Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was born Jewish and converted to Islam

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Oct 3, 2009 16:25 | Updated Oct 3, 2009 16:27
'Iranian president was born Jewish'
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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was born Jewish and converted to Islam, according to a report in London's Daily Telegraph.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Photo: AP [file]

SLIDESHOW: Israel & Region | World The Saturday report cited a photograph from 2008 which showed Ahmadinejad holding up his identity card, bearing his former last name, Sabourjian, a common Jewish name in Iran.

The Telegraph said that the name was "Jewish" for cloth weaver, and that the Iranian president's family had changed their name when they converted to Islam. "The name derives from "weaver of the Sabour," the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia," the report said.

The report also cited experts as speculating that Ahmadinejad's anti-Semitic rhetoric may be a kind of overcompensation to conceal his heritage. "Every family that converts into a different religion takes a new identity by condemning their old faith… By making anti-Israeli statements he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections," Ali Nourizadeh, the head of the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies was quoted as saying.

Comment by Lev/Christopher on October 10, 2009 at 1:48am: It's a possibility. However, in just looking at his face, and having worked with Iranians for many years, he looks "Iranian"/Persian" to me.

Comment by Yaacov on October 9, 2009 at 10:16pm: To further complicate things, what if Ahmadinejad is a real ethnic Jew, and his hatred toward the political entity of modern secular Israel is really directed at the "pseudo-Jews" of the Ashkenazi "13th tribe?" The ideological overlap of Ahmadinejad and JewsNotZionists certainly make for strange bedfellows.

Comment by Lev/Christopher on October 3, 2009 at 11:29am: Who can tell. Having known Iranians for many years and worked among them, I can say that Ahmadinejad looks pretty Persian to me. A question I am asking myself is why this story is being put out? What if he is actually Iranian and this is an attempt to oust him by creating suspicions about his origins? Anything is possible :)

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