Iran’s leaders mischaracterized
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Re “A world full of Cold Wars,” Opinion, May 15
Niall Ferguson demonizes and mischaracterizes Iran’s leadership and their Shiite religion. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s letter to President Bush is not “long and nutty.” It was probably constructed carefully by the clerical leadership of Iran to appeal to Bush on common religious grounds.
Our Christian apocalyptic expectation of God’s millennial kingdom is widely believed by fundamentalist Christians in the U.S. Ahmadinejad’s millenarian expectation of the Mahdi (the Shiite savior) is a similar phenomenon. Does Bush consider the book of Revelation to be “long and nutty”? The United States, with millions of Christian millenarians, has more nuclear weapons than any nation on Earth. Does this ensure “future Cold Wars”?
Ahmadinejad’s letter is an attempt to bridge the gap of language and culture by speaking in the millenarian language shared by Jews, Christians and Muslims. There is nothing cultish about Ahmadinejad’s religion.
JEAN ROSENFELD
Pacific Palisades
Rosenfeld is a researcher at UCLA’s Center for the Study of Religion.
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