FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Kiss of Life or Kiss of Death?

Rant Number 352 8 June 2009

This time I have really done it. I have cooked my goose. You are not going to believe it but it is true: I have kissed Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad!

Where, when and how? In Tehran. Last week. While attending an international conference commemorating the death 20 years ago of Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the Iranian revolution. An inspiring and stimulating event, filled with trips, gatherings, lectures and discussions. Meeting the President was one of the highlights. The West’s favourite whipping boy, ritually loathed and anathematised by Europe’s leaders, you could have expected a kind of ogre. Instead, he came across as surprisingly good. Well, in parts…

As the slim, young-looking figure walked into the auditorium where we sat, pandemonium broke out. If a popular saint and healer had suddenly appeared among a throng of votaries, in a medieval shrine like Canterbury or Santiago de Compostela, it might have been like that. The scramble and struggle to grab, hug and kiss him was something to behold. (His exit was even more stirring.) By the time Ahmadinejad stood to speak, he might have felt just a little bit bruised. But he looked in good form.

First, his opening invocations included one so ‘the coming of the Twelfth Imam may be hastened’. The priest liked that. The concept of Imamate is of course distinctive of Shia theology. A hierarchy of twelve men, sinless and infallible, empowered to lead the Muslim Umma after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Many were persecuted, martyred or killed. The last Imam never died but went into occultation. He is therefore the ‘hidden Imam’. All Shia faithful eagerly await his return, which will usher in an era of universal righteousness and peace – as well as judgment and chastisement for the wicked.

‘Messianic’ or ‘apocalyptic’ are the technical terms for those expectations. Western politicians recoil in horror from such language. Maybe they are right. The prospect of the Second Coming of Christ – something prayed for in any celebrations of the Eucharist – must scare the hell out of people like Blair, Brown, Zapatero and Co., who have good reasons to fear the Supreme Judge. As for the Left, they utterly detest and condemn anything religious, other than vicarage tea parties, as darkly backward and reactionary. Conversely, the pious, the humbled and the hurt, the victims of arrogance and oppressions, are naturally drawn to intimations of transcendence. Belief in the Hidden Imam is liberation theology in genuinely popular style. Ahmadinejad clearly has become a political spokesman for such sentiments. And what’s wrong with that, pray? If a fiery South American rabble-rouser like the late, unlamented Che Guevara boasted of awaiting the return of ‘Comrade Jesus’, few would dare to object. Hasn’t Islam got has a right to its own living eschatology?

Second, ‘Marxism is now on the ash heap of history’, the President noted. I agree, and how jolly good that is. But so is liberal democracy, according to him. Because, briefly, it excludes people from ‘real participation’ and it results in the ‘erosion of values and prophetic ideas’. From the perspective of eternity, it is a difficult to disagree with the latter claim. The European Union has pointedly excluded any reference to God in its charter. It systematically enacts legislation which amounts to ‘a denial of God made into a system of government’, to quote that great Victorian statesman and Christian, W.E. Gladstone. It is an active agent of secularism and disintegration. Besides, the current economic and financial woes of the capitalist system also argue the need for change. ‘The link between economics and Heaven has been cut off’, the President complained. Not that I profess to know exactly what he meant, but I suspect that when a great economist like Werner Sombart wrote of ‘demonic economics’, he might have gestured towards the same thing. The problem is what to replace liberal democracy with. On that, I am not at all sure. Hearing Ahmadinejad having a go at that sacred cow was uplifting, though.

Third, the Jews. On these I fear the President and I do NOT see eye to eye. He reiterated his perverse position on the holocaust. I find that puzzling. An Iranian, surely he has heard of the ancient Persian ruler, Cyrus the Great. The vanquisher of Babylon, in 537 BC, he generously freed the Jewish exiles from their captivity there. Led by Zerubabbel 40.000 Jews were returned to the Holy Land, accompanied by a Royal Persian official, to ensure the carrying out of the King’s orders, such as rebuilding of the Temple. The Bible hails Cyrus as ‘the Lord’s Anointed’, mashia, in Hebrew. God’s Messiah, no less. Through the mouth of the Prophet Isaiah, God declares of Cyrus: ‘He is my shepherd and shall perform all my pleasure. To Jerusalem he shall proclaim: You shall be rebuilt. And the Temple: your foundation shall be laid.’ (44:28) So, like it or not, it is to Cyrus and to Iran that the ancient Jewish people owed their rebirth. Mr President, are you listening?

The priest is not suggesting Ahmadinejad should embrace Zionism or turn against the Palestinians. But you can excoriate the policies of the state of Israel towards their conquered people without going in for loony narratives such as ‘the holocaust never happened’. Indeed, I watched his chief electoral opponent, Mousavi, pointing out during a TV debate how ‘raising the holocaust issue has benefited Israel and the pro-Israel lobby’. I fear that may well be true…

Iranians are now in the midst of a vigorous and exciting electoral campaign. All over Tehran you can see enthusiastic people of all ages and looks waving posters and placards of their favourite candidates, honking, singing and shouting. The forthcoming elections will certainly be free. So, the question arises: will Ahmadinejad win or lose? Has the priest given him the kiss of life or the kiss of death?

Honestly, I haven’t a clue. The voters will decide. Nice, ordinary Iranian folks, whom I liked very much. As to my personal preference…my lips are sealed.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

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