Interpreting the Epistle of St. Ahmedinejad

Thankfully somebody has undertaken a serious reading the President Ahmedinejad's recent letter to President He-whom-I-will-not-name. As the title of this posting suggests, the letter needs (and I think merits) the sort of attention that folk in my profession give to Biblical writings (or that lawyers and judges give, or used to give, to the Constitution and the lawcodes).

PastorDan of DailyKos and Street Prophets offers such a reading today. He finds not so much a diplomatic-political document, as a religious-political document, in which Mr. Ahmedinejad fronts for the theocratic ayatollahs who ultimately wield power in Iran:

What do the ayatollahs want? Well, an opportunity to open a dialogue. The extent of the parlay they seek is unclear: it might be as limited as stalling for time while their nuclear program develops, or it might be a comprehensive series of talks aimed at normalization of relations between Iran and the U.S. Whatever. They want to talk.

They want to talk, but they can't do it directly. They have some ground to make up, what with Ahmedinejad allegedly stating his fond wish that Israel be "wiped off the map"[however this should be translated] and drawing lines in the sand left and right. So he offers some new language on Israel - no longer exactly denying the Holocaust, though remaining suspicious of the evidence - and calling for a referendum, rather than a bloodbath, to settle the Palestinian question. It's progress, of a sort.

But mostly, what Ahmedinejad and his bosses are up to is searching for some sort of common ground with which to begin a conversation. [my emphasis] Knowing Bush and knowing the U.S., religion certainly seems like the obvious place to look.

Sadly, and here I mostly agree with PastorDan, they have overestimated the genuine religiosity of The Regime

What finally dooms [the letter] is not this administration's stubbornness or hostility, but its sanctimony. The Iranians screwed up when they thought they could appeal to Bush's innate sense of decency. They challenged his black little heart to grow a little, and they obviously had no idea how dead and withered that organ really is. It is a significant measure of this administration that they could make the loathsome ayatollahs look almost good by comparison. And it is a measure of those ayatollahs that they could put forth a moral vision that one could wish would come true, almost [as the letter reads]:

The day will come when all humans will congregate before the court of the Almighty, so that their deeds are examined. The good will be directed towards Haven [sic] and evildoers will meet divine retribution. I trust both of us believe in such a day, but it will not be easy to calculate the actions of rulers, because we must be answerable to our nations and all others whose lives have been directly or indirectly effected by our actions.

Two comments: 1. Despite my deep anger at The Prez, and perhaps in contradiction to my Voldemort-ian refusal to name him, I am not sure that I can know "how dead and withered" his "heart" is. Call me a bleeding-heart liberal. (I think there may be a bit of this in his refusal simply to criminalize and Gitmo-ize illegal Mecxican immigrants. [Though there may equally not be: as Glenn Greenwald states, "He long ago sold his soul on immigration issues to the Wall St. Journal/big business desire for more-or-less open borders and cheap immigrant labor." Note the religious language!] In any case, I am not sufficiently "liberal", however, to refrain from judging, say, Michelle Malkin on this!)

2. The language of the letter in that one bit cited is indeed part of the common language shared by Muslims with Christians (and to a slightly lesser extent, I think, Jews) . There is indeed language here that genuinely Christian and Muslim politicians might work with. Of course, there is that old weasel word, "genuine." Can't say really how appropriate it is for the Ayatollahs; it certainly has precious little force here. If for no other reason, the "Left Behind" version of Christianity that now dominates Regime supporters can no longer distinguish between God's purposes and "the good" on the one hand, and their own self-interested, pseudo-nationalistic, greedy, xenophobic, militaristic values, I-could-go-on, on the other.

Better stop now, before I get to preachin' again.