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‘Ahmadinejad is a Jew’ claim is wide of the mark
By changing their name, the Iranian president’s family were avoiding snobbery rather than hiding a Jewish past
A remarkable claim that the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, famous for his anti-Israeli views and his denial of the Holocaust, has Jewish roots has come under fire today from Middle Eastern academics.
The claim was made in a Daily Telegraph article published on Saturday. Today, the Iranian-Israeli Middle East analyst Meir Javendanfar, writing on the Comment is Free website, says the Telegraph's understanding of the roots of Ahmadinejad's previous family name are deeply flawed.
The Telegraph's claim is based on the notion that Sabourjian, the name that can be seen in a close-up photo of the president holding up his identity card in 2008, "derives from weaver of the sabour, the name for the Jewish tallit shawl in Persia". Saturday's report also alleged that this name "is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran's Ministry of the Interior".
The article's authors, Damien McElroy and Ahmad Vahdat, went on to unearth helpful experts who backed up their claim. Ali Nourizadeh, of the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies, said: "This aspect of Mr Ahmadinejad's background explains a lot about him. Every family that converts into a different religion takes a new identity by condemning their old faith. By making anti-Israeli statements he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections."
An unnamed "London-based expert on Iranian Jewry" was also wheeled out to claim that "the 'jian' ending to the name specifically showed the family had been practising Jews. He has changed his name for religious reasons, or at least his parents had. Sabourjian is well-known (sic) Jewish name in Iran."
However, writing on Comment is Free, Javendanfar pours scorn on McElroy and Vahdat's claim. "Upon closer inspection, a completely different interpretation of 'Sabourjian' emerges," he writes. "The name derives from thread painter - sabor in Farsi - a once common and humble occupation in the carpet industry in Semnan province, where Aradan [Ahmadinejad's birthplace] is situated. Carpet weaving or colouring carpet threads are not professions associated with Jews in Iran."
What's more, Javendanfar says that the reason Ahmadinejad's father changed his surname was nothing to do with shame at his Jewish roots, but "has more to do with the class struggle in Iran. When it became mandatory to adopt surnames, many people from rural areas chose names that represented their professions or that of their ancestors. In many cases they changed their surnames upon moving to Tehran, in order to avoid snobbery and discrimination from residents of the capital."
So by taking on the name Ahmadinejad - meaning 'from the race of Ahmad', one of the names given to Mohammad - the president's father was emphasising the piety of the family, and not shedding a contentious surname. ·
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Nick Bowman, that comment --although heard often enough (i.e., it's not original to you), is disingenuous and illogical. His "position" as number 1 opponent of Israel is not "re-inforced immesurably" if he happens to be of Jewish background. Why is it the case that coming from a Jewish family which converted to Islam when he was 4 makes any critique by Ahmadinejad stronger as a result? His views are either sensible and sound, or they are not (and if it needs saying, I think he is a racist demagogue and a thug). If this story is true, he has only a Jewish ethnic origin - he is a Muslim, clearly raised in and attached to that identity.
Yes, there are certainly thousands of Jews who do not subscribe to Zionism, that is, to the project of settlement of Jews in a national home in Mandate Palestine -- for the real meaning of Zionism is nothing more or less than that: a nationalist movement which began in the late 19th century and bore fruit with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
But such people are in a minority.
You seem gleeful that, yes, the anti-Israeli position is "proven" because a Jew, Ahmadinejad, is against Israel. Marx came from a family of converts as well - and expressed himself in vehemently anti-Semitic terms full of spleen and venon. The phenomenon is pretty well-known - the self-hating Jew. If you knew anything about the psychology of oppressed minorities, you would understand this. It is a problem which has also affected some black people, who have incorporated into their thinking some negative self-images which in fact emanate from the majority environment. Thousands of pages have been written about this phenomenon of self-hatred. Malcolm X wrote about it at length his autobiography. Richard Wright also dealt with this....
All Telegraph shareholders should by now know of the fate befallen the Evening Standard. After Ken Bates was hounded out of Chelsea for a £20m pittance and the Ken Livingstone crescendo (by the inhouse saboteurs) the consumers finally made clear harpischords are no longer in fashion. Shareholders of the Telegraph please note !!
I wish I'd read the Daily Telegraph, rather than the truncated versions on their web site. In the furore though, it strikes me that the key point is being missed. If (and it's a big if) he does have Jewish ancestry, then his position as the number one opponent of Israel is re-inforced immeasurably. Making him Jewish only strengthens him. Jews against Israel? Who'd have thought?