President Mahmud Ahmadinejad of Iran has lost a couple of his top aides to charges of sorcery by the country’s leading religious figures.

 

One, Abbas Ghaffari, was arrested for being involved with spirits and exorcism. One Iranian news website, Ayandeh, described Ghaffari as “a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds.”

 

Abbas Amirifar, the head of Ahmadinejad’s cultural office, got into trouble over his praise for the documentary film, The Appearance Is Imminent, which discusses the return of the 12th and final imam, Muḥammad al-Mahdī, one of Shi’a Islam’s holiest figures. Muḥammad al-Mahdī, who was born in 868, is said to have never died. Rather, he has been hidden by God, and will return to defeat evil before the Last Judgment.

 

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other clerics resent Ahmadinejad, who holds no religious title, for preaching about religious affairs.

 

The president is said to be losing Khamenei’s support, in part because his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaei, is seen as a threat to the country’s clerical-based political system.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

 

Ahmadinejad Floored By Bugs, Spirits, And Djinns (by Robert Tait, Radio Free Europe)

Ahmadinejad Allies Charged with Sorcery (by Saeed Kamali Dehghan, The Guardian)

Loser of Romanian Election Claims He was Defeated by Negative Energy Waves (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)