Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a profound sense of his religious destiny, and it’s not good news for the West. Charles Moore elaborates in the Telegraph:

Last September, he addressed the United Nations in a speech that called on God to hurry up and send along his “Promised One”. This was a reference to the strong Shi’ite belief in a Mahdi, or Hidden Messenger, who will reappear in the world to rule it aright. Recalling his own speech afterwards, Mr Ahmadinejad said: “One of our group told me that, when I started to say ‘In the name of God, the almighty, the merciful’, he saw a light around me and I was placed inside this aura. I felt it myself. I felt the atmosphere suddenly change and, for those 27 or 28 minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink.”…..

What is the West facing in the government of Iran? I read in yesterday’s Times that President Ahmadinejad is a “naïve extremist”. It is an assumption of Western foreign policy elites that extremists are, by definition, naïve, but is it so? The point about Iran since 1979 is that it has been governed by revolutionaries; and the history of revolutionaries - successful ones, anyway - is that they are often mad and bad and incredibly skilful all at the same time. Thus Hitler could genuinely believe in crazed racial theory and outmanoeuvre the chancelleries of Europe. Thus Chairman Mao could promote deranged, famine-inducing economics, while at the same time keeping a grip on power for a quarter of a century.

Mr. Moore’s point is different from the one we want to make. Ours is scarier. Here’s what Moore says about Ahmadinejad’s light from heaven when he intoned the Islamic blessing at the United Nations: By putting himself inside this aura, Mr Ahmadinejad may be at once sincere and cynical. He may truly think that God is bringing the Mahdi his way, but he will also know that by identifying with this strand of Shi’ism he can seem to be a Robin Hood for the poor against corruption. We see no reason to think that Ahmadinejad was being cynical at all. Here is a more complete version of what he said, from a PBS New Hour discussion of Shiism and the Mahdi, the 12th Imam who will return to make the world right:

On the last day when I was speaking before the assembly, one of our group told me that when I started to say “In the name of God the almighty and merciful,” he saw a light around me, and I was placed inside this aura. I felt it myself. I felt the atmosphere suddenly change, and for those 27 or 28 minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink. When I say they didn’t bat an eyelid, I’m not exaggerating because I was looking at them. And they were rapt. It seemed as if a hand was holding them there and had opened their eyes to receive the message from the Islamic republic.

Why not take Ahmadinejad at face value in his revealing comments? He felt that God was acting in that room in the United Nations, and that he was the messenger of God. A hand held the world’s diplomats there, and opened their eyes to receive the Islamic message. They were rapt, sensing God’s aura around Ahmadinejad, even as he felt it too. It must have been a powerful experience for him.

Ahmadinejad may be a true believer, a madman, or both. But there is no reason to explain away his religious conviction. Two centuries ago, the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard described the necessity of a leap of faith over the gulf separating religious belief from unbelief. It seems today that the secular intelligentsia of the West needs a leap of imagination to understand the radically different way that men like Ahmadinejad experience the world and their place in it. We think Ahmadinejad may be mad as a hatter, but that is no reason to doubt his sincerity, his ruthlessness, or his effectiveness in pursuing his religious vision.

UPDATE

Another article in the Telegraph discusses Ahmadinejad’s beliefs and gives a slightly different translation of the UN moment (which we won’t quote again):

When an aircraft crashed in Teheran last month, killing 108 people, Mr Ahmadinejad promised an investigation. But he also thanked the dead, saying: “What is important is that they have shown the way to martyrdom which we must follow.”

The most remarkable aspect of Mr Ahmadinejad’s piety is his devotion to the Hidden Imam, the Messiah-like figure of Shia Islam, and the president’s belief that his government must prepare the country for his return. One of the first acts of Mr Ahmadinejad’s government was to donate about £10 million to the Jamkaran mosque, a popular pilgrimage site where the pious come to drop messages to the Hidden Imam into a holy well. All streams of Islam believe in a divine saviour, known as the Mahdi, who will appear at the End of Days. A common rumour - denied by the government but widely believed - is that Mr Ahmadinejad and his cabinet have signed a “contract” pledging themselves to work for the return of the Mahdi and sent it to Jamkaran.

Iran’s dominant “Twelver” sect believes this will be Mohammed ibn Hasan, regarded as the 12th Imam, or righteous descendant of the Prophet Mohammad. He is said to have gone into “occlusion” in the ninth century, at the age of five. His return will be preceded by cosmic chaos, war and bloodshed. After a cataclysmic confrontation with evil and darkness, the Mahdi will lead the world to an era of universal peace. This is similar to the Christian vision of the Apocalypse. Indeed, the Hidden Imam is expected to return in the company of Jesus.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 14th, 2006 at 9:13 am and is filed under General, Religion, War, radical chic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.