The Iranian Identity Crisis: Islam V. Persian Identity
Paolo Bassi
2005/10/03
Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution the West has presented,
with depressing consistency, a distorted image of
Iran
portraying it as a seething mass of islamic fanaticism. Those unaware of
Iran
's history could be forgiven for believing that
Iran
knows nothing but Islam. The reality is far more complex and hopeful. Publicly
most Iranians accept their Islamic identity, however, most are also aware of
their pre-Islamic Persian identity. The tension between these competing
identities has existed since the Arab-Islamic takeover of
Iran
in the seventh century AD.
In 632 A.D., the founder of Islam, Mohammad, died but left
his new Islamic state in
Arabia
with a clear message to conquer, convert and subdue all other faiths. The
Muslim Arabs, armed with their new Islamic faith, and hungry for land and
wealth, unleashed a devastating war of conquest and within 30 years they had
conquered a huge empire stretching from
North Africa
to N.W. India. The Arab conquerors imposed Islam so successfully that the
pre-Islamic history of the conquered peoples was virtually erased from the
historic consciousness. The Arabs did not seek mere military conquest but also
sought to conquer the culture and identity of the defeated nations. Islam was to
have no serious rivals. The political nature of Islam demanded that a conquered
people, such as the Iranians, not only convert to Islam but also to regard its
past history as a time of darkness before the light of Islam came. In attacking
Iranian identity, one of the most infamous acts of the Arab invaders was to burn
Persian libraries with centuries of collected books. The Islamic logic to
justify this vandalism was that if Persian knowledge agreed with the Koran, then
these Persian books were superfluous and if they contradicted the Koran, then
they should be destroyed. An unbeatable argument.
Islam required conquered people to scorn their own past and
love their Islamic Arab conquerors by striving to imitate them. More
importantly, the Koran is written in arabic and Islam's sacred places,
Mecca
and
Medina
, are in
Arabia
. It was clear that the conquered and newly converted had to accept the primacy
of the arabic language, arabic values and
Arabia
. After all, Mohammad was an arab and since Islam regards him as the best
example of a human, arab values cannot be rejected, without implicitly rejecting
Islam and Mohammad. Islam as an imperial culture brought deeper and more
profound psychological changes to the cultures it conquered than European
colonialism ever could.
Along with Islam's cultural demands, its political ambition
was to include all Muslims in an Islamic world without borders, in which the
only permissible political allegiance was to the world-wide Muslim community and
Allah. There was no place in such a world for a conquered people's pre-islamic
history or national identity.
After the arrival of
Islam
,
Iran
faced the most critical test in its history. Would its ancient Zoroastrian
culture survive or would Islam and arab culture replace the unique Iranian
identity. Alternatively, could
Iran
somehow transform Islam into a palatable Iranian form? These questions have
characterized
Iran
since the Islamic takeover. It is true, Islam has become the dominant cultural
force, yet Iranian identity, rooted in its Zoroastrian past, has never quite
conceded defeat. The tension remains to this day. For example "no ruz"
or the Persian new year (based on a Zoroastrian practice) is condemned by the
Islamic clerics as a pagan practice, yet is widely celebrated. In addition, the
achievements of the ancient Achaemenian period (whose empire was conquered by
Alexander the Great in the 4th Century B.C.) and its classical civilization,
have never left the Persian collective psyche. The ruins of
Persepolis
are a constant reminder that there was great Iranian past a thousand years
before Islam as even born. Not even the mullahs can deny evidence that is carved
in rock.
During the Abbassid, Ferdowsi (b.935), perhaps
Iran
's greatest amongst many great poets, wrote the epic "Shahnameh"
(story of kings) and reclaimed the Persian past and language from arabic
influence. Ferdowsi's poetry openly proclaims the superiority of Persian culture
and laments the arab invasion. He accepts Islam itself as a fact of life without
directly criticizing its teachings. However, Ferdowsi has nothing but contempt
for the arabs themselves and cannot forgive them. At times Ferdowsi's poetry
even condemns the imposition of Islam itself. It is paradoxical that Ferdowsi's
tomb is still revered by Iranians despite
Iran
being an Islamic theocracy.
Islam's relegation of the pre-islamic past of the non-arab
peoples it conquered, to an era of "darkness" was one of the major
themes of the Indian author, V.S. Naipaul's Nobel Prize winning books,
"Among the Believers' and "Beyond Belief". Naipaul proposes that
conquered peoples, such as the Iranians and Indonesians, had been separated by
Islam from their complete and true historical past, and removed again by
European colonialism and this disconnect has resulted in an inner anxiety and
crisis of identity. Take for example Islamist movements in
Indonesia
and Phillippines, in which young Asian Muslims imitate Arabic appearance and
call for
Israel
's destruction, yet they have no ethnic, cultural or historic connection with
arab Palestinians. Both Islamic and subsequent western colonialism, according to
Naipaul, have robbed the "conquered peoples" from their true selves,
such that there is an inner loss of identity and a yearning to belong to some
cause.
There have been times when
Iran
has dared to remember its past. In 1926, Reza Khan was crowned the first
Pahlavi King of
Iran
and as part of his reforms he made it clear that he regarded Islam as a foreign
imposed faith that should not determine
Iran
's identity. As part of his attack on Islam, Reza Khan connected his new
Iran
with the ancient Zoroastrian past. The Farsi language was purged of arabic
words, architecture began to take inspiration from ancient Achaemenian styles
and schoolbooks were re-written to enhance an Iranian identity. Cities were
renamed with Persian names, parents were encouraged to give Persian, and not
arabic, names to their children. In 1935
Persia
itself was renamed
Iran
, as it was known in the days of Cyrus the Great. These reforms were of course
reversed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
It conclusion, it seems that Iranian history has swung back
and forth between its Arab imposed Islamic identity and its older Zoroastrian
era Persian culture. The latter simply refuses to die. Just as an individual
struggles with conflicting loyalties and identities until they are reconciled,
so do entire nations and cultures. As long as
Iran
's ancient identity is denied and denigrated, Iranian public life will be
dishonest and contradictory. According to Islam, all history before Islam was an
era of "darkness" and should be discarded. This is a frightening
Orwellian belief, that the world witnessed first hand with the Taliban's
destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues. If the
Iran
past is to regain its rightful place, it must be prepared to attack this
identity-destroying aspect of Islam.
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