Many Happy Returns, Twelfth Imam!

When I first noticed my birthday this year would coincide with the birthday of the Twelfth Imam, a revered figure in Shi`ite Islam, the possibility of a scheduling conflict didn’t occur to me. After all, the Twelfth Imam, also known as the Hidden Imam or the Mahdi, has been occulted since 874 A.D., and the festivities held in his honor are usually a daytime affair.

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• How Iran’s Populist Lost His Popularity
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• Many Happy Returns, Twelfth Imam!
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• Silencing the Voices of Dissent
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• The Backlash Against Iran’s Role in Lebanon
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• Raising a Child in Iran’s Cultural Divide
Coping with the gulf between Iranian private and public life is a difficult skill even for adults to manage. So what should we teach our children?

• A Nation of Holocaust Deniers?
The president’s skepticism is, surprisingly, shared by many Iranians. But that doesn’t mean they are anti-Israel. Let me explain

• You’ve Come Only a Little Way, Baby
Bans on foreign, Kurdish and even some ancient Persian names for newborns have been around since the Islamic revolution but are now letting up slightly

• Iran’s Caesarean Section Craze
Well-accustomed to elective surgery, Iranian women are choosing C-sections at such a high rate that it’s a challenge now to find a doctor who will perform a “medieval” vaginal birth

• How Iran’s Populist Lost His Popularity
With prices rising and the economy stagnating, Iranians view their President as less a national hero than the latest in a long line of ineffectual bureaucrats

• Many Happy Returns, Twelfth Imam!
The Mahdi, an imam who happens to be Ahmadinejad’s favorite, has become the object of frenzied and government-nurtured worship

• Silencing the Voices of Dissent
Inside the forced shutdown of Iran’s most popular reformist paper, Shargh

• Who are the Women Behind the Men Running Iran?
First ladies are usually kept in hiding, but one outspoken wife is causing big problems for Ahmadinejad

• The Backlash Against Iran’s Role in Lebanon
The notion that Iranian dollars are going to Lebanese Shi`ites is fueling animosity between the Persian community and the Arab world

But the night of my birthday party I noticed the neighbors across the street weaving colored lights into the trees of their huge yard frontyard, unfurling a Koranic banner from their second-story balcony, and arranging dozens of chairs around their veranda. Within an hour their guests had taken up all the parking spaces in a three block radius, and a speaker attached to an immense sound system began congratulating everyone on the Twelfth Imam’s birthday. The voice launched into an excited sermon, detailing how God concealed the Mahdi — the last in a line of Shi`ite imams descended from the Prophet Mohammad — and would only bring him back at the end of time to bestow justice to mankind. Soon you couldn’t even hear the phone ring in my apartment. I began text messaging my friends that my party was postponed until next week. Sharing a birthday with the Twelfth Imam, it turns out, is like being born on Christmas. You just can’t compete.

With my party off and the din rising, I resigned myself to sitting on the balcony and spying on the neighbor’s festivities. The buffet tent and the chairs were filled with men, so the female members of the household were either invited to an all-women’s Twelfth Imam birthday party, or confined to the house. I couldn’t see the speaker, but his voice transfixed the all-male assembly, rising to extol the Mahdi’s virtues (immortal, pure).”He may even be among us right here right now, in this very gathering!” he exclaimed, looking about exaggeratedly. The idea that the Twelfth Imam could be present, either invisibly or in the bodily guise of an ordinary guest seated on a folding chair, led the assembly to a sort of climax, and afterwards everyone drove away in late model cars.

Iranians have celebrated the Twelfth Imam’s birthday for centuries, but it was only after the 1979 Islamic Revolution that the holiday was celebrated by draping Tehran in tinsel and colored lights, much like a Western city during Christmas. The government honors the Mahdi’s birthday with more fanfare than it treats other arguably more prominent Muslim holidays. This year, out on a short trip for groceries, I ate Mahdi birthday cookies on one street, and was offered a cold fruit drink at a nearby square. The result of this government-nurtured devotion to the Mahdi has transformed the piety of millions of Iranians to frenzied worship bordered on superstition.

About 65 miles south of Tehran, there lies Jamkaran, a tiny, run-down mosque which in the past 20 years has been designated as the spot the Mahdi went into concealment. Pious Iranians, with government help, have transformed the site into a massive devotional center for the Mahdi, and on weekends tens of thousands of Iranian pilgrims peer down the well where legend says he is hiding. Some visitors claim to have seen the Mahdi there, and report things he allegedly said to them. More commonly, people write him letters asking for blessing, and drop them down the well (on the male or female side). Caretakers fish the letters out regularly, and burn them nearby. If you happen to be walking through the area, it’s common to find half-scorched fragments of letters to the Mahdi in the grass. On the occasion of the Mahdi’s birthday this year, the government installed 60 new payphones at Jamkaran, and extended Iran’s mobile network coverage to the site.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad adores the Twelfth Imam, and has dedicated much of his public speeches to pleading for his return, and expounding on the importance of preparing for it. He invokes the Mahdi so frequently, is so suggestive of his own divine guidance, that the ordinary, devout Iranian could be easily made to think the two enjoy a special connection. These religious tendencies irritate many clerics in Iran’s theological center, Qom, and serious religious scholars, who feel the president is using the Mahdi mythology to expand his own power, and in the process conflating the Mahdi’s attributes with those of God.

But as abstract as it may sound, Ahmadinejad and the Islamic Republic need the Twelfth Imam. Iran’s system of absolute rule by the clergy is vested in the Mahdi’s disappearance, for in his absence the ayatullahs function as his deputies on earth. The legitimacy of the Islamic system and the credibility of the establishment clergy are founded on the Twelfth Imam. Which is why the President mentions him at every opportunity, why the Jamkaran pilgrimage site is becoming a small city. And of course, why his birthday is celebrated with unparalleled passion, at high volume.