Inner Circle

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# Haghani Circle

Haghani school (also Haqqani) is a Shia school of thought in Iran by a group of hardliner right-wing clerics based in the holy city of Qom and headed by Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, an influential theologian. The Haghani Circle has its origin in the Haghani seminary, founded in 1964, which previously had been called Muntashiriya. After two of the leading members of the circle were assassinated (Ayatollahs Qodousi and Beheshti), the hawza changed its name to Shahidayn Seminary (Martyr Seminary).

The Haghani Seminary was founded by Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, Ayatollah Beheshti, Ayatollah Sadoughi, and Ayatollah Taleghani. It was originally conceived in a reform effort to strengthen the weight of philosophy in the hawza curriculum. To this effect, Allameh Tabatabai was commissioned to write two introductory works, which he completed in 1970 (Bidayat al-Hikmah) and 1975 (Nikhayat al-Hikmah). Today, the school trains clerics with both a traditional and modern curriculum, including a secular education in science, medicine, politics, and Western/non-Islamic philosophy.

The Haghani Seminary has been described as "a kind of Ecole Nationale d'Administration for the Islamic Republic" whose alumni "form the backbone of the clerical management class that runs Iran's key political and security institutions." During Iran's elections it is said to be common for candidates to visit the city to "pay homage" to Haghani religious leaders and "receive their blessing." Another source says "most Haghani people serve either in the security forces or in the military."

According to journalist Tim Rutten "the Haghani is a particularly aggressive school of radical Shiite Islam which lives in expectation of the imminent coming of the Mahdi, a kind of Islamic messiah, who will bring peace and justice -- along with universal Islamic rule -- to the entire world. ... Members ... of this school believe they must act to speed the Mahdi's coming."

Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi (The founder of Haghani School, is President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's ideological mentor and spiritual guide).

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# Hojjatieh

Hojjatieh — also called Hojjatieh Society — is a semi-clandestine traditionalist Shia organization founded in Iran in 1953 (in Tehran) by Shaikh Mahmoud Halabi (a Tehrani mullah from Mashhad; 1900-1998) with permission of Ayatollah Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi. The organization was founded on the premise that the most immediate threat to Islam was the Bahá'í religion, which they viewed as a heresy that must be eliminated. The group also opposes both Sunniism and the Khomeinist concept of Velayat-e Faqih. An earlier organization was founded by Halabi, the Anjoman-e Imám-e Zaman (called Anjoman-e Zedd-e Bahá'í privately) which later was re-named to the Anjoman-e Hojjatieh Mahdavieh (called Hojjatieh for short) after the Iranian Revolution. In March to June 1955, the Ramadan period that year, a widespread systematic program was under taken cooperatively by the government and the clergy. During the period they destroyed the national Bahá'í Center in Tehran, confiscated properties and made it illegal for a time to be Bahá'í (punishable by 2 to 10 year prison term.) Founder of SAVAK, Teymur Bakhtiar, took a pick-axe to a Bahá'í building himself at the time.

Halabi is said to have worked with SAVAK security agency under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, offering his full cooperation in fighting "other heathen forces, including the Communists." By doing so he was given freedom to recruit members and raise funds, and by 1977 Hojjatieh is said to have had 12,000 members. However, since the Shah's regime, in Halabi's view, allowed the Baha'is too much freedom, he then supported Khomeini's movement to overthrow the Shah.

The group flourished during the 1979 revolution that ousted the Shah and installed an Islamic government in his place. However it was forced to dissolve after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini speech on 12 August 1983. However there have been mentions of it again circa 2002-2004.

Doctrine

The Hojjatieh society has been described as "an underground messianic sect ... which hopes to quicken the coming of the apocalypse" in order to hasten the return of the Mahdi, the prophesied future redeemer of Islam. However, according to legal scholar Noah Feldman, the idea that supporters "want to bring back the imam by violence, rather than ... wait piously and prepare for the imam’s eventual return on his own schedule," is a misinterpretation of the society's position common "outside Iran". In fact, the "Hojjatiya Society was banned and persecuted by Khomeini’s government in part for its quiescent view that the mahdi’s arrival could not be hastened." Those who adhere to this perspective claim Hojjatieh is a millenarian group who put great stock on the return of the Mahdi and the idea of such a return bringing happiness to true believers.[citation needed]

Methods

Though initially claimed to be using "peaceful methods" allowing harassment but not direct insult or violence, a circle of spies infiltrated Bahá'í communities seeking out Iranians who were interested in the religion and "reconvert" them back to Islam as well as confronting muballighs or Bahá'í missionaries. According to one first hand testimony, suspicions were spread and reputations compromised leading Bahá'ís to treat inquirers badly who would then be recruited to the anti-Bahá'í movement. Students of the organization engaged in practice debates on various topics. See Allegations of Bahá'í involvement with other powers.

Rumored members

Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi is reported to be the highest ranking member of the Hojjatieh. He denies this and has said that if anyone finds a connection between him and Hojjatieh, he will denounce everything he stands for. It is noteworthy that while Hojjatieh generally renounces all Islamic (and other) governments before the arrival of the twelvth Imam as illegitimate, Mesbah Yazdi recommends and gives full authority to the pre-messianic Islamic government. Since the 1980's, Hojjatieh has been frequently cited in unfounded conspiracy theories which claim that real power lies in hands of people who are secretly affiliated with Hojjatieh.

The current president of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is also rumored to be an advocate of Hojjatieh through the influence of Ayatollah Yazdi, who was his mentor. Asia Times reports that Ahmad Tavassoli, a former chief of staff of Khomeini, claimed in 2005 that "the executive branch of the Iranian government as well as the crack troops of the Revolutionary Guards have been hijacked by the Hojjatieh, which, he implied, now also controls Ahmadinejad." According to the report, Hojjatieh were endangering Iran by working for Shia supremacy, Feldman writing in 2006 in the New York Times suggests this rumor was spread by Ahmadinejad's enemies. It is also reported that Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, who was to have been Ahmedinejad's First Vice President, may be a Hojjatieh member, but the source of this information is unclear.

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# "Obeying Ahmadinejad like obeying God" -Iran cleric

12 August 2009

A hard-line cleric considered to be the mentor of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on Iranians on Wednesday to follow the newly-re-elected president, saying that obeying him was akin to obeying God.

Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi also warned the country’s opposition groups against undermining supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has been the country’s spiritual guide for 20 years.

‘When the president is endorsed by the leader, obeying him is similar to obedience to God,’ Mesbah Yazdi was quoted as saying.

Khamenei endorsed Ahmadinejad as president for a second term last week amid a continuing political crisis sparked by widespread protests against his June re-election.

Lashing out at opposition groups that refuse to acknowledge Ahmadinejad’s victory, Mesbah Yazdi said these ‘enemies’ also wanted to undermine Khamenei.

‘The enemies wanted to weaken or eliminate this main pillar and some people knowingly or unknowingly sought to do this in recent events,’ he said. [AFP]

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# HOJJATIYA

By Mahmoud Sadri (15 December 2004)

A Shia religious lay association founded in 1953 by the charismatic cleric Shaikh Mahmud Halabi to defend Islam against the Bahai missionary activities.

HOJJATIYA, a Shia religious lay association founded by the charismatic cleric Shaikh Mahmud Halabi to defend Islam against the Bahai missionary activities. Hojjatiya exerted considerable, albeit indirect and unintended, influence on the education and world-view of the lay elite leadership of the 1979 Islamic revolution. The association was founded in the aftermath of the coup d’état of 1953. The explicit goal of Hojjatiya was to train cadres for the “scientific defense” of Shia Islam in the face of the Bahai theological challenge. Bahai missionaries argued that Shia’s awaited savior had already emerged and that Islam had been superceded by the Bahai faith. Hojjatiya sought to defend the Shia position based on both Islamic and Bahai texts. Halabi’s own sensitivity to this controversy stems from a personal encounter. As a seminarian he and his colleague Sayyed Abbās Alawi had been approached by a Bahai missionary, who had succeeded in persuading the latter to convert. Alarmed by this experience, Halabi abandoned the normal course of his studies and immersed himself in the study of Bahai history and original texts with the intention of composing a comprehensive Islamic response to the Bahai challenge. Halabi’s original plan to train a group of seminarians to discharge these duties was rebuffed by the clerical establishment in Qom. Halabi then embarked upon recruiting a corps of volunteer lay disciples adept at both substantive arguments and debating skills. This is the group that came to be known, after the Islamic revolution, as Anjoman-e hojjatiya .

Although the primary stages of Halabi’s project evolved in his native Mašhad, he met with little enthusiasm there. It took him six months to recruit and train his first serious student. Halabi’s decision to move to Tehran proved a strategic success. The first circle of his students in Tehran were comprised of religious merchants and professionals. They, in turn, succeeded in recruiting from a talented pool of ardent students from religious as well as secular high schools. By the late 1960s the second generation of Hojjatiya recruits had entered universities and embarked upon modernizing and standardizing the management of the association. Therefore, the early 1970s witnessed organizational reforms within the association that reflected increasing complexity and division of labor. Graduates of the basic instruction on Shia and Bahai history and theology were recruited in specialist teams of operations. The latter included: The Guidance Team, that was charged with debating Bahai missionaries, persuading Bahais to return to Islam, and neutralizing the effects of Bahai missionary activity on those exposed to it. The Instruction Team along with the Authorship Team jointly worked to standardize instructional material and levels. These came to include basic instruction, the intermediary training, and the graduate training. Most of the instructional material was distributed, in typed and copied form (poly-copy) in classes that met weekly in private homes across the country. They were retrieved within a week so that no copies would leave the provenance of the association. Students were instructed not to share or discuss the material with outsiders. The public speaking team organized weekly public gatherings in various venues that featured trained Hojjatiya speakers discussing Shia theology, critiquing Bahai positions, and fielding questions. The intelligence team, named the Investigation Team operated, in three distinct regiments, as a fifth column within the Bahai ranks and succeeded in thoroughly penetrating the Bahai hierarchy. Unbeknownst to Bahai’s, some members of the Hojjatiya had advanced to the rank of prominent Bahai missionaries. There were, also, smaller service-providing units within Hojjatiya such as the bureau of contact with foreign countries, bureau of libraries and archives, and bureau of publications. Thus, the most salient specialists in the association were known, in the jargon of Hojjatiya, as: polemical activists, public speakers, instructors, and intelligence operatives. Most full-fledged Hojjatiya members carried out at least two of the above duties in the course of weekly meetings. Bahais, reacted to the emergence of Hojjatiya by adopting a more defensive and reserved posture and by avoiding open debates and confrontations. This response further emboldened the Hojjatiya members and reassured them of the effectiveness of their approach. The organization steadily grew and by the early 1970s had spread throughout Iran and a few neighboring countries such as Pakistan and India. Indeed, in certain parts of Iran, Hojjatiya grew disproportionately to the Bahai threat and bred resentment among other Islamic organizations, that intended to mimic its success or to recruit from the same pool of talented religious youths.

Between the early 1950s and early 1970s a great number of the future elite of the Islamic revolution were trained, usually as a transitory stage in their ideological development, in pedagogic and practical venues provided by Hojjatiya. Beyond Hojjatiya’s explicit and stated objectives, a sense of dedication, engagement, and accomplishment akin to a Jesuit zeal electrified successive generations of its members. Along with Ali Aṣḡar (Allāma) Karbāsčiān’s Alawi High School, Halabi’s Anjoman-e Hojjatiya signified traditional Shia Islam’s attempt to acclimatize itself to the modern environment and to utilize its resources for the propagation of its worldview. Ironically, in its attempt to confront the Bahai challenge, Hojjatiya emulated a number of Bahai idiosyncra-cies such as the practice of secrecy with respect to the workings of its bureaucracy and access to its original literature, the lay hierarchical nature of the organization, and the unhindered access to modern means of communication and implements. For example, long before Ḥosayniya-ye eršād, the first modern Islamic lecture hall, was inaugurated in the north of Tehran, Hojjatiya’s public gatherings had become the first Islamic organization to replace rugs and pulpits with chairs and lecterns. Members of Hojjatiya, unlike their traditional brethren, were clean-shaven and groomed for success in the secular educational and professional world. Hojjatiya, under the leadership of Halabi, had succeeded in acquiring necessary religious dispensations and written permissions for usage of a portion of tithes from Shia grand Ayatollahs. These resources were spent for logistical purposes only, as the entire body of the Hojjatiya was comprised of volunteer members.

From the very beginning the activities of Hojjatiya attracted the attention of the security apparatus of the Pahlavi regime. Based on documents published after the Revolution, the leadership of Hojjatiya was pressured to formally register the association as a non-profit, philanthropic organization—hence the title, Anjoman-e Ḵayriya-ye Hojjatiya Mahdawiya—and to promise to abstain from political activities. The latter pledge came to haunt the association after the Revolution of 1979.

The Islamic revolution caught Hojjatiya by surprise. The initial reaction of the leadership toward the Islamic revolution was one of skepticism and suspicion. This caused many defections in its ranks. With the success of the revolution Hojjatiya, under the leadership of Halabi, attempted to placate the revolutionary leadership but was rebuffed. Ayatollah Khomeini, despite his earlier affirmation of the association, allowed open criticism of its apolitical nature and its “conservative bias” in interpreting Islam. Finally, five years after the Islamic revolution, Khomeini publically threatened Hojjatiya with violent suppression in thinly veiled words. Halabi, responded by terminating all of the activities of the Hojjatiya in a terse notice published in a number of newspapers. The announcement was followed by a widespread campaign to purge Hojjatiya affiliates from decision-making, academic, and educational bodies throughout Iran.

The animosity between Halabi and Khomeini is traceable to their distinct casuistries concerning the meaning of Messianism in Islam. Inasmuch as Islam shares the Judeo-Christian Messianic tendencies one may draw a parallel between the Judeo-Christian and the Islamic brands of pre-millenarianism and post-millenarianism. The quietist conservative interpretation of Hojjatiya is akin to a pre-millenarian world-view that, while advocating the ardent and pious practice of “awaiting” the savior, discourages active revolt in order to hasten the appearance of the “Mahdi” or any attempt to build the promised Islamic utopia in the absence of the awaited one. The revolutionary activism of Khomeini, on the other hand, is reminiscent of the post-millenarian tendencies in Christianity and Judaism in that it advocates taking an active role in bringing about the just Islamic society prior to the appearance of the Mahdi in order to hasten his coming. A telling incident illustrates the aforementioned contrast: in the months following the success of the 1979 Islamic revolution, the gatherings with Hojjatiya affiliation had adopted the slogan of “O Mahdi, make your appearance”. In response, the pro-Khomeini crowds composed a slogan of their own “O God, O God preserve Khomeini until Mahdi appears; preserve him even alongside Mahdi”.

In the years since the termination of the Hojjatiya activities, the origins, nature, and goals of the association have been publicly debated with varying levels of accuracy and objectivity. Its detractors from the left and the right have played a pivotal role in perpetuating views that vastly exaggerate and distort the organization’s influence and agenda through spreading myths and conspiracy theories about Hojjatiya. The pro-Khomeini religious establishment (both organizations such as the Revolutionary Guards and individuals such as Shaikh Ṣādeq Ḵalḵāli have repeatedly maintained that the Hojjatiya’s line remains alive and continues to pose a threat to the revolutionary cause in Iran. The secular critics (namely the Tudeh Party and its ideological allies) have claimed that the association, despite its obvious fall from favor, has been the true power broker behind the scenes. They have used the title Hojjatiya as a euphemism for all they deem retrogressive, authoritarian, bourgeois, and pertaining to an agent of imperialism in post-revolutionary Iran. However, the original members of the association have largely declined to join the debate, perhaps for reasons ranging from a pious penchant for secrecy to a genuine fear of reprisals.

As the leaders of Hojjatiya were committed to a non-violent, persuasive strategy in dealing with Bahais, the Association did not take part in persecution of Bahais in post-revolutionary Iran. For all Halabi’s animus against Bahais, he was a disciplined pacifist. He was distraught by violence and repeatedly warned his followers: “This is not the way, this is not our way”. [iranicaonline]

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# Esoteric Cult of Iran Scares Israel

10 June 2006

Messianic leaders in Iraq and Iran

Professors at Haifa University discuss extremist leaders in Persian Gulf who believe in increasing chaos to facilitate judgement day

President Ahmadiebnjad believes he's in touch with God. Professor Baram is a little worried.

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