The recent Daily Telegraph article about Judaism in the family of Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is wrong for a number of reasons, according to a column by Meir Javedanfar in Monday's Guardian.
Professor David Yeroshalmi of Tel Aviv University's Center for Iranian Studies, said that Ahmadinejad's former name of Sabourjian does not come from the Persian word for the talit or Jewish prayer shawl, as claimed in the Telegraph article. He also said that the "-jian" ending to the name is as Muslim as it is Jewish.
Input by others points away from a Jewish background and toward a Muslim heritage that predates the Iranian president's birth. While there are Islamic underpinnings to the name change, they were culturally motivated, and not related to a Jewish path, according to the column.