The Twelfth Imam (35 page)

76

“I have been blind from birth,” Birjandi began. “But I was always a devout Muslim. My father was a mullah. So were most of my forefathers, going back several centuries. So I was raised in a very devout environment. But my parents didn’t force me to believe. I
wanted
to. Growing up, I loved to hear my parents teach me the Qur’an, especially my mother. She would read to me for hours, and when she stopped, I would beg her to read more and to answer all of my questions. She insisted I study Arabic because she wanted me to hear and understand and memorize the Qur’an as my heart language.

“By the time I was nine or ten, I would often go to the mosque by myself, praying and meditating for hours. I couldn’t see the trees and the flowers and the colors of the world. All I had was my own inner world. But I knew Allah was there, and I wanted to know him and make him happy.

“Souri, my wife, was even more devout than I. She memorized the Qur’an faster. She prayed longer. She was smarter. By the time we graduated from high school, she was fluent in five languages. I knew only three.

“We got married right after high school. I went to college and then to seminary. I was going to be a mullah, of course. It was not anything forced on me. I wanted to spend my days and nights learning about God, teaching about God. And Souri was at my side every step of the way. She read my textbooks to me. I dictated my homework to her. She typed my papers. She walked me to class. We did everything together.

“With her help, I always got high marks on my exams and papers. When I graduated from seminary, I was first in my class.”

David’s heartbeat was slowly returning to just above normal. He tried to sound calm. “Was eschatology your main focus?”

“It was, and with Souri’s assistance I wrote a thesis that was later published in 1978 as my first book,
The Imams of History and the Coming of the Messiah
.”

“It became a huge best seller.”

“No, no, not initially.”

“Really?” David asked, perplexed. “On the cover of my copy, it says, ‘Over one million copies in print.’”

“You’ve read it?”

“Absolutely—it was riveting.”

“Well, that’s very kind,” Birjandi said. “Yes, the book did become popular in Iran and around the world, but that happened much later. The first printing was only about five thousand copies in Tehran and another few thousand copies in Iraq because there were a lot of Shias there. But you have to understand that Khomeini rose to power in 1979, just a year after the book was published. And from that point forward, it was illegal to discuss the Twelfth Imam. Well, not against the law per se, but severely frowned upon, especially in Qom and especially in academia.”

“Why?” David asked.

“Very simple. Khomeini was threatened by it. He wanted people to believe that
he
was the Twelfth Imam. He never claimed to be, mind you—not directly—but he certainly didn’t discourage people from thinking it. That’s why he insisted that everyone call him Imam Khomeini. Before him, no one ever dared call a religious man
imam.
Among Shias, that title was reserved for the first eleven special descendants of Muhammad and, of course, for the twelfth and last. Religious leaders were called clerics, mullahs, sayyids, ayatollahs—but
never
imams.”

Because of Khomeini’s effective prohibition on speaking or teaching about the coming of the Islamic messiah, Birjandi explained, his book had been banned in Iran in 1981. Nevertheless, during that time, he and his wife had developed an even greater fascination with—and love for—Shia eschatology. The more forbidden it was, he said, the more intriguing it became.

“We were determined to understand how and when the end would come, what would be the signs of the End Times, and how a devout Muslim should live in the end of days. Most of all, we wanted to understand what would happen on Judgment Day and how to be saved from the flames. After Khomeini died, an entirely new era of intellectual and religious freedom began to dawn. Not for Jews or Christians or Zoroastrians or other religious minorities, mind you. But certainly for Shia scholars and clerics. Certainly for Souri and me. That’s when we began to openly and aggressively accelerate our studies about all things related to the Twelfth Imam.”

“So when was the ban lifted?”

“In 1996. And that’s when the thing took off—over the next year or so. I honestly never thought of it as a book for the general public. I originally wrote it to serve as a textbook for a seminary class I hoped to teach. But somehow it became hugely popular, almost overnight, and soon I was speaking and teaching all over Iran.”

“And interest in the Twelfth Imam skyrocketed as a result.”

“Well, interest in the subject definitely grew exponentially, but not because of my book,” Birjandi humbly insisted. “My book just happened to be rereleased at the perfect time. One millennium was ending. Another was beginning. Talk of the End Times was in the air. Suddenly, it seemed as if everyone was writing and speaking about the coming of the Mahdi. Then Hamid Hosseini read my book. He gave it to President Darazi to read. Then the two of them invited me to begin meeting with them once a month to discuss my findings and talk about these and other spiritual and political matters. When the public learned of our meetings through the national press, interest grew in a way that shocked us.”

“It vaulted you into the status of the world’s leading expert on Shia eschatology and a close advisor to the nation’s leaders,” David said.

“Strange but true,” Birjandi conceded, shaking his head. “But along the way, something changed for me.”

“What?”

“Well, first of all, you have to understand that during this time my elderly parents died. Then our only child, a daughter, was killed in a car accident in 2007. Souri was devastated. I was devastated. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t teach. My fellow professors were very understanding. They gave me a sabbatical to grieve and rest and recover. But I kept sinking. I was sure that I would be next, or Souri. I thought about death constantly. I became a slave to fear. What really happens when one stops breathing? Does that heart beat again in paradise? I was sure such a place existed, but I doubted the certainty of my ever arriving there. After a lifetime of study, I realized I had no answers. And the joy of life was gone. I had no will to teach, no will to be a good husband. I barely desired to get up in the morning.”

“What did you do?” David asked.

“I made a decision not to give up on Allah,” Birjandi said. “Many people do in similar situations, and I understand why. They’re hurt. They’re depressed. They blame God. But let me be honest with you, son—and I am not being pious when I say this—I just knew in my heart that somehow Allah was the only answer. I knew he was there, even though I felt so far from him. Despite all my religious training, all my family’s history, all my knowledge of the Qur’an, I felt cut off from God, and it haunted me.”

David said nothing, waiting for the old man to continue at his own pace.

“I thought about it for a long time,” Birjandi continued after a moment, “and I concluded that the problem was that I only knew Allah intellectually, and that wasn’t enough. What I really needed was to experience him. Now, Shia Islam, as you know, is a very mystical religion. We teach students that there are higher and higher levels of spiritual consciousness they need to discover and help others discover. But as you probably also know, Shia doctrine teaches that God’s love is not available for everyone. It’s only for those who go through a very specific spiritual journey. So in my classes, I would teach my students to meditate until they entered a trance. In that trance, if they were truly devout, they would eventually see visions of ancient imams and the various prophets and other historical figures. The goal is to go higher, deeper, closer to Allah. But truthfully I had never taken this so seriously for myself. I loved learning
about
Allah, but I had never really tried to
know
him personally.

“Then one day I went for a long walk through our neighborhood, alone with my cane. I knew I was sinking deeper and deeper into despair. I thought about ending my life, but I was not ready to die. I believed that committing suicide would condemn me to hell for sure. I was lost. Yet so many looked to me as if I had all the answers. Finally I came home and went to my room. I begged Allah to reveal himself to me. I pleaded that he show himself to me. I told him that I had done everything he had asked me, but it wasn’t enough. I was ready to do more, but first I asked him to come and speak to me directly. But nothing happened. Months went by and nothing happened.”

David listened, entranced.

“I became even more despondent. I wouldn’t talk to my wife. I would stay up all night, unable to sleep. I would turn on satellite TV and mindlessly scan through the channels, listening to whatever was on. And one day I came across a program that caught my attention. It was an Iranian man who had been on the streets of Tehran during the Revolution in ’79, shouting, ‘Death to America!’ For some reason, he and his wife applied to graduate school in California; they were accepted, and they went. But then their marriage started failing and their lives started falling apart, and they questioned Islam. It promised peace, but he said it gave them no peace.

“And that’s when I started to listen more carefully. Until the man said he did a careful study of the Qur’an and the Bible and concluded that the Bible was true and that the Qur’an was false and that Jesus was the One True God. Then I cursed the television and turned it off, as furious as I had ever been.

“But after a few nights, when my wife was out doing errands, I couldn’t help myself. I became curious and found that show again and kept listening. And the next time she went out in the evening, I listened again. I wanted to be able to prove that this man was insane. I wanted to be able to write an article or a book refuting everything he said.

“Then something very strange happened.”

77

“What?” David asked.

“I simply knew.”

“Knew what?”

“I knew that this man on television was the Creator’s answer to my hunger. That I could not refute him. Through this man, God was telling me the simple truth about Himself. About His Son, Jesus. The anger in my heart for this man had displaced the despondency. Now that anger was suddenly gone, and only peace remained. Peace and the most solid, unmistakable knowledge that it was Jesus I should follow for the rest of my days.”

David felt as though he had been struck mute. He heard Birjandi’s words, but he could not believe they were coming from the mouth of such a revered Islamic scholar and counselor. Was this all a trick? But the man seemed to be filled with an energy that was growing as he told the story.

“Then I had this intense hunger and thirst—not for food and water but to know more about Jesus.”

“What did you do?” David finally asked.

“What could I do?” Birjandi responded. “I already knew the Qur’an held no real answers about Jesus. Some tidbits, to be sure, but nothing solid. So one weekend when my wife went to Qom to visit her sister, I left the house and took a bus to Tehran. I must have asked a dozen people for directions, and finally someone helped me find my way to an Armenian church. I went there and I begged them for a Bible. They wouldn’t give me one. They feared I might be a spy. I said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Look at me. I’m an old man, not a spy.’ I pleaded with them to read to me about Jesus just for an hour, even just for a few minutes. They asked me if I was a Christian. I told them the truth—that I was a Muslim. But they said they could only give Bibles to Christians, never to Muslims. I told them I wanted to know more about Jesus. But they sent me away, and I was very aggrieved.

“It took me eight months to find a Bible. I went to every bookstore I could find, asking for one. I went to every library. Finally, to my surprise, I reconnected with a retired colleague of mine from the seminary. I learned that he had been given a Bible in a comparative religion class in college in England during the days of the Shah. I told him I needed it for a research project I was doing, and he told me I could have it; he had no use for it.”

Dr. Birjandi leaned forward in his chair, drawing David in closer as well. “David,” he continued, “I had never been more excited in my life. My hands trembled as my colleague set that book in them, and I came back to my home and realized I had a problem. I obviously couldn’t read the Bible myself, not being able to see it. And I was scared to death to tell my wife what was happening with me. So I lied a little.”

“You lied?”

“Yes, and I still feel terrible about it. But I didn’t know what else to do.”

“What did you say?”

“I told Souri that the seminary wanted me to consider writing a chapter for a book they were going to publish about the fallacies in Jewish and Christian eschatology, and that this intrigued me,” Birjandi said. “To my relief, it intrigued her, too. So we locked ourselves in this study for several weeks and read and studied the Bible for ourselves from morning to night, from the first verse of Genesis—the first book of the Bible—to the last chapter of the last book, Revelation. We studied it. We discussed it. We filled up whole books with notes, and when our notebooks were full, Souri went out to get more, and we filled those up too. And as we did, I have to say, I was amazed by the life and teachings of Jesus. I fell in love with the Sermon on the Mount, for example. Have you ever read it?”

“No, I haven’t,” David admitted. None of this was clearing up his questions. He wondered how much more of this, no matter how interesting it was, he would need to listen to before he got the information he’d come for.

The old man leaned back in his chair, tilted his head against the faded cushion, and smiled. A look of restful delight crossed his face. He pressed his hands together at his chest and recited in a steady, melodic voice, “‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.’

“In all my life, I had never read more powerful words. I knew they were not the words of men. They were the words of God. And then we began to study Jesus’ warnings.”

“Warnings?” David asked.

“Throughout the New Testament, Jesus warned again and again of false teachers and false messiahs who would come to deceive the world after His death and resurrection. ‘Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves,’ Jesus warned His disciples in Matthew chapter 7. ‘You will know them by their fruits,’ He said. ‘Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.’

“I thought long and hard about such verses and many others like them. And I thought about the fruit of Muhammad’s life, about the violence. Muhammad lived by the sword and taught others to, while Jesus taught the exact opposite.”

Birjandi then asked David to go to the bookshelf to his left and pull out the first and second books on the right-hand side of the top shelf; behind them he would find a copy of the
Injil
—the New Testament—in Farsi. David did as he was told and found it immediately.

“Turn to the Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 24,” Birjandi said. “Matthew is the first book in the
Injil
, so it won’t be difficult to find.”

David did so.

“Okay, let’s begin in verse 3,” Birjandi said, beginning to recite the Scriptures aloud from memory as David followed along silently in the text. “‘As He’—Jesus—‘was sitting on the Mount of Olives’—that’s near Jerusalem—‘the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things happen, and what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?”’ You see, Jesus’ disciples wanted to understand when their Lord was coming back to earth to set up His kingdom and reign upon the earth. They wanted one sign, just one, that would indicate when His return was close at hand. But Jesus didn’t give them just one sign. He gave them many. Earthquakes. Famines. Natural disasters. Wars. Rumors of wars. Apostasy. Persecution of the believers. The spread of the Christian gospel message all over the world. All that will happen in the last days, Jesus warned, just before He returns.”

“That’s all happening right now,” David said.

“That’s true,” Birjandi said. “But look at the first sign Jesus warned His disciples about, beginning in verse 4. ‘And Jesus answered and said to them, “See to it that no one misleads you. For many will come in My name saying, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will mislead many.”’”

David read the verse for himself. Birjandi was right.

“Now look at verse 11,” Birjandi said. “What does it say?”

“‘Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many,’” David read, curious at why Jesus was repeating Himself.

“Did Jesus say false messiahs and false prophets
might
arise in the last days?” Birjandi asked.

“No,” David said. “He said they
will
arise.”

“Did He say they
might
mislead many?” Birjandi pressed.

“No, He said they
will
mislead many.”

“Okay, now read verses 23 through 27.”

David turned the page and continued reading. “‘Then if anyone says to you, “Behold, here is the Messiah,” or “There He is,” do not believe him. For false messiahs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect. Behold, I have told you in advance. So if they say to you, “Behold, He is in the wilderness,” do not go out, or, “Behold, He is in the inner rooms,” do not believe them. For just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes even to the west, so will the coming of the Son of Man be.’

“That’s the third time in the same chapter that Jesus is warning about false prophets and false messiahs,” David observed.

“That’s right,” Birjandi said. “And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my life’s work was built on lies.”