The Daily Clarity

The ‘Hidden Imam’ in the Iranian election

Can a Western diplomat, particularly one with a pressing agenda of their own,  ever really understand the thinking of a non-Western mind? Increasingly we see evidence, and from errant US media commentary in particular, that this is a real issue to making progress in the Middle East and Central Asia. The problem, when a foreign consciousness is attempting to interpret the underlying psyche of another nation, is that it is reliant on its own world picture for reference. It is somewhat akin to trying to decipher the  writings of a language one is not conversant with.  This psychological and philosophical phenomena is why many in the non-Christian world, for example,  found some of the attitudes of the Bush era  difficult to understand.  Bush, especially on social and moral policy, was referencing a Judeo-Christian value set (albeit tempered by the practicalities of his office), and this is a world view that non-Christians and secularists alike find difficult to understand the nuances of.

The same phenomena is in play in relation to US Diplomats attempts to predict  Iranian intent in relation to its nuclear program. Many commentators understand, though few in the West give it due weight, that there are both secular and religious agendas in play within Iran on this issue. The upcoming Iranian election may well determine which of these agendas triumph. Israel is well aware of the religious dimension, even if the West is not,  hence its excitability and rhetoric about the issue – it is fearful that the ‘Hidden Imam’ agenda will be the ultimate driver. For most in the West, they do not know how important these beliefs are to some in Tehran,  and to many of the electorate in Iran.

Iran’s President Ahmadinejad (or Ahmadinezhad as some  anglicize it) is quite widely believed to be a member of a sect that has rather extreme beliefs about the Hidden Imam. There is circumstantial evidence that he believes his  actions may have some influence over when the  al-Mahdi (Messiah-like figure) will return to the physical world. It is a difficult concept to understand for most Westerners, but suffice to say that both Ahmadinejad  and the head of Iran’s nuclear program, Gholam Reza Aqazadeh, are believed to be members of this sect. The fact that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has issued a Fatwa (a religious ruling) against the creation of nuclear weapons in Iran, is not a member,  tells one that the upcoming Iranian election may well be critical in terms of  supremacy of one tenet over the other. This is an issue that matters in Iran,  and is getting precious little coverage in the West, and in the US media in particular.

In outline form, the Hidden Imam and the importance can be described thus:

The eleventh Imam, al-Hassan al-Askari, died in 874. He was succeeded by the twelfth Imam, the youthful Muhammad, who “disappeared” in 274/878 in the cave of the great mosque at Samarra without leaving progeny.

He is now known as the “expected one,” (al-Muntazar), the “promised one” (al-Mahdi”), or the “hidden one,” (al-Mustatir). The theology of the Hidden Imam is that Allah realized at last that the rightful successor to Muhammad was not going to be accepted by Islam at large so he had to be taken into hiding and kept there until he would re-appear to purify the umma and take the world for Islam.

The period of the Twelfth Imam’s hiding was in two parts. The period from 878 until 941 would be known as the “Lesser Occultation,” a time when the Hidden Imam was still active in this earthly realm, communicating by messengers. The Great Occultation began in 941, when all contact with the world was broken off. This date has been misinterpreted by some authors as the date of his disappearance. The Great Occultation continues to present and will end when he re-appears. – Ahmadinejad Awaits the Hidden Imam (Interesting perpective!).

Before Westerners dismiss this as only superstition, the story has close correlations to the Apocalypse and the ‘End Times’ prophecies popular among many Christian fundamentalists. In Iran, believers think that the Hidden Imam will return as the world boils and broils, and at a  time of existential danger for man the al-Mahdi will reappear to lead believers  in a  new, unified caliphate. In many variants of the story al-Mahdi is accompanied by Jesus on his return.  Some postulate that President Ahmadinejad may be in pursuit of nuclear weaponry to ’speed along’ the return of the Hidden Imam. Other more cynical commentators believe Ahmadinejad is merely using the Hidden Imam as a means to appeal to his base, who are in large part uneducated rural people. Regardless of whether Ahmadinejad peddles the philosophy for political or religious intent or some combination of both, he has been criticized heavily by more traditional Iranian clerics for this approach.

Ahmadinejad went further than ever before in emphasising his belief that the Mahdi is playing a critical role in Iran’s day-to-day politics.

“The Imam Mahdi is in charge of the world and we see his hand directing all the affairs of the country,” he said in the speech, which appears to date from last month but has only now been broadcast.

“We must solve Iran’s internal problems as quickly as possible. Time is lacking. A movement has started for us to occupy ourselves with our global responsibilities, which are arriving with great speed.”

Two leading clerics retorted that Ahmadinejadwould be better off concentrating on Iran’s social problems — most notably its double-digit inflation — than indulging in such mystical rhetoric.

“If Ahmadinejad wants to say that the hidden imam is supporting the decisions of the government, it is not true,” sniped Gholam Reza Mesbahi Moghadam, the spokesman of the conservative Association of Combatant Clerics.

“For sure, the hidden imam does not approve of inflation of 20 percent, the high cost of living and numerous other errors,” he said, according to the Kargozaran daily.

Ali Asghari, a member of the conservative Hezbollah faction in parliament, told the president not to link the management of the country to the imam.

“Ahmadinejad would do better to worry about social problemslike inflation … and other terrestrial affairs,” the Etemad Melli daily quoted him as saying. – AFP: Iran clerics rebuke Ahmadinejad over ‘hidden imam’.

In addition, the recent criticisms by Ahmadinejad’s opponents in the election ridiculing the supposed ‘glow’  he felt at his UN speech were viewed as trivial attacks on his credibility by Western observers. However, it is within the context of his opponents attempting to belittle Ahmadinejad’s superstitious approach to  governance  that these comments need to be understood. This is not only campaign rhetoric, it is a determined attempt by more secular politicians to reclaim Iran’s agenda for pragmatism,  and move the dialog away from Ahmedinejad’s mysticism and veiled religiosity.

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 Tehran 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 – ‘Divine mission’ driving Iran’s new leader – Telegraph.

One also has to understand that the current Ahmadinejad regime has very distinct political objectives in support of its religious agenda, or cynical political manipulation, dependent on  your view. The Iranian paranoia about regime change has as much to do with religious agenda as it has to do with nationalist beliefs. In case you think that such analysis of the Iranian agenda was confined to extreme analysts, you could always read the report produced by the respected think-tank, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, entitled “Apocalyptic Politics: On the rationality of Iranian policy” where the author says:

Ahmadinezhad is from a completely different genre of worshiper-politicians. He apparently belongs to a secret society that believes in the imminent return of the Hidden Imam. This group does not give much credit to the clerics or the clerical establishment, since few of its members have the theological training and ability to read and understand the religious texts in Arabic. The group considers itself to be the authentic representative of Islamic teachings, with the prophetic mission to change Iranian society—all in preparation for the coming of the Mahdi. In this group’s apocalyptic ideology, advanced technology can be used to hasten the return of the Hidden Imam. It is very difficult to know precisely what this secret society believes, but some rumors suggest it is eager to control the country’s nuclear program. It has been said that Gholam Reza Aqazadeh, head of the Organization for the Atomic Energy of Iran, is affiliated with this society. Some people around Ahmadinezhad have a background in neo-Nazi groups in Germany, such as Muhammad Ali Ramin, who is the head of the Holocaust Foundation, the secretary of the Holocaust conference in Tehran, and the president’s advisor.

It seems that the ideology of Ahmadinezhad’s group is a mixture of socialism and Nazism in the framework of Islamic fundamentalism. This ideology has two main international slogans: anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism. Apocalypticism has little influence in the seminaries of Qom and Najaf, and it has been always a marginal trend within the clerical establishment. The return of the Hidden Imam means the end of clerical establishment, because the clerics consider themselves as the representatives of the Imam in his absence. Hence, they do not propagate the idea that the Hidden Imam will come soon. But in the military forces, especially in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Basij militia, apocalypticism has a very strong following.

So there are numerable reasons for the West to support Ahmadinejad’s opponents in the upcoming Iranian election, not least of which may be a neutralization of his extreme religiosity. His views are  potentially far more dangerous to the West than the strict Islamic orthodoxies of the Supreme Leader and his clerics. Even if Ahmadinejad is merely and cynically manipulating  a religiosity agenda to motivate his base, it is a belief set that the West could do best to help discredit. Fundamentalists of any sort, whether it be the evangelicals in the US or the Hidden Iman extreme sects in Iran, hold  narrow world pictures that admit no potential for error nor any chance for compromise. The West must engage Iran with secular arguments, while remaining empathetic of the Muslim values that underpin the traditional theocracy there.  This was something the Bush-Cheney Administration failed to grasp to their cost, and that in his early days President Obama has shown better understanding of.  However, regardless of the language of engagement, if Ahmadinejad is reelected the chances for compromise and negotiation diminish and the potential for non-rationalist policies, at least in secular terms, increases. The Hidden Imam is a hidden dimension to the Iranian election, but one that could have a big say in the outcome.