Meir Javedanfar, writing days later in The Guardian, asserted that Persian Jews referred to their shawls by the Hebrew word tzitzit; that Sabourjian was not a Jewish surname; that Ahmadinejad’s father was an observant Shia Muslim who once worked as a teacher of Koran; and that his mother was a Seyyede, one of a priestly caste descended directly from the Prophet Muhammad. Apparently, the family only changed their name to advance their class: Who wants to be “Mr. Weaver-and-dyer-of-carpets”—“painted thread” being the more accurate translation of sabour—when you could be called the scion of Ahmad, one of the many names of the polyonymous Prophet (also, Ahmad was the name of Ahmadinejad’s father). All of which is a terrible shame...

n+1, Joshua Cohen, Famous Infamous Jews, kleines großes Stück über eine Infamie des Daily Telegraph