Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was born on this day (October 28 – same day as Bill Gates, by the way) in 1956, has never exactly been a friend of the Jews (he has vowed to wipe Zionism off the map, and has come very close to denying the Holocaust, among other things), so there seemed to be an imminent irony overload in the making when it was alleged that Ahmadinejad was part-Jew himself. After the jump, we trace the controversy, and reveal the authority that has settled the question for good.
First, the allegation:
A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.
A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.
The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.
Oy. But not so fast, said The Guardian:
The reason that Ahmadinejad’s father changed his surname 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. This made them easily identifiable as townfolk. In many cases they changed their surnames upon moving to Tehran, in order to avoid snobbery and discrimination from residents of the capital.
The Sabourjians were one of many such families. Their surname was related to carpet-making, an industry that conjures up images of sweatshops. They changed it to Ahmadinejad in order to help them fit in. The new name was also chosen because it means from the race of Ahmad, one of the names given to Muhammad.
In the end, it was probably too good to be true. And so the final word should go to the experts at Jew or Not Jew:
So is it possible? Well, it’s not impossible that if a number of flimsy assumptions hold, Ahmadinejad would not be just an antisemite, but an antisemite… with Jewish ancestry.
But we doubt it.
