Then They Came for Me_ A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival - Maziar Bahari [19]
There were dozens of shoes piled one on top of another in the entrance of the headquarters. In accordance with Islamic practices, I removed my shoes, then went inside to look for Alireza Asadi, a student leader with the campaign whom I had met a month earlier at a rally. Inside, the office was even more modest than its façade.
The Ahmadinejad posters on the walls of the headquarters, proclaiming his humility and religious devotion, made me sick. Groups of young Ahmadinejad supporters were poring over maps and lists. Alireza took Davood and me to a corner, where we couldn’t hear what was being discussed.
Alireza was an engineering student and a classmate of Ahmadinejad’s younger son, whose name is also Alireza. They were both part of the Islamic society of their university as well as members of the Basij, the volunteer arm of the Revolutionary Guards, which has a unit at every government office and school in Iran. The Basij’s mission is said to be defending the ideals of the revolution. This vaguely worded mission allows the Guards commanders to use the paramilitary group in any way they desire. That had included ransacking student dormitories, attacking opposition newspapers, and even staging assassination attempts against reformist politicians.
At the rally, when I had asked Alireza why he’d joined the Basij, he’d looked at me as if the answer were obvious.
“There’s nothing I’m more proud of than being Basiji,” he told me proudly. “The Basij is the backbone of this country.”
One of the things that fascinated me most about Alireza was that he was so unlike the stereotypical Ahmadinejad supporter, who is typically poor, uneducated, and close-minded. The son of two physicians, Alireza had spent the early part of his life in England. But the devout Muslim family had decided to return to Iran when Alireza’s sister hit adolescence, finding British society inappropriate for bringing up a good Muslim teenage girl. “Most British girls are corrupt, as you know,” Alireza told me once, unaware that Paola, my fiancée, was British. “As soon as they can, they start whoring around,” he added with a cheeky smile.
Even though he’d left England for Iran at the age of eight, Alireza talked about British society with the authority of a sociology professor at the London School of Economics, and as we sat across from each other on the faded orange wall-to-wall carpet of the campaign headquarters, he spoke with the same conviction about why Iranians should reelect Ahmadinejad. To him, it was very simple. According to the Iranian Constitution, he pointed out, the president has very limited power. The main power lies in the hands of the supreme leader, who has the final say in all major decisions in the country. Many who support the supreme leader don’t think of him merely as the political leader of the country, but also as the highest Shia religious leader, who can control all aspects of their lives.
Shiism, or Shia Islam, is the second-largest denomination in the religion. The majority of Muslims are Sunnis. Shias are the majority in only four countries in the world: Iran, Iraq, Bahrain, and Lebanon.
The division between Muslims started after the death of the Prophet Mohammad in A.D. 632, due to political differences. The Sunnis believed that one of the close allies of the Prophet was his rightful successor. The Shias believed that Ali, the Prophet Mohammad’s cousin and son-in-law, was the Prophet’s rightful successor.
Ali is the first imam, or saint, of Shias. Sunnis call all their local religious leaders imams.
Most Shias believe in the sanctity of twelve imams: Ali and his eleven direct descendants. The twelve imams are regarded by Shias as “the infallible,” those who never committed a sin. During their lifetime, the Shia imams interpreted the teachings of the Koran for their followers and were responsible for the welfare of their followers.
Shias regard the twelfth and last imam,