8 Comments
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Buddy S.'s avatar

Re: “For the West, this means rediscovering the civilizational framework that shaped its institutions in the first place. The biblical worldview that influenced Western law, philosophy, and moral reasoning helped produce a culture that values freedom of conscience, open debate, and the right of individuals to question authority.”

The West is in need of remembering its own heritage because another ideology will fill the void of a people’s forgotten history.

I appreciate the reminder of Iran’s past rich civilization.

Pete Ross's avatar

Quran is a book for Arabians not for Persians.

Tara Houle's avatar

because they’re smart and intelligent people. They’ve been around long before Islam.

Giulia Beccarelli's avatar

It doesn’t take root where men still grow a pair, do not hate women and therefore life, and are not closet pedophiles and repressed homosexuals. On the other hand, it seems to prosper where the ugliness of “men” clashes so strongly with the beauty of women that they can’t handle themselves and their own inferiority. Superficial analysis? For sure, but point out a country with equally beautiful women and men where islam is the religion of choice. I’ll wait.

Christopher Messina's avatar

I have no basis with which to evaluate this "IDI" thing, but it is worth pondering and investigating the claims made about Persian resistance to Islam, or at least the crazy wacko, "let's kill pretty girls on motorcycles" version promulgated by the mullahs.

Jonathan Zartman's avatar

Excellent and thorough summary and analysis. I often give a simplified version to people who generalize, and conflate the Persian people with the hard-line Shi’a Islamists running the country. Thanks to Ferdowsi’s Shahnama (Book of Kings) the Persian people reserved their language from the onslaught of Arabic. Thanks to the Sufi mystics, Persian literature has preserved a humanistic core of ethics, so that the Persians often describe themselves as spiritual, not religious. When the Ayatollah Khomeini tried to shove his doctrine of religious leader dictatorship (Valiyati Faqi) down the throat of the Persian people, many rebelled against Islam. Those who actually care to understand this issue should consider the “Two Centuries of Silence” (Avid Kamgar) account of the gap in Persian writing imposed by the Arab conquest. The Persian expel rebelled repeatedly, consistently for two hundred years and sought to remove the imposition of this doctrine on them. Ultimately, the Abbasids essentially “Persianized” Islam.

ECB's avatar

Very interesting analysis. You have given me something to think about

David Snyder's avatar

Enlightening. Thank you Ali Siadatan