Who is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
Saddam is on trial, and Osama is enjoying the fifth year of his involuntary south Asian spelunking holiday. So it was only a matter of time before a new boogeyman emerged, a boogeyman whose apocalyptic speechifying and filthy mustache would fill the spider hole in our hearts, minds and cable TV schedules the way Saddam and Osama used to. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is the new boogeyman. And he’s more than just new. He’s improved! He combines the best of the worst qualities of Saddam and Osama. Like Osama bin Laden, he’s a religious fanatic who gives the impression that he actually welcomes the idea of a military confrontation with the United States. Like Saddam Hussein, he’s got a nation and its military covering his behind (a nation that, unlike Iraq in 2003, actually has a nuclear weapons program). Plus, Ahmadinejad has that creepier-than-creepy smirk, the kind that only people with bodyguards can afford. The only foreign boogeyman, past or present, whose smirk creeps me ou
To understand Ahmadinejad’s mind set and behavior requires a close scrutiny of the elaborate and intricate theology of Hujjatiyyah Shiism, perhaps the most fundamentalist of the numerous Shiite sects. In the 1950s, a group of Islamic clergy led by Sheikh Mahmoud Halabi (a close associate of Ayatollah Khomeini) formed a society called the Anjoman-e Khayryyehye Hujjatiyyah-ye Mahdaviat (Charitable Society of the Mahdi), based in Mashhad, Iran. The Hujjatiyyah membership was mostly composed by the bazaar-i businessmen and fanatical mullahs. Among many things, they were against the communists, Marxists, and atheists. Their overarching “raison d’être,” however, was to prepare the world for the upcoming of the 12th Imam — the Mahdi. However, the most important immediate agenda item on their list was to harass and persecute the Baha’is, a religious group representing a small percentage of Iran’s population. In fact, the Hujjatiyyah-y’s alternative name became “The anti-Baha’i Society” (Anjum
My friend Amil Imani, the Iranian freedom fighter, wrote this in September 2007, but with the Thug-In-Chief back in town it is worth revisiting: To understand Ahmadinejad’s mind set and behavior requires a close scrutiny of the elaborate and intricate theology of Hujjatiyyah Shiism, perhaps the most fundamentalist of the numerous Shiite sects. In the 1950s, a group of Islamic clergy led by Sheikh Mahmoud Halabi (a close associate of Ayatollah Khomeini) formed a society called the Anjoman-e Khayryyehye Hujjatiyyah-ye Mahdaviat (Charitable Society of the Mahdi), based in Mashhad, Iran. The Hujjatiyyah membership was mostly composed by the bazaar-i businessmen and fanatical mullahs. Among many things, they were against the communists, Marxists, and atheists. Their overarching “raison d’tre,” however, was to prepare the world for the upcoming of the 12th Imam — the Mahdi. However, the most important immediate agenda item on their list was to harass and persecute the Baha’is, a religious g
