The Brain Behind Ahmadinejad
Opinion
By Meir Javedanfar
On December 14, 2005, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became the first senior Iranian official to deny the Holocaust. “They have created a myth today that they call the massacre of Jews and they consider it a principle above God, religions and the prophets,” he said in the city of Zahedan.
Until that date, leaders of the Islamic Republic had focused their hostility on Israel and Zionism but had steered clear of Holocaust denial and direct attacks on Judaism. In the decades preceding the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini did sometimes use antisemitic rhetoric. But after his return to Iran, he declared that Jews should be protected. This position was consistent with the traditional Islamic view of Jews as “people of the book.”
Many answers have been offered to explain Ahmadinejad’s more overtly antagonistic posture. Some believe he wishes to be viewed in the Muslim world as a hero who is not frightened to take on Israel and its supporters on any ideological battlefield. Others believe that he actually wants to increase Iran’s international isolation, because doing so would allow him to crack down hard on the opposition. Still others believe he wants to show up the double standards of the West, where criticism of Islam is allowed under the principle of freedom of speech yet Holocaust denial is taboo and in some countries forbidden under law.
More recently, there have even been suggestions that Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial reflects an attempt to overcompensate for what is alleged to be his own Jewish background. This theory is rooted in a ridiculous report that appeared earlier this month in Britain’s Daily Telegraph claiming that Ahmadinejad’s family — citing as evidence its original surname, Sabourjian — was Jewish. In fact, there is no reason to believe that Ahmadinejad is of Jewish ancestry, or even that the surname in question is particularly Jewish.
Instead of these tactical and psychological explanations, perhaps we should look to the realm of philosophy for an explanation of Ahmadinejad’s antisemitic rhetoric.
The Iranian president comes from a cadre of messianic revolutionaries who were influenced by the teachings of an Iranian philosopher by the name of Ahmad Fardid. Born in 1909 in the city of Yazd in central Iran and educated in Europe, Fardid was an admirer of Martin Heidegger, the renowned German philosopher who was a leading intellectual supporter of Hiter’s National Socialist ideology.
After the revolution, Iran’s Islamic radicals were looking for secular philosophies in which to ground their hostility toward the West and their Shiite messianism. In Fardid and his teachings some found what they were looking for.
Fardid believed that ideas such as human rights, tolerance and Western democracy are decadent. He also believed that all international organizations are conspirators against Iran. An antisemite, he saw the “hand of Zionists” controlling foreign governments and nongovernmental organizations. The use of violence to achieve political goals was, in Fardid’s opinion, absolutely permissible.
Fardid offered support for the revolutionaries’ calls for a system of Velayat-e Faqih (or guardianship by Islamic jurist), under which Iran’s “supreme leader” is seen as God’s representative to all Shiites. This concept dovetailed with Fardid’s belief in the importance of a strong leader, or, as Heidegger would have put it, a “Führer.”
This vision of violent, total revolution sweeping away the old Western-aligned order appealed to the messianic instincts of Ahmadinejad and his comrades. Although Fardid died in 1994, his ideology is still very much alive among hardline messianic circles within Iran. According to Mehdi Khalaji, a leading Iran expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Fardid’s admirers include former heads of Iran’s secret service.
When it comes to Jews, we see two varying approaches among Fardid’s admirers. While Ahmadinejad may have broken new ground by denying the Holocaust, he has not attacked Judaism as a religion. Others, however, do go further. For instance, Mohammad Ali Ramin, Ahmadinejad’s former senior adviser and the organizer of the 2006 Tehran Holocaust denial conference has called Jews “filthy creatures” and blamed them for causing disasters such as SARS and AIDS.
Ahmadinejad’s own antisemitism is of a piece with his larger apocalyptic vision, influenced by Fardid, that has as its culmination the return of the Shiite messiah, the Mahdi. In this vision, the Mahdi’s return would rid the world of all “corrupt” governments and ideologies, such as Zionism. As Ahmadinejad awaits the return of the Mahdi, the rest of the world waits anxiously to see whether Iran will acquire nuclear weapons and how closely Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, will identify with his president’s messianic visions.
Meir Javedanfar is the co-author , with Yossi Melman, of “The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran” (Basic Books, 2007).
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Interesting..Followers of Heidiger in Islamist Persia. What a mixture! Probably most of the reasons, including that surprising revelation for me about the existence of an Iranian Heidiger, have a part in Nejad's comments, I see his denial of the Holocaust as part of a larger strategy meant to deligitimize the existence of Israel. His argument goes like that: The State of Israel was created because of the Holocaust. The Holocaust is a lie, a fabrication wich never existed Therefore Israel has no justification in existing neither It's a mistake that schould be deconstructed Jews have to go back then from where they came from. It is an agression on truth, a falsificationt of History, facts are here to demonstrate the fallacy of the arguments...but it is working!! Not only with ignoramus in the West and Arabs everywhere.. Even Obamba in his Cairo speech emphasized the Final Solution and Holocaust as the reason for Jewish to have a right for their own Homeland. Part of the argument is therefore already widely accepted by educated Western people.If you repeat lies endlessely they'll become the new reality, it is said... Orwellian, Kafkaest,never mind...Why is the Wakf in Jerusalem is against archeological digging there ? Same reason, as they say that Jews never lived in Jerusalem, that no Temple existed, etc.. Same Sophistic arguments as above are aplicated for more ancient history as well.No City of David, no Temple, no Jew ever lived and had their State there.All Palestinian leaders since the"Nazi" Mufti, allied with Hitler, claims that openly as Arafat, Abbas wich his Phd thesis, is about the denial of the Holocaust. Nothing new then under the sun, strategy and propaganda was set already by the Soviet Union and before. Iranian regime has to be totally weakened or overthrown before any agreement with the Pal's would be eventually realistic. This deligitimation of Israel is orchestrated mainly now by Iran and have already devastating effects and schould end hopefully very soon.
Ahmadinejad gave his speech in Parsi, and so didn't use the word "myth." The question is, what word did he use, what is it's possible translation, and what were its speaker's true intentions? Assuming that the word actually used can be interpreted as the English word "myth," let's check Webster (New Collegiate Dictionary): "myth, n. 1. A story, the origin of which is forgotten, ostensibly historical, but usually such as to explain some practice, belief, institution, or natural phenomenon. Myths are especially associated with religious rites and beliefs. 2. A person or thing existing only in imagination. 3. Such legends collectively; legendary or mythical matter." Can any reasonably intelligent person conclude that the word "myth" can be a very accurate description of the historical event most Westerners call the Holocaust? I think not. Definition 1., and to some extent, 3. seem fairly appropriate, or can be appropriate to intelligent people, or to anyone who understands the historical, and most importantly, political issues surrounding the Holocaust. To me, anyone insisting that definition 2. be the only meaning Ahmadinejad intended, is a person who is ignorant, brainwashed, or corrupt. Take your pick. Further, the saga is both tragically and comically illustrated further when one reads the rest of the speech Ahmadinejad gave. In other words, what rational, sensible people call "context." In this context, Ahmadinejad was claiming that the Holocaust has become a concept or principle higher than God, for it was used to justify the expulsion of innocent people from their homelands - the latter being another historical fact. Elsewhere in the speech, Amadinejad said clearly that the Holocaust is apparently historical fact, because of the intensity with which the West accepts it, though he hasn't verified himself, from his own study. The comical part about this is that, in that very speech, Ahmadinejad said that the same people who continue their unjustified rants against him will distort and only remember their lies about this very speech; they will not even mention what he considers to be the real messages of the speech - one of which is the fact that the Holocaust was used to drive people from their homeland. Can anyone deny that Ahmadinejad's prophesy has come true? No.
For those who seek Truth and Justice, the truth about what I'm saying can found by reading an English translation of the actual speech. This will be very rewarding, because it will teach volumes about the extent to which propaganda saturates our lives. Just search "myth holocaust Amadinejad." Of course, on the web, there can also be found much distortion and lies, but it is within the heart of each of us to sort out the chaff from the wheat. Good luck.
Thanks for the interesting article. There is an answer to Israel’s problem with regards to Iran and its crazy government... * Be less greedy on land. * Don’t think force is the only answer. * Learn how to live with your neighbours in peace. * Acknowledge basic human rights of Palestinians. * Learn to respect human beings and act as if they were all Jews. * Hold your leaders responsible for atrocities committed to neighbouring countries. If you do all this, a country like Iran will have no ammunition left to use against you.
There is also the possibility that Ahmadinejad is a courageous statesman who "tells it like it is." His critiques of Zionist supremicism are not necessarily anti Semitic. Not all Jews are Zionists: anti Zionist jews gave us the concepts "Shoa Business" and "Holocaust Industry."
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