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MESSIANIC CULT IN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC
Iranian cult of the “Hidden Messiah” has huge political implication in 21st century. Supreme Leader of Iran and his President are not afraid of direct military confrontation with the West. Why?
Let us check the cult's history.
# Haghani Circle
Haghani school (also Haqqani) is a Shia school of thought in Iran by a group of hardliner right-wing clerics based in the holy city of Qom and headed by Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, an influential theologian. The Haghani Circle has its origin in the Haghani seminary, founded in 1964, which previously had been called Muntashiriya. After two of the leading members of the circle were assassinated (Ayatollahs Qodousi and Beheshti), the hawza changed its name to Shahidayn Seminary (Martyr Seminary).
The Haghani Seminary was founded by Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, Ayatollah Beheshti, Ayatollah Sadoughi, and Ayatollah Taleghani. It was originally conceived in a reform effort to strengthen the weight of philosophy in the hawza curriculum. To this effect, Allameh Tabatabai was commissioned to write two introductory works, which he completed in 1970 (Bidayat al-Hikmah) and 1975 (Nikhayat al-Hikmah). Today, the school trains clerics with both a traditional and modern curriculum, including a secular education in science, medicine, politics, and Western/non-Islamic philosophy.
The Haghani Seminary has been described as "a kind of Ecole Nationale d'Administration for the Islamic Republic" whose alumni "form the backbone of the clerical management class that runs Iran's key political and security institutions." During Iran's elections it is said to be common for candidates to visit the city to "pay homage" to Haghani religious leaders and "receive their blessing." Another source says "most Haghani people serve either in the security forces or in the military."
According to journalist Tim Rutten "the Haghani is a particularly aggressive school of radical Shia Islam which lives in expectation of the imminent coming of the Mahdi, a kind of Islamic messiah, who will bring peace and justice -- along with universal Islamic rule -- to the entire world. ... Members ... of this school believe they must act to speed the Mahdi's coming."
Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi (The founder of Haghani School, is President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's ideological mentor and spiritual guide).
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# Hojjatieh
Hojjatieh — also called Hojjatieh Society — is a semi-clandestine traditionalist Shia organization founded in Iran in 1953 (in Tehran) by Shaikh Mahmoud Halabi (a Tehrani mullah from Mashhad; 1900-1998) with permission of Ayatollah Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi. The organization was founded on the premise that the most immediate threat to Islam was the Bahá'í religion, which they viewed as a heresy that must be eliminated. The group also opposes both Sunniism and the Khomeinist concept of Velayat-e Faqih. An earlier organization was founded by Halabi, the Anjoman-e Imám-e Zaman (called Anjoman-e Zedd-e Bahá'í privately) which later was re-named to the Anjoman-e Hojjatieh Mahdavieh (called Hojjatieh for short) after the Iranian Revolution. In March to June 1955, the Ramadan period that year, a widespread systematic program was under taken cooperatively by the government and the clergy. During the period they destroyed the national Bahá'í Center in
Tehran, confiscated properties and made it illegal for a time to be Bahá'í (punishable by 2 to 10 year prison term.) Founder of SAVAK, Teymur Bakhtiar, took a pick-axe to a Bahá'í building himself at the time.
Halabi is said to have worked with SAVAK security agency under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, offering his full cooperation in fighting "other heathen forces, including the Communists." By doing so he was given freedom to recruit members and raise funds, and by 1977 Hojjatieh is said to have had 12,000 members. However, since the Shah's regime, in Halabi's view, allowed the Baha'is too much freedom, he then supported Khomeini's movement to overthrow the Shah.
The group flourished during the 1979 revolution that ousted the Shah and installed an Islamic government in his place. However it was forced to dissolve after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini speech on 12 August 1983. However there have been mentions of it again circa 2002-2004.
Doctrine
The Hojjatieh society has been described as "an underground messianic sect ... which hopes to quicken the coming of the apocalypse" in order to hasten the return of the Mahdi, the prophesied future redeemer of Islam. However, according to legal scholar Noah Feldman, the idea that supporters "want to bring back the imam by violence, rather than ... wait piously and prepare for the imam’s eventual return on his own schedule," is a misinterpretation of the society's position common "outside Iran". In fact, the "Hojjatiya Society was banned and persecuted by Khomeini’s government in part for its quiescent view that the mahdi’s arrival could not be hastened." Those who adhere to this perspective claim Hojjatieh is a millenarian group who put great stock on the return of the Mahdi and the idea of such a return bringing happiness to true believers.[citation needed]
Methods
Though initially claimed to be using "peaceful methods" allowing harassment but not direct insult or violence, a circle of spies infiltrated Bahá'í communities seeking out Iranians who were interested in the religion and "reconvert" them back to Islam as well as confronting muballighs or Bahá'í missionaries. According to one first hand testimony, suspicions were spread and reputations compromised leading Bahá'ís to treat inquirers badly who would then be recruited to the anti-Bahá'í movement. Students of the organization engaged in practice debates on various topics. See Allegations of Bahá'í involvement with other powers.
Rumored members
Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi is reported to be the highest ranking member of the Hojjatieh. He denies this and has said that if anyone finds a connection between him and Hojjatieh, he will denounce everything he stands for. It is noteworthy that while Hojjatieh generally renounces all Islamic (and other) governments before the arrival of the twelvth Imam as illegitimate, Mesbah Yazdi recommends and gives full authority to the pre-messianic Islamic government. Since the 1980's, Hojjatieh has been frequently cited in unfounded conspiracy theories which claim that real power lies in hands of people who are secretly affiliated with Hojjatieh.
The current president of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is also rumored to be an advocate of Hojjatieh through the influence of Ayatollah Yazdi, who was his mentor. Asia Times reports that Ahmad Tavassoli, a former chief of staff of Khomeini, claimed in 2005 that "the executive branch of the Iranian government as well as the crack troops of the Revolutionary Guards have been hijacked by the Hojjatieh, which, he implied, now also controls Ahmadinejad." According to the report, Hojjatieh were endangering Iran by working for Shia supremacy, Feldman writing in 2006 in the New York Times suggests this rumor was spread by Ahmadinejad's enemies. It is also reported that Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, who was to have been Ahmedinejad's First Vice President, may be a Hojjatieh member, but the source of this information is unclear.
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"Obeying Ahmadinejad like obeying God" -Iran cleric
12 August 2009
A hard-line cleric considered to be the mentor of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on Iranians on Wednesday to follow the newly-re-elected president, saying that obeying him was akin to obeying God.
Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi also warned the country’s opposition groups against undermining supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has been the country’s spiritual guide for 20 years.
‘When the president is endorsed by the leader, obeying him is similar to obedience to God,’ Mesbah Yazdi was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.
Khamenei endorsed Ahmadinejad as president for a second term last week amid a continuing political crisis sparked by widespread protests against his June re-election.
Lashing out at opposition groups that refuse to acknowledge Ahmadinejad’s victory, Mesbah Yazdi said these ‘enemies’ also wanted to undermine Khamenei.
‘The enemies wanted to weaken or eliminate this main pillar and some people knowingly or unknowingly sought to do this in recent events,’ he said. [AFP]
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# HOJJATIYA
By Mahmoud Sadri (15 December 2004)
A Shia religious lay association founded in 1953 by the charismatic cleric Shaikh Mahmud Halabi to defend Islam against the Bahai missionary activities.
HOJJATIYA, a Shia religious lay association founded by the charismatic cleric Shaikh Mahmud Halabi to defend Islam against the Bahai missionary activities. Hojjatiya exerted considerable, albeit indirect and unintended, influence on the education and world-view of the lay elite leadership of the 1979 Islamic revolution. The association was founded in the aftermath of the coup d’état of 1953. The explicit goal of Hojjatiya was to train cadres for the “scientific defense” of Shia Islam in the face of the Bahai theological challenge. Bahai missionaries argued that Shia’s awaited savior had already emerged and that Islam had been superceded by the Bahai faith. Hojjatiya sought to defend the Shia position based on both Islamic and Bahai texts. Halabi’s own sensitivity to this controversy stems from a personal encounter. As a seminarian he and his colleague Sayyed Abbās Alawi had been approached by a Bahai missionary, who had succeeded in
persuading the latter to convert. Alarmed by this experience, Halabi abandoned the normal course of his studies and immersed himself in the study of Bahai history and original texts with the intention of composing a comprehensive Islamic response to the Bahai challenge. Halabi’s original plan to train a group of seminarians to discharge these duties was rebuffed by the clerical establishment in Qom. Halabi then embarked upon recruiting a corps of volunteer lay disciples adept at both substantive arguments and debating skills. This is the group that came to be known, after the Islamic revolution, as Anjoman-e hojjatiya .
Although the primary stages of Halabi’s project evolved in his native Mašhad, he met with little enthusiasm there. It took him six months to recruit and train his first serious student. Halabi’s decision to move to Tehran proved a strategic success. The first circle of his students in Tehran were comprised of religious merchants and professionals. They, in turn, succeeded in recruiting from a talented pool of ardent students from religious as well as secular high schools. By the late 1960s the second generation of Hojjatiya recruits had entered universities and embarked upon modernizing and standardizing the management of the association. Therefore, the early 1970s witnessed organizational reforms within the association that reflected increasing complexity and division of labor. Graduates of the basic instruction on Shia and Bahai history and theology were recruited in specialist teams of operations. The latter included: The Guidance Team, that was
charged with debating Bahai missionaries, persuading Bahais to return to Islam, and neutralizing the effects of Bahai missionary activity on those exposed to it. The Instruction Team along with the Authorship Team jointly worked to standardize instructional material and levels. These came to include basic instruction, the intermediary training, and the graduate training. Most of the instructional material was distributed, in typed and copied form (poly-copy) in classes that met weekly in private homes across the country. They were retrieved within a week so that no copies would leave the provenance of the association. Students were instructed not to share or discuss the material with outsiders. The public speaking team organized weekly public gatherings in various venues that featured trained Hojjatiya speakers discussing Shia theology, critiquing Bahai positions, and fielding questions. The intelligence team, named the Investigation Team operated, in
three distinct regiments, as a fifth column within the Bahai ranks and succeeded in thoroughly penetrating the Bahai hierarchy. Unbeknownst to Bahai’s, some members of the Hojjatiya had advanced to the rank of prominent Bahai missionaries. There were, also, smaller service-providing units within Hojjatiya such as the bureau of contact with foreign countries, bureau of libraries and archives, and bureau of publications. Thus, the most salient specialists in the association were known, in the jargon of Hojjatiya, as: polemical activists, public speakers, instructors, and intelligence operatives. Most full-fledged Hojjatiya members carried out at least two of the above duties in the course of weekly meetings. Bahais, reacted to the emergence of Hojjatiya by adopting a more defensive and reserved posture and by avoiding open debates and confrontations. This response further emboldened the Hojjatiya members and reassured them of the effectiveness of their
approach. The organization steadily grew and by the early 1970s had spread throughout Iran and a few neighboring countries such as Pakistan and India. Indeed, in certain parts of Iran, Hojjatiya grew disproportionately to the Bahai threat and bred resentment among other Islamic organizations, that intended to mimic its success or to recruit from the same pool of talented religious youths.
Between the early 1950s and early 1970s a great number of the future elite of the Islamic revolution were trained, usually as a transitory stage in their ideological development, in pedagogic and practical venues provided by Hojjatiya. Beyond Hojjatiya’s explicit and stated objectives, a sense of dedication, engagement, and accomplishment akin to a Jesuit zeal electrified successive generations of its members. Along with Ali Aṣḡar (Allāma) Karbāsčiān’s Alawi High School, Halabi’s Anjoman-e Hojjatiya signified traditional Shia Islam’s attempt to acclimatize itself to the modern environment and to utilize its resources for the propagation of its worldview. Ironically, in its attempt to confront the Bahai challenge, Hojjatiya emulated a number of Bahai idiosyncra-cies such as the practice of secrecy with respect to the workings of its bureaucracy and access to its original literature, the lay hierarchical nature of the organization, and the
unhindered access to modern means of communication and implements. For example, long before Ḥosayniya-ye eršād, the first modern Islamic lecture hall, was inaugurated in the north of Tehran, Hojjatiya’s public gatherings had become the first Islamic organization to replace rugs and pulpits with chairs and lecterns. Members of Hojjatiya, unlike their traditional brethren, were clean-shaven and groomed for success in the secular educational and professional world. Hojjatiya, under the leadership of Halabi, had succeeded in acquiring necessary religious dispensations and written permissions for usage of a portion of tithes from Shia grand Ayatollahs. These resources were spent for logistical purposes only, as the entire body of the Hojjatiya was comprised of volunteer members.
From the very beginning the activities of Hojjatiya attracted the attention of the security apparatus of the Pahlavi regime. Based on documents published after the Revolution, the leadership of Hojjatiya was pressured to formally register the association as a non-profit, philanthropic organization—hence the title, Anjoman-e Ḵayriya-ye Hojjatiya Mahdawiya—and to promise to abstain from political activities. The latter pledge came to haunt the association after the Revolution of 1979.
The Islamic revolution caught Hojjatiya by surprise. The initial reaction of the leadership toward the Islamic revolution was one of skepticism and suspicion. This caused many defections in its ranks. With the success of the revolution Hojjatiya, under the leadership of Halabi, attempted to placate the revolutionary leadership but was rebuffed. Ayatollah Khomeini, despite his earlier affirmation of the association, allowed open criticism of its apolitical nature and its “conservative bias” in interpreting Islam. Finally, five years after the Islamic revolution, Khomeini publically threatened Hojjatiya with violent suppression in thinly veiled words. Halabi, responded by terminating all of the activities of the Hojjatiya in a terse notice published in a number of newspapers. The announcement was followed by a widespread campaign to purge Hojjatiya affiliates from decision-making, academic, and educational bodies throughout Iran.
The animosity between Halabi and Khomeini is traceable to their distinct casuistries concerning the meaning of Messianism in Islam. Inasmuch as Islam shares the Judeo-Christian Messianic tendencies one may draw a parallel between the Judeo-Christian and the Islamic brands of pre-millenarianism and post-millenarianism. The quietist conservative interpretation of Hojjatiya is akin to a pre-millenarian world-view that, while advocating the ardent and pious practice of “awaiting” the savior, discourages active revolt in order to hasten the appearance of the “Mahdi” or any attempt to build the promised Islamic utopia in the absence of the awaited one. The revolutionary activism of Khomeini, on the other hand, is reminiscent of the post-millenarian tendencies in Christianity and Judaism in that it advocates taking an active role in bringing about the just Islamic society prior to the appearance of the Mahdi in order to hasten his coming. A telling
incident illustrates the aforementioned contrast: in the months following the success of the 1979 Islamic revolution, the gatherings with Hojjatiya affiliation had adopted the slogan of “O Mahdi, make your appearance”. In response, the pro-Khomeini crowds composed a slogan of their own “O God, O God preserve Khomeini until Mahdi appears; preserve him even alongside Mahdi”.
In the years since the termination of the Hojjatiya activities, the origins, nature, and goals of the association have been publicly debated with varying levels of accuracy and objectivity. Its detractors from the left and the right have played a pivotal role in perpetuating views that vastly exaggerate and distort the organization’s influence and agenda through spreading myths and conspiracy theories about Hojjatiya. The pro-Khomeini religious establishment (both organizations such as the Revolutionary Guards and individuals such as Shaikh Ṣādeq Ḵalḵāli have repeatedly maintained that the Hojjatiya’s line remains alive and continues to pose a threat to the revolutionary cause in Iran. The secular critics (namely the Tudeh Party and its ideological allies) have claimed that the association, despite its obvious fall from favor, has been the true power broker behind the scenes. They have used the title Hojjatiya as a euphemism for all they deem
retrogressive, authoritarian, bourgeois, and pertaining to an agent of imperialism in post-revolutionary Iran. However, the original members of the association have largely declined to join the debate, perhaps for reasons ranging from a pious penchant for secrecy to a genuine fear of reprisals.
As the leaders of Hojjatiya were committed to a non-violent, persuasive strategy in dealing with Bahais, the Association did not take part in persecution of Bahais in post-revolutionary Iran. For all Halabi’s animus against Bahais, he was a disciplined pacifist. He was distraught by violence and repeatedly warned his followers: “This is not the way, this is not our way”. [iranicaonline]
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# Iran's crocodile rocked
By Pepe Escobar (19 December 2006)
With votes still being hand-counted, there's every indication Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's moderate faction has scored a stunning victory over the extreme right in the crucial election for the 86-member Council of Experts, according to Iranian state TV.
"Hashemi" - as he is known in Tehran - as well as Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi - the gray eminence and spiritual leader of
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad - will be among the 16 clerics representing Tehran in the Council of Experts.
The Council of Experts (86 clerics only; no women allowed) is key because it's the only institution in the Islamic Republic capable of holding the supreme leader accountable and even removing him from office. It is the system's Holy Grail. The supreme leader - not the president - is where the buck stops in Iran.
Once again, this election has been a case of the extreme right against the moderate/pragmatists. Or the recluse Yazdi - aka "the crocodile" (in Farsi) - against the eternal insider, relative "friend of the West", former president (1989-97), opportunist and king of the dodgy deal, Rafsanjani.
Yazdi is the dean of the Imam Khomeini Educational and Research Institute in Qom, a hardcore hawza (theological school) that has prepared and configured the world view of key members of the Ahmadinejad presidency. It's impossible to interview Yazdi - officially because of "government rules", unofficially of his own volition.
Rafsanjani, aka "the shark", remains the chairman of the Expediency Council and virtually the regime's No 2, behind Supreme Leader Ali al-Khamenei and ahead of Ahmadinejad. Iranian pop culture, with a tinge of Discovery Channel, delighted in describing this as the battle between the crocodile and the shark.
It was heavily symbolic that moderate Rafsanjani and another former president, the progressive, sartorially impeccable Mohammad "dialogue of civilizations" Khatami, voted together in the Jamaran mosque, where the late ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, used to deliver his speeches. Iranian reformist papers did not fail to publish the emblematic photo sealing the alliance on their front pages this past Saturday. Rafsanjani's victory was sweeter because he had lost to Ahmadinejad in the second round of the 2005 presidential elections.
There have been rumors in Tehran for months that Yazdi and his followers were on a power grab. They had won city and village council elections, then parliamentary elections, and the presidency (with Ahmadinejad), and were ready to conquer the Council of Experts and thus be in position to choose the next supreme leader. There have been unconfirmed reports that Khamenei may be seriously ill.
Saudi Wahhabis may complain there are "no free elections in Iran" (as if there were any elections in Saudi). Anyway, popular participation in these, one may say, "relatively free" elections was a healthy 60%.
Clerics running for the Council of Experts must pass a difficult theological exam - and must be approved by the Council of Guardians, which, as with anything that really matters in Iran, is controlled by the supreme leader. The six key mullahs out of the council's 12 jurists are directly appointed by the supreme leader. So inevitably the election for the Council of Experts had to be supreme-leader-controlled. No wonder Khamenei described it last week as the most important in the whole country, stressing that candidates "should comprise honest, wise, competent, benevolent and trustworthy people". Given the election results, the Council of Experts is expected to remain under the ironclad dominance of Khamenei's conservative bloc.
On municipal elections nationwide, the extreme right - clustered on Ahmadinejad-endorsed lists - also fared worse than expected. The results for the crucial Tehran City Council will only be known next week, but certainly there won't be a sweep by the extreme right - rather a surge by the reformists mixed with Ahmadinejad-faction allies plus a coterie of technocratic conservatives.
Yazdi and his followers have always stressed they want to implement "real Islam". They view the Rafsanjani camp as a bunch of filthy rich, morally and legally corrupt decadents, totally oblivious to the concerns of "ordinary people", whose self-styled key symbol happens to be Ahmadinejad.
Yazdi is also the spiritual mentor of the Hojjatieh, a sort of ultra-fundamentalist sect whose literal interpretation of Shia tradition holds that chaos in mankind is a necessary precondition for the imminent arrival of the Mahdi - the 12th hidden (since AD 941) Shia imam who will come to save the world from injustice and widespread corruption. Ahmadinejad may not be a Hojjatieh himself, but he understands where they are coming from.
Yazdi's "real Islam" has nothing to do with Western democracy. He wants a kelafat - a caliphate. Ayatollahs like Yazdi are simply not concerned with worldly matters, foreign policy, geopolitical games or Iran's nuclear program; the only thing that matters is work for the arrival of the Mahdi. Yazdi is on record as saying that he could convert all of America to Shiaism. But some in Tehran accuse him of claiming a direct link to the Mahdi, which in the Shia tradition would qualify him as a false prophet.
Even facing a relative defeat at the polls, the Ahmadinejad faction - known as Isaargaraan ("the Self-Sacrificers") - maintains a huge, countrywide popular base in the military-security establishment, in the tens of millions, ranging from the Pasdaran - the Revolutionary Guard - to the Bassijis, the hardcore paramilitary, also known as "the army of 20 million", and expanding to the pious, apolitical, downtrodden masses, mostly rural but also urban (in sprawling south Tehran, for instance). But the defeat at the Council of Experts signals their efforts for an all-out power grab have certainly been thwarted.
It's important to remember that Ahmadinejad, more than a politician, is fundamentally a believer in the Mahdi. Ahmadinejad even has his own roadmap for the return of the Mahdi; he drew it himself. According to Shia tradition, the Mahdi will rise in Mecca - not in Qom - where he will preach to his close followers (Jesus Christ puts on a guest appearance), draw up the armies of Islam and finally settle down in Kufa, Iraq.
The only crucial policy the Council of Experts has implemented since the beginning of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 has been to appoint Khamenei as Khomeini's successor and new supreme leader, in 1989. It was in fact a white coup - because according to the constitution at the time the supreme leader had to be a marja (source of imitation and top religious leader). Khamenei was not up to standards. Khomeini died while the constitution was being revised; so Khamenei was in fact appointed by a law ratified only after he was already installed as supreme leader.
Yazdi has been trying a different strategy - to take over the Council of Experts from the inside and then overwhelm Khamenei. It's fair to argue that Khamenei has played a very deft hand. He firmly supported Yazdi before the 2005 presidential election, but lately has rallied his followers - and the full machinery of the system - to keep Yazdi and his protege, Ahmadinejad, under control.
"Hashemi" may have been a winner - but most of all it's the supreme leader who seems to be as much in control as he ever was. Khamenei has been politicizing the religious system non-stop, to the point of the Islamic Republic nowadays being neither a democracy nor a theocracy: rather, it's a clerical autocracy.
Neo-conservatives and the Washington establishment should not jump to hasty conclusions. There won't be regime change in Tehran any time soon. This year there has been a serious crackdown on the reformist press, the Internet, personal weblogs, satellite dishes and academia - where more than 50 reformist professors have been targeted.
What is happening now is the moderate/pragmatists reaching a more solid position allied with the reformists - with the extreme right held in check by a supreme leader more supreme than ever. The crocodile may have been rocked. But the Islamic Republic's fierce internal power play is far from over. [atimes.com]
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Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi
www.mesbahyazdi.org
Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi was born 31 January 1934 in Yazd, Iran. He is a hardline Iranian Twelver Shia cleric and politician who is widely seen as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's spiritual advisor. He is also a member of Iran's Assembly of Experts, the body responsible for choosing the Supreme Leader, where he heads a minority ultraconservative faction. He has been called "the most conservative" and the most "powerful" and "influential ... clerical oligarch" in Iran's leading center of religious learning, the city of Qom.
Mesbah Yazdi advocates Islamic philosophy and in particular Sadra Mutahillin's Transcendent School of Philosophy (Hikmat-e Muta`aliya). He believes Iran has strayed from the values of the 1979 Iranian revolution and strongly opposes democratic rule and the Iranian reform movement.
Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi completed his primary and secondary education in Yazd, and then moved to Qom, where he continued his education in fiqh (Islamic Jurisprudence). He studied works of Avicenna and Mulla Sadra. In the 1950s he joined pro-Khomeini students in Qom. His teachers included prominent figures such as Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Bahjat Foumani. He was also among the students of Ayatollah Allameh Tabatabaei, the author of Tafsir al-Mizan, the influential shi'a exegesis of Quran. He graduated in 1960. Before the Islamic revolution, he assisted the other clerics, i.e., Mohammad Beheshti and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in publishing two journals called "Mission of Prophet Muhammad" and "Revenge", while he was responsible for all the publishing activities in the latter.
Political activity
In 1997, after the election of reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, Mesbah Yazdi encouraged Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Hezbolli to put a stop to the reform agitation by any means, including violence. After decline of the reform movement in 2003, his supporters made gains in local and parliamentary elections. In 2005, Mesbah Yazdi supported Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidential bid and subsequently gained "direct influence" in the Iranian government through the appointment of loyal supporters "to high posts" after Ahmadinejad's victory. By 2011, however he was sharply critical of Ahmadinejad saying that he was behaving “unnaturally” and needed to be “saved.” After Ahmadinejad fired intelligence minister Heydar Moslehi without consulting Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Mesbah-Yazdi stated, "That a human being would behave in a way that angers his closest friends and allies and turns them into opponents is not logical for any politician."
According to some sources, Mesbah-Yazdi is rumored to have ambitions to succeed Ali Khamenei as Supreme Leader." Some clerics and some newspapers feared Mesbah-Yazdi was trying to expand his already growing power by "packing" the Assembly of Experts with "loyalists." In October 2006, an acolyte of Mesbah-Yazdi, Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi, was appointed head of the election commission, supervisor of the poll for the Assembly of Experts, and many of the candidates in the 2006 Assembly of Experts elections were Mesbah-Yazdi loyalists (though they ran as independent candidates to avoid revealing their affiliation to Mesbah Yazdi). However, his group failed to achieve a majority in that election, leaving the assembly in the hands of pragmatic-conservatives. Mesbah-Yazdi himself won a seat but finished only in sixth-place in Tehran municipality where he ran, and now heads the minority ultraconservative faction in the assembly.
He has been named by investigative journalist Akbar Ganji as "having encouraged or issued fatwas, or religious orders" for the 1998 Chain murders of Iran assassinations of five Iranian dissidents.
2009 Presidential Election
The neutrality of this section is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (June 2009)
According to the website roozonline, an unnamed cleric that could only have been Mesbah-Yazdi reportedly issued a "religious decree to manipulate the results" of the 2009 election in favor of his follower, president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The information came from an open letter issued by a group of Ministry of Interior employees, who described the cleric as "one of the Qom Seminary School professors, who also heads a research institute there and previously spoke at the Tehran Friday prayers". In part the fatwa read:
"if an election of a presidential candidate, would cause the islamic principles, although it's rising in the countries like Lebanon, Palestine, Venezuela and other parts of world, start diminishing it is Haraam [forbidden by Islam] to vote for that person. We shouldn't vote for that person and we should inform the people not to vote for him either, or else. For you, as administrators of the election, everything is permitted to this end."
On June 22, a few days after security forces broke up one of the biggest election protests, Mesbah-Yazdi "addressed a gathering" of Revolutionary Guards and told them:
"Do not be worried about the events and earthquakes that have occurred. Know that God created this world as a test, ... The supreme leader holds a great many of the blessings God has given us and at a time of such uncertainties our eyes must turn to him."
According to Alarabiya news Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi has issued a fatwa calling for the murder of Mir-Hossein Mousavi following the election. The fatwa itself has, however, not been provided as evidence.
Career
Mesbah-Yazdi has been described as close to Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, Khomeini's first designated heir who was assassinated in 1981 (despite being considered a moderate). Mesbah Yazdi helped Beheshti establish the Haghani School (also Haqqani) in Qom to train the future cadres of the regime, and is (or was) a member of the school's board of directors. The Haghani School is very influential and has been described as "a kind of Ecole Nationale d'Administration for the Islamic Republic" whose alumni "form the backbone of the clerical management class that runs Iran's key political and security institutions."
Mesbah-Yazdi is the author of many books on fiqh, Quran exegesis, divinity and general issues of Islam. His "Amuzesh-e Falsafeh" is used widely in the philosophy classes of Qom's hawza. It broadly covers the same ground as Allameh Tabatabaei's Arabic-language works in philosophy "Bidayat al-Hikmah" and "Nihayat al-Hikma". Mesbah-Yazdi's "Amuzesh-e Falsafeh" has been published in English translation by Mohammad Legenhausen and Azim Sarvdalir as "Philosophical Instructions," Binghamton University 1999.
He publishes the "archconservative" weekly Parto-Sokhan, is the director of the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute in Qom, founded in 1995, and a member (since 1990) of the Iranian Assembly of Experts. In addition, Mesbah Yazdi sometimes speaks before Khutbah in Tehran's Friday prayers.
After the presidential election of June 1997 in the relatively more open political atmosphere in that time, Mesbah Yazdi's students played an important role as the critics of the former president Mohammad Khatami. As a result, Mesbah Yazdi's name appeared more often in the media and became more well known. He issued a fatwa in support of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidential bid, and meets with the president frequently. In December 2006, he was elected to the Assembly of Experts, the group of Ayatollahs responsible for choosing a successor for the Supreme Leader.
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Mesbah Yazdi has been described as "a theoretician of the radicals" in Iran, "extremely hostile towards the West" and "the first senior figure" in Iran to have "publicly endorsed a military nuclear programme." He advocates suicide bombings, the killing of "any person who insults Islam," and the carrying out of the fatwa to kill author Salman Rushdie. He considers "the Zionists" to be the fundamental source of evil on earth.
In an article by the Associated Press, quoting from an 2005 book written by Yazdi, the AP asserted that Yazdi made a "rare public call for the producing the 'special weapons' that are monopoly of a few nations -- a veiled reference to nuclear arms."
In a lecture posted on his website, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi warns of Muslim of the "thugs of falsehood and the followers of the damned Satan" who have formed a coalition of the forces of infidelity and hypocrisy, the servants of dollars and euros/gold and silver, and influential oppressors and traitors to uproot Islam, to fight Muslims, to dominate their countries, wealth, and resources, to deny their glories and excellence, to destroy their relics and teachings, to wipe out their culture, to alter their identity, to put them in miserable conditions, and to force them into wretchedness in this world and God’s punishment in the hereafter.
Mesbah-Yazdi supports a return to what he sees as the values of the 1979 Iranian revolution. He believes an "Islamic republic" is a contradiction in terms, as a truly Islamic government would not hold elections as an opportunity for voters to make choices between representatives and policies, but to express their allegiance to the supreme faqih. He believes that "the republican component" was established in Iran as a concession to secular forces and should be "stripped" away to leave the true essence of the "Islamic system." He has been quoted as saying, "It doesn't matter what the people think. The people are ignorant sheep."
Mesbah-Yazdi is also a firm opponent of the Reformist movement in Iran which he believes an Islamic government must "combat ... because injecting misleading ideas [of reform] is like injecting the Aids virus!". He also claims that young Iranians who questioned the regime after studying abroad did so only because they had been trained in 'psychological warfare' by foreign universities. President Khatami once called him the theoretician of violence.
In 2005 he issued a fatwa urging Iranians to vote for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former student and "protege", whom he is "considered a ideological and spiritual mentor" of, and with whom he reportedly meets with weekly. Following Ahmadinejad's election Mesbah Yazdi declared that Iran now had its first true Islamic government and there was no need for any more elections, which were incompatible with theocracy.
Mesbah Yazdi believes that a trial is not needed to convict and execute offenders. "If anyone insults the Islamic sanctity, Islam has permitted for his blood to be spilled, no court needed either". He has called for the execution of Dr Hashem Aghajari for insulting Islam based on the blasphemy laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This idea is considered by many, as an open avocation of terrorism.
On the issue of slavery Mesbah Yazdi has said
Today, too, if there’s a war between us and the infidels, we’ll take slaves. The ruling on slavery hasn’t expired and is eternal. We’ll take slaves and we’ll bring them to the world of Islam and have them stay with Muslims. We’ll guide them, make them Muslims and then return them to their countries.
In a lecture that was released on February 15, 2006, Mohsen Ghorourian who is a well-known student of Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi said that using atomic bomb has religious legitimacy. In 2005.
Like many prominent Shia clergies, he supports non-literal interpretations of various verses of the Qur’ān and narrations attributed to the Prophet and his followers. Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi opposes bida'a or innovations in religion which he believes includes new interpretations of the Sunna and Qur'an. He has been quoted as saying: "If someone tells you he has a new interpretation of Islam, sock him in the mouth."
In August 2009 he is reported to have warned Iranian opposition groups against undermining supreme leader Ali Khamenei, stating,
"When the president is endorsed by the leader, obeying him is similar to obedience to God."
Controversy
Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi has been described as "affiliated" with the Hojjatieh group. Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi denies this and has denounced the rumor, saying that if anyone finds a connection between him and Hojjatieh, he will renounce everything he stands for. Ayatollah Khomeini actually frowned on the Hojjatieh and the group was nominally dissolved in 1983, yet they secretly continued to maintain and strengthen their network.
Quotes by Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi
"The real and precious knowledge is the one that culminates in God fearing."
"If it is impossible to uncover the hypocrites faces other than through sacrificing our souls, therefore we are supposed to do so."(In Persian)
The concept ”exam” in the divine order (In Persian)
"We should know that 1,400 years ago the Koran said that the enemies of Islam will always fight while chanting peace-seeking slogans."
"Islam cannot accept that a group of people congregate and decide to initiate laws for themselves" (Ettela'at, 1 Oct. 1993) [wiki]
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Esoteric Cult of Iran Scares Israel
Messianic leaders in Iraq and Iran
Professors at Haifa University discuss extremist leaders in Persian Gulf who believe in increasing chaos to facilitate judgement day
President Ahmadiebnjad believes he's in touch with God. Professor Baram is a little worried.
Israel - 10 June 2006
On the same day that the story of a major dictator came to an end in Iraq, experts on the Persian Gulf region posited a disturbing and imminent next chapter.
According to these experts, Shias in Iraq and Iran are becoming more extreme, under young and charismatic leadership, possessing messianic faith, and unafraid of a struggle with the western world.
In a Haifa University conference on Iran and the Persian Gulf, two experts discussed the personalities of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Shia leader in Iraq Muqtada al-Sadar.
Both figures are religious extremists who believe in the coming of the mahdi –the Shia equivalent of the messiah.
The conference's first speaker, Dr. Soli Shahvar, analyzed the personality of the Iranian president, who only a year ago was a relatively unknown mayor of Tehran and is now a dominant international figure.
According to Shahvar, Ahmadinejad's relationship with Iran's spiritual leader Ali Khameini, is complicated and charged, with many ongoing struggles about questions of the country's leadership.
Waiting for the messiah
"The president of Iran implements the decisions of the spiritual leader. That's how it always was," Shahvar explains.
"But now Ahmadinejad, a leader with an agenda, is on the scene, attacking the west and ruining the efforts of other leaders to break Iran's isolationism.
"He attacks Israel ceaselessly. Granted, there were always such attacks, but not with such intensity," Shahvar continued. He stated that the charged relationship between Khameini and the president was a warning sign.
The president has both reformist and conservative critics, but enjoys mass support for now, primarily among the poor from whom he originated and among the military, which he entered during the Iran-Iraq war and served to the rank of Lt. Col.
"He is supported by a religious sect called hujedieh. They believe that everything must be prepared for the coming of the mahdi, and he will arrive when exploitation and poverty increase, in order to do justice," said Shahvar.
One approach to bring about the mahdi is a 'Judgement Day war' – an attempt at chaos and regional warfare, which Ahmadinejad seems to have adopted, the professor said.
In this context, he explains, we can understand the Iranian president's recent statements, for he believes that they have a direct connection to God.
Shahvar stated further that Ahmadinejad's victory in the presidency race was unexpected and, thus, interpreted by him as a divine sign.
According to Shahvar, the most dangerous possible scenario in Iran would be a military coup, in which Ahmadinejad would capture the role of supreme leader.
"The Islamist revolution is at a crossroads. Since 1979, the ideals of the revolution have been diluted, and (the president) believes that he came along to save the revolution and the people. This belief should frighten us," he concluded.
Muqtada al-Sadar: Messiah of the downtrodden
World renowned Iraq expert Prof. Amatzia Baram sketched an image of the anticipated future leader of the Shia faction in Iraq – Muqtada al-Sadar.
Young al-Sadar, somewhere between 28 to 32 years of age, is the son of an ayatollah who was murdered – most likely at the hands of Saddam Hussein's guard – but has no religious position. His power is derived from the militia that he heads.
"He created this militia from the poorest people in Iraq. These are young people, ages 15 to 30, who have nothing else – no education, no finances, no future outside of the militia."
"They were outcasts. Even in Iraq they were considered garbage. But this rabble goes after him in hordes, ready to die for him," Baram explained.
According to the professor, al-Sadar encourages xenophobic ideas – not only against Jews and Christians, but also against non-Shia Muslims.
He appears to have inherited an extensive financial reserve from his father, including schools, religious centers and welfare centers.
"In addition, he gave people hope about the coming of the mahdi. He even calls his militia the 'mahdi army'.
"He tells people that the mahdi is coming soon and in one of his sermons said that the reason that the US is intensifying operations in Iraq is 'to wait and catch (the mahdi), to decapitate him," Baram said.
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Shia supremacists emerge from Iran's shadows
9 September 2005
When mild-mannered former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami lashed out in a post-election sermon at the "powerful organization" behind the "shallow-thinking traditionalists with their Stone-Age backwardness" currently running the country, it became clear that Iran's political establishment is worried by the ideology propelling the government of new hardline President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.
Khatami's attack coincides with mounting evidence that a radically anti-Bahai [1] and anti-Sunni semi-clandestine society, called the Hojjatieh, is reemerging in the corridors of power in Tehran. The group flourished during the 1979 revolution that ousted the Shah and installed an Islamic government in his place, and was banned in 1983 by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the revolution.
Khomeini objected to the Hojjatieh's rejection of his doctrine of velayat-e faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist) and its conviction that chaos must be created to hasten the coming of the Mahdi, the 12th Shia imam. Only then, they argue, can a genuine Islamic republic be established.
"Those who regarded the revolution, during Imam Khomeini's time, as a deviation, are now [wielding] the tools of terror and oppression," Khatami was reported as saying at a speech in the conservative northeastern town of Mashhad, the same location chosen by Ahmadinejad to convene the first meeting of his cabinet.
"The shallow-thinking traditionalists with their Stone-Age backwardness now have a powerful organization behind them," he said, in what was interpreted as an indirect reference to the Hojjatieh society.
Khatami's sharp comments followed an outburst by Ahmad Tavassoli, a former chief of staff of Khomeini. Tavassoli claimed that the executive branch of the Iranian government as well as the crack troops of the Revolutionary Guards had been hijacked by the Hojjatieh, which, he implied, now also controls Ahmadinejad.
Amid talk that the recent election was a silent coup carried out by elements of the hardline Revolutionary Guard after eight years of reformist rule, Western embassies have been scrambling to understand what the Hojjatieh stands for and to what extent the influence of its teachings will be felt in the new government's domestic and foreign policies.
Asia Times Online spoke last week with European and North American diplomats in Tehran who are trying to identify which of the new government's ministers have sympathies with the Hojjatieh or a part in the organization.
After its banning in the 1980s, the Hojjatieh's members faded into the ranks of the bazaar-based Islamic Coalition Society (Mo'talife). Reports in the past few years that the society is reviving have stressed that the neo-Hojjatieh are not so much anti-Bahai as "fanning the flames of discord between Shias and Sunnis", according to the August 28, 2002 edition of the Hamshahri daily.
Ahmadinejad himself is said to have sympathies with the Hojjatieh, if he was not a member outright at some point in his career. The Islamic society he belonged to at Alm-u Sanat University where he attended was an extreme traditional and fundamentalist group that contained a large number of students from the provinces and maintained grass-roots links with the Hojjatieh. The society's anti-leftism also chimes with reports that Ahmadinejad was pushing for a takeover of the Soviet Embassy alongside or instead of the US compound in Tehran during the 1979 revolution.
Of the 21 new ministers in Ahmadinejad's cabinet, three are said to have Hojjatieh backgrounds, including Intelligence chief Hojatoleslam Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejehyi, a graduate of the Hojjatieh-founded Haqqani theological school with a long background in the intelligence services. Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, a hardline Shia cleric who is said to have issued a fatwa urging all 2 million members of the bassij Islamic militia to vote for Ahmadinejad in the recent presidential elections, is also associated with that university.
The hardline minister of the interior, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, is another Haqqani alumnus with suspected Hojjatieh sympathies. His appointment was greeted with outrage by some Iranian politicians. Tehran member of parliament Emad Afruq was reported by Islamic Republic News Agency on August 24 to have challenged Pourmohammadi's appointment on the basis of his questionable human rights record while at the Ministry of Intelligence: "You must recognize that when someone comes from such a ministry, with this past and the absence of supervisory mechanisms, our reaction is that we shudder with fear in the public arena. And have we not shuddered? Have we not felt insecure in the past?"
A few days after the new cabinet was revealed, a dinner party in North Tehran's exclusive Elahiyeh neighborhood was buzzing with talk of Hojjatieh involvement in the new government. One Iranian working as a political analyst for a Western embassy fingered the controversial Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi as the main reason behind the transformation of an initially anarchist movement that rejected any form of government, especially an Islamic one, into a key actor influencing the policies of the Ahmadinejad administration.
The powerful cleric is said to be Ahmadinejad's marja-e taqlid (object of emulation) and the ultimate proponent of an elite theory of government best summed up in his once saying: "It doesn't matter what the people think. The people are ignorant sheep."
"There is no doubt that Mesbah and the new crew, whether formally Hojjatieh or not, are more attached to core Shia identity and values," said Vali Nast, a professor of Middle East politics at the Department of National Security Affairs. "But an equally important faction, especially in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Council, is simply anti-Ba'athist. These are people who fought in the Iran-Iraq war and that may also be important in deciding attitudes towards Saudi Arabia and Iraq."
At a time of rising Sunni-Shia tensions in the region, and as Iraq increasingly turns into a proxy battleground for its neighbors, it is not surprising that a Shia supremacist government in Tehran, whether related to the Hojjatieh or not, should reemerge.
Saudi Arabia and Iran are battling it out in Iraq as both seek to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis, the majority of whom are Shias. While Iran is believed to have a better intelligence presence in the country and a more organized military capability, Saudis account for a large percentage of the suicide bombers active there.
In an August Newsweek article, former Central Intelligence Agency agent Robert Baer quoted a high-level Syrian official telling him that of 1,200 suspected suicide bombers arrested by the Syrians since Iraq was invaded in 2003, 85% have been Saudis. Baer went on to quote Iran's Grand Ayatollah Saanei reacting to the news by describing Wahhabi suicide bombers as "wolves without pity" and saying that "sooner rather than later, Iran will have to put them down".
Saudi Arabia is also reported to be active in Iran, especially in the ethnically Arab, oil-rich south of the country, where it is whispered that Riyadh is offering financial incentives for locals to convert from Shia to Sunni Islam. News of this strategy has reached Qom, the clerical heartland of Iran.
In an April 2004 article, Persian-language Baztab news website that is written by well-connected insiders and read by Iran's political elite, published a piece alleging that the Hojjatieh had adopted a strategy of trying to sharpen domestic tensions between Sunnis and Shias through launching a propaganda campaign against the minority religious group inside Iran (Sunnis). The report alleged that some Hojjatieh-aligned publishers have been issuing books in Arabic that are critical of Sunnis. The books have been distributed in Qom, but are fictitiously marked "Published in Beirut" to give them further credibility and mask the fact they are Shia propaganda.
This is a potentially dangerous move with grave foreign policy implications for Iran. Iran's Sunni minorities live in some of the least-developed provinces and are under-represented in parliament, the army and the civil service. Iran's Kurds, who are Sunni, have been rioting in the north, while the ethnic Arab south is another location that has suffered riots and a bombing campaign in the past six months.
But whether the Hojjatieh is being resurrected by its former adherents or is being used as a battering ram by those Iranian politicians opposed to the current government, its reappearance coincides with a Shia resurgence across the region and a new era of conservative factional infighting in Tehran.
"This particular form of mud-slinging that had disappeared a quarter of a century ago - when the secular left accused the religious establishment of having clandestine Hojjatieh affiliations - is gaining currency again in the new battle of Titans: the traditional right-wing versus the revolutionary right-wing clerical establishment - over ideological hegemony in Iran," concluded Mahmoud Sadri, a US-based Iranian academic. [atime.com]
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The rise of Prof 'Crocodile' - a hardliner to terrify hardliners
20 Nov 2005
With his fierce anti-Western rhetoric and ever-ready quotes from the Koran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was widely seen as the authentic mouthpiece of Iran's theocracy when he swept to power in last summer's elections.
Yet while his hardline attitudes have horrified Iran's defeated reformists, they have also unnerved the all-powerful mullahs who backed him in the first place.
The reason is that Mr Ahmadinejad takes his spiritual cue from a man whose views go beyond even the orthodoxy of Iran's religious establishment - a little-known cleric nicknamed "Professor Crocodile" because of his harsh conservatism.
Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, who espouses total isolation from the West, has a blunt message for anyone who veers from his fundamentalist readings of Koranic texts: "If someone tells you he has a new interpretation of Islam, sock him in the mouth."
An enthusiastic supporter of both the death penalty and public floggings, and the use of suicide bombers against "enemies of Islam", the bespectacled 70-year-old is viewed as an extremist even by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the current religious leader who is Iran's supreme authority.
But since Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi issued a fatwa, or holy order, in support of Mr Ahmadinejad's presidential bid, his influence has expanded hugely, possibly eclipsing even that of Ayatollah Khameini.
From his seminary in Qom, the holy city north of Teheran, he dispenses regular wisdom to the new president as he seeks to fulfil his quest to return Iran to the spiritual values of the Islamic revolution of 1979.
Some of the choicer remarks from his fiery sermons over the years give disturbing clues to the likely mindset of his disciples, not least the man now in charge of the country.
Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi accuses America, for example, of trying to banish Islamic values for ever in its bid for world domination, a stance that may explain Mr Ahmadinejad's decision to reverse the detente with the United States that his reformist predecessors tried to broker.
The president's recent rejection of a European deal to end the stand-off over Iran's nuclear programme may also have been influenced by his mentor's suspicion of Western blandishments.
In a sermon at Teheran University, Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi reminded worshippers: "We should know that 1,400 years ago the Koran said that the enemies of Islam will always fight while chanting peace-seeking slogans."
The ayatollah's hostility towards allowing Iranians to be exposed to challenges to Islamic dogmas may also have spurred Mr Ahmadinejad's enthusiasm for censorship in the public realm, including, last month, a ban on foreign films.
In a veiled reference to the democratic principles ushered in by the previous government, Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi said: "An Islamic government must combat this, because injecting misleading ideas is like injecting the Aids virus!"
Young Iranians who questioned the regime after studying abroad did so only because they had been trained in "psychological warfare" by foreign universities, he added.
Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi's notoriety is not just confined to rhetorical flourishes, however. In addition to being an enthusiastic endorser of the fatwa against the author Salman Rushdie, he was accused of giving religious sanction to government death squads which assassinated political opponents both at home and abroad in the 1990s, a scandal that helped to produce the reform movement.
But his greatest notoriety comes from the fate of the man who gave him his nickname. Nikahang Kowsar, Iran's most famous cartoonist, was slung into prison for his depiction of "Professor Crocodile", a reptilian academic who was shown strangling a journalist with his tail.
Kowsar, who was satirising the way that Iranian clerics stifled freedom of expression, insisted the cartoon was not based on any particular individual. But his defence proved unworkable - and not just because the ayatollah's name rhymes with the Farsi word for crocodile.
Among his accusers were Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi's own seminary students, who knew that there was only one person to whom it could possibly refer. [Telegraph]
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Ayatollah who backs suicide bombs aims to be Iran's next spiritual leader
19 Nov 2006
An ultra-conservative Iranian cleric who opposes all dialogue with the West is a frontrunner to become the country's next supreme spiritual leader.
In a move that would push Iran even further into the diplomatic wilderness, Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, 71, who publicly backs the use of suicide bombers against Israel, is campaigning to succeed Grand Ayatollah Ali Khameini, 67, as the head of the Islamic state.
Considered an extremist even by fellow mullahs, he was a fringe figure in Iran's theocracy until last year's election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a fellow fundamentalist who views him as his ideological mentor. He is known to many Iranians as "Professor Crocodile" because of a notorious cartoon that depicted him weeping false tears over the jailing of a reformist journalist.
Mr Mesbah-Yazdi and his supporters will attempt to tighten the fundamentalists' political stranglehold next month, by standing in elections for the Assembly of Experts, an 86-strong group of theologians that would be responsible for nominating a replacement for Ayatollah Khamenei, whose health is rumoured to be ailing. [Telegraph]
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Iranian fatwa approves use of nuclear weapons
Iran's hardline spiritual leaders have issued an unprecedented new fatwa, or holy order, sanctioning the use of atomic weapons against its enemies.
19 Feb 2006
In yet another sign of Teheran's stiffening resolve on the nuclear issue, influential Muslim clerics have for the first time questioned the theocracy's traditional stance that Sharia law forbade the use of nuclear weapons.
One senior mullah has now said it is "only natural" to have nuclear bombs as a "countermeasure" against other nuclear powers, thought to be a reference to America and Israel.
The pronouncement is particularly worrying because it has come from Mohsen Gharavian, a disciple of the ultra-conservative Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, who is widely regarded as the cleric closest to Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Nicknamed "Professor Crocodile" because of his harsh conservatism, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi's group opposes virtually any kind of rapprochement with the West and is believed to have influenced President Ahmadinejad's refusal to negotiate over Iran's nuclear programme.
The comments, which are the first public statement by the Yazdi clerical cabal on the nuclear issue, will be seen as an attempt by the country's religious hardliners to begin preparing a theological justification for the ownership - and if necessary the use - of atomic bombs.
They appeared on Rooz, an internet newspaper run by members of Iran's fractured reformist movement, which picked them up from remarks by Mohsen Gharavian reported on the media agency IraNews.
Rooz reported that Mohsen Gharavian, a lecturer based in a religious school in the holy city of Qom, had declared "for the first time that the use of nuclear weapons may not constitute a problem, according to Sharia."
He also said: "When the entire world is armed with nuclear weapons, it is permissible to use these weapons as a counter-measure. According to Sharia too, only the goal is important."
Mohsen Gharavian did not specify what kinds of "goals" would justify a nuclear strike, but it is thought that any military intervention by the United States would be considered sufficient grounds. Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi has previously justified use of suicide bombers against "enemies of Islam" and believes that America is bent on destroying the Islamic republic and its values. The latest insight into the theocracy's thinking comes as the US signals a change in strategy on Iran, after the decision earlier this month to report it to the United Nations Security Council for its resumption of banned nuclear research.
While Washington has made it clear that military strikes on Iran's nuclear sites would be a "last resort", White House officials are also targeting change from within by funding Iranian opposition groups.
The secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said the Bush administration would seek an extra $75 million (£43 million) from Congress to help to support Iran's fractured pro-democracy movement and fund Farsi-language satellite broadcasts.
The announcement is the clearest public indication that Washington has adopted a two-track approach to Iran, combining the diplomatic search for a united international condemnation of its illicit nuclear programme with efforts to undermine the regime's status.
The new tactic amounts to the pursuit of regime change by peaceful means, although that phrase is still not stated as official US policy. Washington hopes that a dedicated satellite channel beamed into Iran will encourage domestic dissent, such as the current strike by bus drivers - the most significant display of organised opposition since the 1999 and 2003 student protests.
Ms Rice unveiled the change of tactics a week after a visit to Washington by a senior British delegation that pressed for a co-ordinated Western policy on using satellite television and the internet to bolster internal opposition. The State Department had previously been wary of the two-track strategy.
As the Sunday Telegraph reported last week, Pentagon strategists have been updating plans for a another policy of "last resort" - blitzing Iranian nuclear sites in an effort to stop the regime gaining the atomic bomb.
The bus strike, which has led to the jailing of more than 1,000 drivers, was originally sparked by an industrial dispute over unpaid wages benefits. But the robustness of the state response has indicated the nervousness of the Ahmadinejad regime over any internal dissent.
Reports from Iran say that Massoud Osanlou, the leader of the bus drivers' union, was arrested at his home by members of the Basij, the pro-regime militia, and had part of his tongue cut out as a warning to be quiet.
But the dispute already risks disillusioning Mr Ahmadinejad's core of working class support - among them municipal workers - who voted him into power on his promises to improve the lot of Iran's poor. [Telegraph]
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Iran's New Hard-Liners
Who Is in Control of the Islamic Republic?
September 30, 2009
The headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) are in a European-style palace, replete with Greek columns and a grand staircase, in the eastern suburbs of Tehran. From here, the IRGC orchestrated the crackdown that followed Iran's disputed presidential vote in June, beating protestors on the street and torturing those behind bars. More ominously, the IGRC and other extreme hard-liners have sidelined fellow conservatives in the Iranian government, carving out their own power base in a regime that is becoming increasingly insular, reactionary, and violent.
So far, much of the analysis of the emerging Iranian power struggle has focused on the clash between the country's conservatives and reformers, pitting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his patron, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, against Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, two thwarted presidential candidates, and Mohammad Khatami, a former president. (Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and seasoned kingmaker has eased toward the reformists in the election's aftermath.)
The real struggle, however, is the conflict among the hard-liners themselves, many of whom operate behind the headlines in unseen corners of the state machinery. Although Iran's opposition movement has witnessed an unprecedented surge in public support, the election and its aftermath mark a radicalization of the system not seen since the early days of the Islamic revolution.
In the reformist era of Khatami, and to some extent during Ahmadinejad's first term, the country's conservative theocrats and technocrats -- such as Ali Larijani, the speaker of the parliament, and Gholam-Hussein Mohseni-Ejei, the ousted intelligence minister who criticized the state's use of forced confessions -- held much of the power over the executive and legislative branches. Although they were entrenched status quo forces, these pragmatists believed in the dual nature of the Islamic Republic's statehood -- a country with religious and political legitimacy.
But now such figures are losing their influence to a new breed of second-generation revolutionaries from Iran's security apparatus known as "the New Right." They are joined in the emerging power structure by ultraconservative clerics and organizations such as the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran. These neo-fundamentalists call for the "re-Islamization" of the theocracy, but their true agenda is to block further reform to the political system in terms of reconciling with both domestic opponents and the West.
This coalition includes Hassan Taeb, the commander of the Basij, the paramilitary branch of the IRGC; Saeed Jalili, the secretary of Iran's National Security Council and the country's chief nuclear negotiator; and Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader's second son, a man so feared that his name is not often uttered in public.
Hard-line figures such as the younger Khamenei and the IRGC leadership are granted religious legitimacy through the support of the most radical mullahs in the theocratic establishment: Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of the Guardian Council, the committee that certified the election tallies, and Ayatollah Mohammad Mesbah Yazdi, Ahmadinejad's spiritual adviser. Yazdi is affiliated with an underground messianic sect called the Hojjatieh Society, which hopes to quicken the coming of the apocalypse. Democratic reforms, the Majlis (parliament), and elections are mere annoyances under this radical Islamic worldview.
It is not surprising, then, that Yazdi issued a fatwa shortly before June 12 that gave authorities tacit approval to fudge the vote. Indeed, the clerics seem to have gotten the intended result: after the election, a number of employees at Iran's Interior Ministry released an open letter stating that "the election supervisors, who had become happy and energetic for having obtained the religious fatwa to use any trick for changing the votes, began immediately to develop plans for it."
Yazdi's influence on Ahmadinejad became pronounced in the early days of the president's first term, when Ahmadinejad declared that the return of the apocalyptic 12th imam would come within two years. Now, his second term will likely be marked by even more radical behavior: in a meeting with Yazdi in June to discuss his domestic agenda, Ahmadinejad promised to Islamize the country's educational and cultural systems, declaring that Iranians had not yet witnessed "true Islam." Then, in August, amid calls to purge reformist professors, a presidential panel began investigating university humanities curricula deemed to be "un-Islamic." Several progressive students told me that they have been barred from returning to campus this semester, including a top law student at Tehran University. "I was going to continue the protests with my law degree in a more effective manner," he said. "But now I am just a simple pedestrian."
But ideology remains secondary in the struggle to maintain and consolidate control within the fractured regime. It is becoming increasingly clear that Ahmadinejad and his associated faction of neo-fundamentalists no longer aim to take on the mantle of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's revolutionary ideals. As Khamenei's representative to the IRGC put it, "Some people are sticking to Imam Khomeini's ideas ... [but] the situation has changed." Accordingly, religion and revolutionary ideology have become convenient means to an end, but not the end themselves. Purges of un-Islamic faculty and students are meant to target the organizers of mass protests; the arrests and subsequent trials of political opponents, meanwhile, act to shield the financial interests of the IRGC and its hard-line partners.
The biggest prize is a number of state petrochemical contracts worth billions of dollars. During his presidency in the early 1990s, Rafsanjani steered oil development projects to family and friends. In 2005, Ahmadinejad defeated Rafsanjani and promised to take on the "oil mafia" -- but then loaded two-thirds of his cabinet with IRGC veterans, signed off on hundreds of no-bid construction and petrochemical contracts for IGRC-backed companies, and condoned the IRGC's proliferating smuggling networks, which net $12 billion a year, according to one Iranian lawmaker. A local market analyst told me that the IRGC functions like "a mafia." It uses free and low-cost labor, as well as an extensive intelligence apparatus, to undercut competing bids.
The resulting opacity and confusion have left many business and financial leaders in Iran unclear of how to navigate the new environment. "We don't know what they will do," one financial analyst told me recently. "Maybe they will stage a military coup and then open our doors like China, or maybe Pakistan," he speculated, referring to the Islamization of the Pakistani state under General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq's military rule from 1978 to 1988.
To his second-term cabinet, Ahmadinejad has appointed IRGC hard-liners to some of the most influential posts in government, such as the ministers of defense, intelligence, interior, and oil, which together not only control the country's energy industry but also domestic security.
Until recently, the IRGC was split between pragmatists and hard-liners. In 2001, three-quarters of the IRGC's 130,000 foot soldiers voted to reelect Khatami. At least one internal government poll before this summer's election showed that a "high percentage" of the IRGC's rank and file planned to vote for Mousavi. Four days before the election, the organization's weekly newspaper, the Sobhe Sadeq, warned of a "Velvet Green revolution" and promised that the IRGC would not allow the opposition to triumph. Then, immediately following the polls, IRGC commanders purged leaders who were sympathetic to the reformists, leaving a united bloc of hard-liners whose views lie at the extreme right.
These new players are wasting little time in attempting to consolidate power. In early August, Yadollah Javani, the head of the IGRC's political bureau, called for the arrest of the opposition leaders. "What is the role of Khatami, Mousavi, and Karroubi in this coup?" he asked. "If they are the main agents, which is the case, judiciary and security officials should go after them, arrest them, try them, and punish them." Such a move may not be far off: in early September, security forces raided offices connected to Mousavi and Karroubi and arrested three of their top aides. The same week, Khamenei warned during a Friday sermon that further attacks by the reformist leadership would be met with a "harsh response." (According to Rafsanjani, Khamenei already issued an arrest warrant for Karroubi in late August.)
If the neo-fundamentalist bloc is able to further concentrate its power, it will not only bode ill for the beleaguered domestic opposition but also dash any hope of an international resolution to Iran's nuclear weapons program. "The nuclear question is finished," Ahmadinejad said earlier this month. "We will not negotiate over Iran's undeniable rights." Eroded legitimacy at home means the ruling hard-liners have little room to budge on a compromise over halting fuel production, for fear of alienating a power base that depends on continued pariah status to feed its clandestine business interests. As such, U.S. administration officials indicated that they have extremely low expectations going into the October 1 meeting with their Iranian counterparts.
For now, the neo-fundamentalists seem to have settled on the tactic of intimidate and escalate. Last month, the regime put French and British diplomatic staff on trial in Tehran, in addition to bringing charges against a Canadian-Iranian Newsweek journalist and an Iranian-American academic. Ahmadinejad has defiantly declared, "We welcome sanctions" -- a signal to reconciliatory elements within the conservative camp that he and the hard-liners will not back down in the face of opposition. In any case, the neo-fundamentalists do not seem eager to jeopardize their near monopoly of the black market by reconciling with the West, particularly when China and Russia continue to extend an open hand in business.
Many of my colleagues in Tehran are preparing for a winter of confrontation. "Iranians have been living through these conditions since the Iran-Iraq war, when everything -- food, oil, clothes -- were rationed," one coworker told me. But this time, the regime must contend with an embattled opposition that is backed by mass popular support. As the last few months have proven, it is a movement that cannot be easily bullied into submission. [foreignaffairs.com]
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GANJI IDENTIFIED FALLAHIAN AS THE "MASTER KEY" IN CHAIN MURDERS
Mr. Akbar Ganji, Iran’s most prominent and daring investigative journalist and researcher revealed Thursday the name of the "Master Key" to the murder of Iranian intellectual and political dissidents by naming publicly former Intelligence Minister Hojjatoleslam Ali Fallahian, thus ending months of guessing and expectations from both the authorities and the public.
Appearing before an Islamic Revolution court in ordinary civilian dress, a smiling and relaxed Ganji also denounced by name some senior clerics, including Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi for having encouraged or issued fatwas, or religious orders for the assassinations.
And he shocked the audience when he named Hojjatoleslam Qolamhossein Mohseni Ezhe’i, the powerful Judge appointed by Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, the leader of the Islamic Republic as the Head of the controversial Clergymen’s Special Tribunal and Tehran’s Deputy Chief Justice as the man who ordered the killing of Mr. Piruz Davani, a leftist activist who "disappeared" in august 1998.
Political analysts immediately said by naming publicly the names of some of the high-ranking clerical personalities suspected to have ordered the assassinations, Mr. Ganji has taken an "insurance" on his life.
"From now on, whatever happen to him, even if he sneeze, the conservatives would be blamed for", commented Mr. Ali Keshtgar, a noted activist based in Paris.
One of the seventeen Iranian reformists who participated at a conference held in Berlin from 7 to 9 April to debate the future of Iran in the aftermath of the reformists landslide victory in the Legislative elections of February, Mr. Ganji not only denied all charges levelled against him by the court, but accused both the Information (Intelligence) and Foreign Affairs ministries as well as the Judiciary of having "betrayed" those who took part at the Berlin meeting.
The Iranian conservatives-controlled Judiciary says the Conference was organised by the "Zionists" who controls Germany’s Green Party to which is affiliated the Heinrisch Boel Cultural Institute that organised the Conference.
Plus charges of acting against national security by participating at the Berlin conference, waging propaganda against the Islamic Republic system and endangering the national security of the State that are considered against all participants at the Berlin conference, Mr. Ganji is also accused of insulting the Judiciary, implicating Iran in terrorism, insulting both Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the Ayatollah Khameneh’i and gathering classified information.
Defending himself, Ganji said he had participated in the meeting unaware of any link between the Heinrisch Boell Institute and Zionists and turning the table, said if the Intelligence Ministry, the Judiciary, the authorities knew that the organisers were Zionist and let us go to Berlin attend the meeting, they have then encouraged us to commit an offence".
Continuing on the same vein, he asked why then the authorities had received Mr. Joschka Fischer, the German Foreign Minister who is also the leader of the Green Party? "How comes that the officials can talk to Zionists and not ordinary citizen? How come that out intellectuals and scholars and sportsmen can exchange with the Americans with who we have no relations but not with German counterparts"? he asked, adding that the "sole aim of protesting to the Berlin Conference is to ruin the reform process".
"The information given to the supreme leader on the Berlin Conference is insufficient and all the participants at the meeting have defended the system", Ganji told the court.
Mr. Ganji denied having insulted the Founder of the Islamic Republic in an interview with a German magazine, explaining that the fault lies with the translator and he had warned the review about this.
On the charge of insulting Ayatollah Khameneh’i, he said that opposing the Leader's views could not imply "affront". "Legally, insult means pronouncing or writing indecent words against someone and in this case the prosecutor general has failed to distinguish between insult and criticism", he observed.
He acknowledged that as far as the bundle closure of the press, the imprisonment of journalists and the treatment of political prisoners are concerned, he did not share the views of the leader. "And this is my right", he argued.
"There are more than three months that prisoners like (Masha’allah) Shams (olva’ezin), (Emaddedin) Baqi, (Ahmad) Zeydabadi, (Hasan) Yusefi-Eshkevari are not allowed to use telephone to talk to their families", he said, reminding that himself has spent more than 80 days in solitary confinment.
Ganji, held in prison since April, had already written a letter to President Mohammad Khatami complaining of "abominable conditions" of the prison. He also charged prison guards had tortured him, provoking a denial from the prison authorities.
Turning to the "Chain Murders" case, Mr Ganji reiterated that he had linked some high-ranking clerics, the conservatives, Hojjatoleslam Fallahian and his senior Deputy Sa’id Emami, alias Eslami to the murders, reminding that Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi has ruled that apostates and those who questions Islam’s principles could be killed without court authorisation.
"The killings were carried out with the blessings of several senior clerics and Ali Fallahian as the Master Key", he charged to the astonishment of the audience.
Mr. Dariush Foruhar, the leader of the secularist Iranian People’s Party and his wife Parvaneh Eskandari were found stabbed to death at their residence on 21 November 1998. Writers Mohammad Mokhtari and Mohammad Ja’far Puyandeh and Majid Sharif, a researcher, followed them.
Ayatollah Khameneh'i blamed "foreign hands" in the assassinations, but a three-men investigation team appointed by President Khatami concluded that the murders were the work of high-ranking agents of the Intelligence Ministry led by Mr. Emami, who was found dead in prison after his arrest.
Pressed by both the deeply shocked public opinion and the independent press, the Intelligence Ministry ended early January 1999 by admitting that in fact its agents had committed the assassinations.
But as the Judiciary, obeying orders from the leader, was trying hard to drag the case in confusion and limit the impact of the murders, several journalists, namely Mr. Emadeddin Baqi in Iran and Dr. Alireza Nurizadeh in London, led by Mr. Ganji continued to search for the "Grey Eminency" and the "Master Key", symbols used by Mr. Ganji in one of his best-seller books named "The Dungeon of Phantoms".
Investigations published in the reformist press revealed that the same "rogue gang" had carried out tens of other assassinations during the presidency of Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, or the "Grey Eminency".
The former Intelligence Minister who is now acting as the leader’s special adviser on security matters is under an international warrant issued by German authorities for his role in the assassination of Iranian dissidents in Germany.
Mr Ganji's revelations are certain to deepen the tension between the conservatives and the reformers who would be pressed by the public to push for public trial of Mr. Fallahian and his acolytes.
He rejected the charge that he had collected classified information and said most of the news about the serial murders he referred to were published in a secret bulletin printed by the Guidance Ministry for the information of high-ranking authorities of the regime as well as articles taken away from the publications published by Iranians abroad and in the daily Kayhan", the mouthpiece of the pro conservative intelligence community.
"Ayatollah Javadi Amoli and Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi say a democratic system is against God and against religion. One wonder describing the regime democratic is a crime or anti-democratic?" Mr. Ganji asked, adding "not able to tolerate losing the power and the wealth, the conservatives resort to fascistic methods".
Blaming the "chain murders" on the Haqqani circle, Mr. Ganji reminded that all the killers of dissident intellectuals and politicians were either students of this theological centre of under its influence, referring to one of the most radical theological school in Qom.
Mr. Mesbah-Yazdi, a hard line cleric who is highly praised and esteemed by Ayatollah Khameneh’i is the senior theoretician of the Haghani circle.
Joining families of the victims and their lawyers, Mr. Ganji also called for the creation of an independent investigation committee to follow up not only the serial murders but also the cases of all dissidents assassinated under the presidency of Mr. Hashemi Rafsanjani.
The Judiciary announced last week that three men described as the "main culprits" in the serial murders would be tried on 23 December.
But informed sources said by naming the three suspects as those who carried out the assassinations, the Judiciary was to close the case "once for all" in order to stop it reaching the real culprits "sitting around the leader".
"If you like, if you may be happy, condemn me not to seven or eight years but to fifty, for, anyway, I would be proud to stay in prison in defence of freedom, of human rights, of democracy and freedom of expression and of thought", Ganji told Judge Hasan ahmadi-Moqaddasi
Meanwhile, the authorities announced Thursday the arrest of several people charged with distributing an 80-page report which implicates a number of high-ranking authorities involved in the serial murders.
The centrist "Entekhab" (Choice) daily cited Intelligence Minister Hojjatoleslam Ali Yunesi as saying that several people, accused of distributing the undercover "night letter", had been identified and arrested recently.
He gave no further details on the number of people involved or their identities, but said the arrests had not been made in Tehran. [Iran Press Service]
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Ahmadinejad's messianic connections
The Iranian leader's mentor thinks war would hasten the Mahdi's return. Fortunately he and his allies have no nuclear access
6 May 2009
The Comoros islands in the Indian Ocean are described by the Lonely Planet Guide as "mysterious, outrageous and enchanting ... the kind of place you go to just drop off the planet for a while".
As well as their remote location, another characteristic that sets the islands apart from other countries in the region and from fellow Muslim countries is that their president, Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi, studied in the holy city of Qom in Iran. According to the Tehran-based Tabnak news agency, while Sambi was there he studied under Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi who believes, among other things, believes that a great war would hasten the return of the 12th Shia Imam called the Mahdi. Sambi's stint in Iran earned him the nickname "The Ayatollah of Comoros".
Mesbah Yazdi's other famous student is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This is one of the reasons why the Iranian president is going to extraordinary lengths to court the president of Comoros. After Sambi's rise to power in 2006, Iran started investing in the Comoros economy – a decision that some in Iran see as unjustified political aid. A recent example that raised the ire of Iran's press was his dispatching of a private Falcon jet to the island to bring Sambi to Iran for a visit last June. Apparently Sambi's own jet was not fit for the job.
One reason for Ahmadinejad's outreach is that he desperately wants to show that during his presidential term, Iran's influence in the Islamic world increased. So much so that not only Sunnis but also former students of Iran's religious institutions who now head governments can be counted among Iran's friends. He is also trying to win favours with Mesbah Yazdi, as other clergy seem to be turning their back on him. A recent sign was the decision by the Society of Combatant Clergy not to to support any candidate until all presidential candidates had been vetted by the Guardian Council. This powerful society has usually supported rightwing conservative candidates and many thought its support for Ahmadinejad as the candidate to stand against the reformists was certain. However, Ahmadinejad's unpopularity has persuaded some of them to withhold their vote to see if a more viable conservative candidate will emerge.
Another heavy blow came last week from the wife of Mohammad Ali Rajai, Iran's second president who was assassinated in 1981. During the 2005 elections, Ahmadinejad prided himself on being a follower of Rajai's dedication to the revolution, and his seemingly simple and incorruptible lifestyle. So much so that one of the most popular slogans shouted in pro-Ahmadinejad rallies is "Greetings to Prophet Muhammad, the scent of Rajai has arrived". Furthermore, one of the most pro-Ahmadinejad news agencies in Iran is called Raja News. In the 2005 elections, Rajai's wife supported Ahmadinejad but this year, in an amazing turnaround, she declared her support for his rival, the reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi. For many of Ahmadinejad's supporters, this was a slap in the face.
However, Mesbah Yazdi is different. He is an ultra-conservative cleric who is considered too rightwing, even among the conservative clergy, and this has made him somewhat isolated among them. This is why none of his supporters managed to get elected in the Assembly of Experts elections of 2006.
Ahmadinejad is Mesbah Yazdi's best hope for political influence. Ahmadinejad also needs him. Mesbah Yazdi's support was crucial for Ahmadinejad during the 2005 election campaign – among other things, he issued a fatwa that called on his supporters to vote for Ahmadinejad. His wife went as far as selling her own jewellery to help Ahmadinejad's election campaign. This was an important symbolic gesture, which was not lost on Ahmadinejad's friends, and foes.
There are also Mesbah Yazdi's other allies, who have steadfastly stood by Ahmadinejad. One is Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi. After Khamenei, this man has the most direct influence on the president. A dedicated student of Mesbah Yazdi, Samareh studied with Ahmadinejad at the University of Science and Technology in the late 1970s. Later on, thanks to their friendship, Ahmadinejad received his first official job, as the mayor of Maku and Khoy, near the border with Turkey. Samareh's connections with the people's militia (Baseej) enabled Ahmadinejad to establish relations with them and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. This helped Ahmadinejad later, as both forces were instrumental in campaigning for his 2005 election success.
Ahmadinejad's other messianic colleague is Saeed Jalili, secretary general of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC). He too worked with Samareh in the Iranian foreign ministry. After the resignation of Ali Larijani from the role, he took on the important job of negotiating with the EU representative Javier Solana over the Iranian nuclear programme. During their first meeting, which many described as a one and half hour monologue by Jalili, he apparently told Solana: "'Everything in the past is past, and with me, you start over." This was very frustrating for Solana who had spent more than a year and a half negotiating with Larijani.
Ahmadinejad's messianic beliefs, and his increasing reliance on Mesbah Yazdi, should be a source of concern to those inside Iran and outside. However, such concern must be accompanied by reality.
First and foremost, Mesbah Yazdi's view that a great war would hasten the return of the Mahdi is shared with only a small minority. According to the Bright Future Institute in Iran, which specialises in religious issues regarding the Mahdi, "No one, not even the Mahdi himself can decide upon his return. Only God decides. Meanwhile, all Muslims can do is to pray and to be good human beings." This is the view held by a majority of Iranians and is in direct contradiction to that of Mesbah Yazdi and his allies.
More important than that is the fact that this group does not have the last word over the nuclear programme. Ayatollah Khamenei does, and he is not a messianic. Nor are any of the people who are thought to be next in line to take over him. [Guardian]
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'Divine mission' driving Iran's new leader
14 Jan 2006
As Iran rushes towards confrontation with the world over its nuclear programme, the question uppermost in the mind of western leaders is "What is moving its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to such recklessness?"
Political analysts point to the fact that Iran feels strong because of high oil prices, while America has been weakened by the insurgency in Iraq.
But listen carefully to the utterances of Mr Ahmadinejad - recently described by President George W Bush as an "odd man" - and there is another dimension, a religious messianism that, some suspect, is giving the Iranian leader a dangerous sense of divine mission.
In November, the country was startled by a video showing Mr Ahmadinejad telling a cleric that he had felt the hand of God entrancing world leaders as he delivered a speech to the UN General Assembly last September.
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.
Mr Ahmadinejad appears to believe that these events are close at hand and that ordinary mortals can influence the divine timetable.
The prospect of such a man obtaining nuclear weapons is worrying. The unspoken question is this: is Mr Ahmadinejad now tempting a clash with the West because he feels safe in the belief of the imminent return of the Hidden Imam? Worse, might he be trying to provoke chaos in the hope of hastening his reappearance?
The 49-year-old Mr Ahmadinejad, a former top engineering student, member of the Revolutionary Guards and mayor of Teheran, overturned Iranian politics after unexpectedly winning last June's presidential elections.
The main rift is no longer between "reformists" and "hardliners", but between the clerical establishment and Mr Ahmadinejad's brand of revolutionary populism and superstition.
Its most remarkable manifestation came with Mr Ahmadinejad's international debut, his speech to the United Nations.
World leaders had expected a conciliatory proposal to defuse the nuclear crisis after Teheran had restarted another part of its nuclear programme in August.
Instead, they heard the president speak in apocalyptic terms of Iran struggling against an evil West that sought to promote "state terrorism", impose "the logic of the dark ages" and divide the world into "light and dark countries".
The speech ended with the messianic appeal to God to "hasten the emergence of your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace".
In a video distributed by an Iranian web site in November, Mr Ahmadinejad described how one of his Iranian colleagues had claimed to have seen a glow of light around the president as he began his speech to the UN.
"I felt it myself too," Mr Ahmadinejad recounts. "I felt that all of a sudden the atmosphere changed there. And for 27-28 minutes all the leaders did not blink…It's not an exaggeration, because I was looking.
"They were astonished, as if a hand held them there and made them sit. It had opened their eyes and ears for the message of the Islamic Republic."
Western officials said the real reason for any open-eyed stares from delegates was that "they couldn't believe what they were hearing from Ahmadinejad".
Their sneaking suspicion is 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. [Telegraph]
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Ahmadinejad: "Messiah is Near"
Israel - 1 April 2011
A group called ‘The Jerusalem Prayer Team’ have sent this report re Iran’s belief that the Mahdi’s arrival is imminent!
The government of Iran has released a movie called "The Coming Is Near" designed to prepare Muslims around the world for the return of the “twelfth Mahdi.” This radical Islamic doctrine, devoutly believed by Iranian President Ahmadinejad, teaches that an end-time war will sweep the world following which this hidden descendant of Mohammed will return to place the entire earth under Shari’a law.
The video claims that Iran is destined to rise as a great power in the last days to help defeat America and Israel and usher in the return of the Mahdi. And it makes clear the Iranians believe that time is fast approaching.
“The Hadith have clearly described the events and the various transformations of countries in the Middle East and also that of Iran in the age of the coming,” said a narrator, who went on to say that America’s invasion of Iraq was foretold by Islamic scripture—and that the Mahdi will one day soon rule the world.
The video describes Ahmadinejad and Iran’s Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei as the leaderswho will bring about his return. It condemns the United States and Israel, and offers praise to the Muslim Brotherhood for helping to overthrow the government of Hosni Mubarak in Egyptrs who will bring about his return. It condemns the United States and Israel, and offers praise to the Muslim Brotherhood for helping to overthrow the government of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.
Read this quote from the movie and sense the rising threat of evil:
"Therefore let us shout out loud that The Coming is soon and that evil should be fearful. We live with these thoughts every day and our lives are filled with The Coming of the last Imam. That human will reappear and fill the world with justice and establish his promised governance on earth. The very world has witnessed too much bloodshed of the innocent for others to build their palaces. The very world is filled with shouts for justice. The innocent and the oppressed are losing their lives to world powers. It is in this very world where the oppressors rule and this world that Allah will command the last Imam to appear and forever put an end to injustice. At that time, the world will belong to the righteous."
The leaders of Iran are willing to launch an all-out war that will lead to the deaths of millions of innocent people; it is a key step in their prophetic end-times belief. The entire world lies at risk—but their first strike will be against Israel.
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What drives Ahmadinejad?
Iranian president wants to set stage for appearance of Shia messiah
Israel - 17 June 2008
Shia Iran is striving to attain the position of regional superpower en route to becoming a significant nuclear power on the international stage. Iran openly challenges the West in its attempt to eject the Americans and British from Iraq and attain hegemony in the Persian Gulf region, supported among other, by its military program, massively built up in recent years. The Iranian leadership talks of a “New Middle East” in response to the West, which would be an Islamic Middle East in the mold of the Iranian inspired Islamic revolution.
Iran's political aspirations are driven by a deep religious zeal. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeatedly pledges "the imminent and evident liquidation of Israel," as a code word for the messianic fervor he shares with his spiritual mentor, Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, one of the more radical ayatollahs, who subscribes to diplomatic and military activism to advance the global Islamic revolution spearheaded by Iran.
Former President Khatami, an Iranian reformist, once referred to Yazdi as "the theoretician of violence." In 2006, Yazdi's leading disciple, Mohsen Gharavian, released a ruling or fatwa sanctioning the use of nuclear weapons against other nations. This is in distinction to Iranian diplomats in the West who repeatedly say that nuclear weapons are opposed by Islam and thus will not be sought.
In language reminiscent of Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa against Salman Rushdie, Ahmadinejad's mentor also ruled that "If anyone insults the Islamic sanctity, Islam has permitted for his blood to be spilled, with no legal proceedings necessary."
Addressing senior religious scholars in mid November 2005, Ahmadinejad did not attempt to hold back his true motives and intentions. Our basic goal, he noted, is to set the stage for the Mahdi, the Shia messiah, or the “vanished Imam.” He went on to state that in order to bring this about, Iran must set an Islamic example, develop a strong society and forge government policy in various fields, endeavoring to realize the goal of the end of time vision whereupon the Mahdi will appear.
As mayor of Tehran, for example, Mr. Ahmadinejad appears to have in 2004 secretly instructed the city council to build a grand avenue to prepare for the Mahdi. A year later, as president, he allocated $17 million for a blue-tiled mosque closely associated with mahdaviat in Jamkaran, south of the capital in the city of Qum. He has also instigated the building of a direct Tehran-Jamkaran railroad line.
Signs of messianic redemption
Such is the religious fervor associated with the mosque, every Tuesday night, the predicted evening of the Mahdi's arrival, thousands of Iranians gather at the shrine of Jamkaran. They write wishes on pieces of paper and throw them in a well where the imam is supposed to have appeared. Ahmadinejad had a list of his proposed cabinet members dropped into a well adjacent to the Jamkaran Mosque, it is said, to benefit from its purported divine connection.
Most worryingly, Ahmadinejad openly espouses the belief that his rule is the harbinger of the Mahdi. In a speech at the UN in 2006 in the presence of many world leaders, Ahmadinejad closed his speech with a prayer: "O mighty Lord, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace."
A book published In Lebanon last year focuses on Ahmadinejad's Shia vision of the Mahdi, titled "Ahmadinejad and the next global revolution." The author, Shadi Fakiya, establishes a direct linkage between Ahmadinejad and the Mahdi. Fakiya claims that the current Iranian president fits the description of the commander of the Mahdi forces which liberated Jerusalem according to Shia belief.
Ahmadinejad is depicted as being determined and guided directly by Allah, and believing that the "army of the liberation of Jerusalem" will pass through Iraq, similar to Ayatollah Khomeini, who claimed that "the road to Jerusalem passes through Karbala" (a holy Shia town in Iraq.)
Ahmadinejad's determination to acquire nuclear weapons is also construed as being part of the signs of messianic redemption, as he and his associates view the showdown with the international community to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear technology as one of the ways to prepare the ground for the appearance of the Mahdi.
‘Jews are corrupting Islam’
As in Christianity, the Shia messiah will be predated by an anti-Christ, or in Shia belief, the dajjal. Muslim tradition predicts that in the “End Times,” the Dajjal and his army will threaten to take over the entire globe, conquering much of it by military power, and seducing others with material prosperity. The Mahdi will then appear and destroy the dajjal and rule the world according to Sharia law.
Although historically there are is little known of the identity of the dajjal, more and more Shia Imams are claiming that the dajjal and his followers are Jews. These extremist Imams and their followers point to the anti-Semitic forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as proof that the Jews are running the world and corrupting Islam.
Already in the 1970s Ayatollah Khomeini wrote in his Vilayat-i Faqih, in Islam and Revolution that the Jews were perverting Islam and thus deserved of divine retribution.
Ahmadinejad's obsession with Israel leads many to believe that he believes Israel to be absolute evil and fits the role of the supposed dajjal. The Iranian president's other obsession, disproving the Holocaust, also fits nicely into the belief that the dajjal manages to fool the world with its lies.
The present era, according to Fakiya, is the "era of revelation," whereby various signs foretell the appearance of the Mahdi:
Firstly, there will be a gathering of the Jews in Palestine. Following this, the Shia Mahdi will appear and lead the decisive campaign to annihilate the Jews. This will be followed by the establishment of an Islamic state as the first stage of creating the worldwide Imam state. An important element for this constitutes an Iraqi regime loyal to Iran.
The depiction of the Khorasani in the Shia vision of the end of time is compatible with Iran's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenai, the present supreme ruler of Iran. The Khorasani will hand over the torch to the Mahdi when he appears, and he will become the most senior among the Muslims.
The description of Shuyeb bin Salah applies to Ahmadinejad. Shuyeb, also known as al-Shabi al-Salah, is the figure who will lead the Mahdi's army, according to the Shia tradition, i.e. the commander of the Muslim forces. Shuyeb is depicted as being suntanned, thin, wearing a short beard, hailing from Tehran, determined and warlike. It is thought by many that Ahmadinejad sees himself in this role as he appears to fit this historical description.
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Ahmadinejad hails Nasrallah as soldier in army of the 'messiah'
Iranian President sends Hezbollah chief a greeting card to mark one year anniversary of Lebanon war.
Israel - 29 July 2007
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a greeting card to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to mark the first anniversary of the Second Lebanon War, calling the head of the Islamist Lebanese group a soldier in the messiah's army.
Celebrating last summer's war between Hezbollah and Israel, Ahmadinejad wrote "the wonderful victory of the Lebanese people over the Zionist occupiers is a result of faith, unity and resistance".
Ahmadinejad said that Nasrallah is one of the soldiers of "Mahdi", the prophesized redeemer of Islam.
"The Imam Mahdi carries the flag of humanity, support, and guidance for the believers," Ahmadinejad wrote.
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