimed that the mahdi directed his government and helped him face international pressure.

He said he had the imam's hidden support when he gave a speech at Columbia University in New York last September and was insulted by the president of the university. With Imam Mahdi's support, he said, 500 million people watched him on television. Mr. Ahmadinejad also said the United States had attacked Iraq because it had found out that "the divine hand" — apparently a reference to Imam Mahdi — was going to emerge there.

In response, Ahmadinejad's critics claim that

by linking his government to Imam Mahdi, he was trying to deflect criticism of his economic policies, which have led to double-digit inflation. A senior conservative cleric, Ayatollah Muhammad Reza Mahdavi Kani, warned him weeks ago not to talk about Imam Mahdi and said that even the founder of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, did not claim any links with the imam.

Another cleric, Mehdi Karroubi, who ran for president when Mr. Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005, warned that people could lose their faith in Imam Mahdi. "People would say that if the current situation is his management before his emergence, what would happen after his emergence?" he said, referring to soaring food prices, the daily newspaper Etemad Melli quoted him as saying. "We need to talk about realities," said Mr. Karroubi, who is a former speaker of Parliament. "We should not link everything to religious and hidden issues."

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