The liberal West is faced with a real problem of recognition and understanding when it comes to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The man talks like what many Westerners would call a “religious nut.” But it’s we who are the fools if we dismiss his motives and intentions on that basis, or assume that religious motivation isolates him among Iran’s rulers.
Ahmadinejad’s latest prophetic revelation — that America is trying to block the return of the “hidden Imam,” or Mahdi, anticipated by about 90 percent of Shias — is a good reminder that we ignore his apocalyptic vision at our peril. Empirical skepticism, while one of the defining strengths of our Western culture, is too often a weakness when it comes to recognizing the motivating power of non-empirical perspectives. We’re apt to think that political leaders can’t really be driven by “fantasies,” as with the sense of eschatological mission so pronounced in Ahmadinejad. Yet our own empiricism, applied honestly, would require us to acknowledge that despots with crazy ideas do, in fact, act on them as if they believe them. The dismissive argument that nobody could really believe he’s been appointed to immanentize the Mahdi’s eschaton has little support from history.
Events are reinforcing the proposition that Ahmadinejad means exactly what he says – and that he represents a major faction in Iran’s ruling cabal. It’s increasingly clear, for example, that Ahmadinejad is not merely posturing for a Mahdist constituency among the Iranian people. There is no actual evidence of such a popular constituency. While the regime has been serving up Mahdi-messianic fare in national TV programming, with the explicit purpose of “preparing the people” for the hidden Imam’s return, the people themselves have spent the last six months mounting a remarkable national protest campaign to demand Western-style liberalization of their society and government.
It thus represented an arresting contrast when, in August, Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei exhorted the Islamic nations of the region to provide armies to fight the U.S. and Israel, and to prepare the world for the hidden Imam’s return. His spokesman even identified Khamenei — for what Western commentators indicate was the first time — as the “direct representative” of the Mahdi. This development certainly appears disjunctive with the liberal aspirations of Iran’s protestors. It also strengthens the perception of a fight being underway for control of Iran, and of a Mahdist faction essentially going for broke: pushing to make things happen now, very possibly from a sense of destiny accelerated by the turmoil, as much as from a pragmatic desire to exploit emerging conditions.
The election of Barack Obama has given religious apocalypticism a new life in the last year, and it would be a supreme mistake to discount its hold on the human mind. Contrary to the implication of critics, an apocalyptic sensibility doesn’t render its acolytes incompetent: Iran keeps getting what it wants, after all, and is much better at exploiting our weaknesses than vice versa. Ahmadinejad’s big advantage over us is that he takes us seriously. We need to start returning the favor.
