The Fall Biola Connections magazine has an article on What Should Christians Know About the Religious Views of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? (scroll down to page 7 of the pdf file). The authors explain,

Ahmadinejad is a “Twelve-Imam Shia” (also known as a “Twelver”), the largest sect of Shia Islam and Iran’s state religion. Shia Muslims are a minority sect in Islam and are ignored by most Western academia and media. Yet, Shias remain influential, representing 10 to 15 percent of Muslims worldwide. They are the majority religious population in a number of countries including Iraq, Iran, Azerbaijan, Lebanon and Bahrain.

The “Twelfth Imam,” called the Mahdi, was born in the 9th century and is said to have been “hidden” to return in a time of great crisis and establish world peace (sort of a Muslim version of the “Second Coming”). There is evidence that Ahmadinejad belongs to a particular sect that believes that they can hasten the coming of the Mahdi by creating chaos on the earth.

For this reason there is a sense of divine mission in some of his speeches, including one given before the UN in September 2005. He seems to want to provoke a conflict with the U.S. as a way of helping to bring in the return of the Mahdi. It is disquieting to say the least that this man who has sworn to “wipe Israel from the face of the earth” may soon have a nuclear weapon under his control.

It seems that the American media have not focused very much on his religious beliefs, perhaps out of political correctness but also perhaps because they have trouble understanding someone who is a “true believer” in any religion. Those who view religion as a quaint cultural activity that occupies only an hour or so on Sunday morning really have no clue when trying to understand a person who directs their life according to what they believe. But we ignore his religious beliefs to our peril.

If you want more information on this, just do a Google search on the words Ahmadinejad and Mahdi.