Iranian President - 1979 Hostage Taker?

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by Ramo
He's a brutal ****. Not because of what he may or may not have done wrt to the Embassy. That's practically irrelevent.

no doubt. its a shame our leaders dont make a fuss about all the brutal **** they've supported in the past and continue to now when it suits them isn't it?

We could live in a really good world no? oh well - we do put them in power i suppose

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Harry Tuttle


How so? A brutal kidnapper, one who invaded a U.S. embassy and kidnapped U.S. citizens might have just been made the leader of one of the largest arab nations on Earth.

So when did the Indo-European Iranians (whose name derives from their word for Aryan) become Semitic Arabs ?


Well, all Muslims look the same in the dark, I suppose.

Another Arab:

[Az]

molly:I am not sure of the nationality, but generally speaking, many people have been assimilated into "arabism". Some of them white, and other black. Persia is lucky to have escaped this fait, but it's still dominated by a religion that is predominantly an arab one ( although not this particular branch).

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Az
molly:I am not sure of the nationality, but generally speaking, many people have been assimilated into "arabism". Some of them white, and other black. Persia is lucky to have escaped this fait, but it's still dominated by a religion that is predominantly an arab one ( although not this particular branch).

I don't think it's quite that simple- Islam as a religion may have originated in Arabia, but does anyone seriously think of Christianity as being an Asiatic 'Semitic' religion ?

Since the days of the Abbasids, Islam has been increasingly dominated (culturally and in terms of population at least) by non-Arab peoples- Iranians, Turks, Berbers, Egyptians, black Africans from North West Africa to East Africa, Uzbeks, Mongols, Chinese, et cetera.

Ask one of our Iranian posters in Civ 4, mkhosravi, how Iranians feel about being described as Arabs....


The most populous 'Muslim' countries are now Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangla Desh and Nigeria- and culturally they certainly aren't Arab.

Go further east. The incredible story is Iran, a theocratic and despotic Muslim country. At its peak, its TFR was seven children per woman. At a recent U.N. conference, an Iranian demographer delivered a paper that calculated the current TFR at 2.06 and falling. Like Iran, the most populous Muslim countries are not Arab. Nearly all--including Turkey, Bangladesh and Indonesia--have also seen major declines in fertility. Only Pakistan remains high.

http://www.tzemachdovid.org/Facts/demography.shtml

Too often I've seen Arab used as short hand for Muslim, or Muslim for Arab- which would be news to such luminaries of the Arab world as George Habash (al Hakim) and Suha Arafat or such luminaries of the Islamic world as Mohammad Ali Jinnah and the Ayatollah Khomeini.

[Mr. Harley]

As another aside, and as a supplement to Molly's post, the Arabs are also some of the most intolerant Muslim's around. Their paticular flavor of Suni teachings routinely marginalizes or even brand as heretics the Sufi's. Then we can go to ultra-Suni Arabs, better known as the Wahabi's. They are truly frightening.

There are Suni's in Iraq who claim that Suni's naturally should be in power over Shia's, they gave some history but I was very tired. Molly can probably figure it out, it went back to the caliphates I believe. Unfortunately Iran's Shia are now giving the Wahabi's a run for the titile of most intolerant branch of Islam, given their treatment of certain minorities like the B'Hai (if memory serves me properly, they engaged in a nice short extermination campaign against them, but I have gotten very little sleep since I've started back to work and my sleep cycle is truly whacked right now.)

[Lefty Scaevola]

Now the Austrians say that the Iran president elect is a suspect to a 1989 triple murder there.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050702/ap_on_re_eu/austria_iran

[DarkCloud]

Actually, if anything the Shiites are the less naturally tolerant of the two groups.

While the Sunnis have the Wahabbis- they have a generally more egalitarian system of 'electing' imams.

Shiites generally believe that imams have special knowledge granted to them through Allah. (shades of Gnosticism here, perhaps?) In the early days they had 12 Imams who were successors to the Caliph 'Ali. These Imams who appointed their successors before they died... However, this practice died out when the last one apparently did not foresee his own death and appoint a successor. It is believed that his successor went into occultation(?) and will return at the end of times.

In a sense, the Sunnis are more democratic by nature than the Shiites.

They always make me think of the Sunni as the Protestants of Islam and the Shiite as the Catholics- with a highly defined hierarchy.

...Just the facts... no judgements there.

[Mr. Harley]

But both groups enjoy trashing the Sufi's, and engage in periodic heretic hunting. Which, since this is current Islam means the death penalty.

[Straybow]

No story here. "Doubles" can be found anywhere.

Fifteen years ago I met a guy who looked just like my younger brother. Several years later I was back in town and I saw the same guy in a Wal-Mart parking lot.

The incidence of this is rather high. There are only about ten million combinations of the primary genetic markers for skin and structural appearance. A white male in the US should have up to half a dozen look-alikes, with one or two falling within a similar age bracket.

A larger number of people will have look-alike faces but significantly different height and body build. For certain narrow phenotypes (e.g., red haired people of Irish ancestry, or blacks of specific West African tribal ancestry) the incidence can be much higher than their mixed ancestry counterparts.

Finding a look-alike among 60 million Persians should be somewhat easier than finding a look-alike in a more cosmopolitan population. There are probably a dozen or more men who could pass for Amadinejad's twin.

[Az]

I don't think it's quite that simple- Islam as a religion may have originated in Arabia, but does anyone seriously think of Christianity as being an Asiatic 'Semitic' religion ?

No, but the seats of power of the christian religion are gone from the middle east. Thus Christianity is a european religion with it's sources in near east, much like Buddhism isn't really an indian religion anymore - since the buddhist population of the subcontinent is negligible.

Since the days of the Abbasids, Islam has been increasingly dominated (culturally and in terms of population at least) by non-Arab peoples- Iranians, Turks, Berbers, Egyptians, black Africans from North West Africa to East Africa, Uzbeks, Mongols, Chinese, et cetera.

While in terms in populations you're most certainly correct, you're not correct in terms of influence on religion. Of course, as any global religion, there are many separatist movements - but historically, Islam was made by arabs, or people who assimilated into 'arabity' - ask an egyptian if he's an arab or not. Same goes to most of the northen african coast, and the fertile crescent.



Since the days of the Abbasids, Islam has been increasingly dominated (culturally and in terms of population at least) by non-Arab peoples- Iranians, Turks, Berbers, Egyptians, black Africans from North West Africa to East Africa, Uzbeks, Mongols, Chinese, et cetera.

Ask one of our Iranian posters in Civ 4, mkhosravi, how Iranians feel about being described as Arabs....


The most populous 'Muslim' countries are now Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangla Desh and Nigeria- and culturally they certainly aren't Arab.[/q]

[Lefty Scaevola]

Originally posted by Straybow
Finding a look-alike among 60 million Persians should be somewhat easier than finding a look-alike in a more cosmopolitan population. There are probably a dozen or more men who could pass for Amadinejad's twin.

The guy is acknowleged to have been leader in the same group of student activists who took the embassy, it narrows the group to a few hundred, but it still looks more like a look alike case. The Austria case against him for the 1989 murder of the three Kurd exiles looks more significant, however.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Az
[q]

While in terms in populations you're most certainly correct, you're not correct in terms of influence on religion. Of course, as any global religion, there are many separatist movements - but historically, Islam was made by arabs, or people who assimilated into 'arabity' - ask an egyptian if he's an arab or not. Same goes to most of the northen african coast, and the fertile crescent.

I'm going to have to disagree somewhat. That Mecca and Medina and Jerusalem are situated in the Middle East and are Islam's three holiest sites is undeniable; however, Najaf, Kerbala, Mash'had, Qom and Mazar i Sharif are sites important to Shi'a Muslims, and Mash'had Qom and Mazar i Sharif are not in Arab or Arab dominated countries.

Islam lost its distinct Arab flavour quite early on- probably because it conquered the Sassanid Empire so quickly. By doing so the relatively unsophisticated Arabs from the oases trading cities in some of the modern day Gulf States encountered an ancient cultured civilization with a highly organized state church, clergy and flourishing literature with trading networks stetching from India and China to Rome.

The kharijites (often thought of as the first Muslim sect) appeared early on and attracted non-Arab converts to Islam who were disgruntled with the privileged Arab position in the new religion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharijites

The revolt of the Zanj, Turkish and Central Asian opposition to Arab dominated Sunni states all show the power of non-Arab Islamic peoples.

Also the primary cultural influences of the Abbasid Empire were not Arab, but Hellenistic and Iranian.

Ibn Battuta visiting northern India (in the 1330s) had this to say about the variety of Islam he found there:

"Along its four sides there are forty pavilions, and round about it live the musicians. Their place is called Tarababad (city of music) and they have there a most extensive bazaar, a cathedral mosque, and many other mosques beside. I was told that the singing-girls there, of whom there are a great many, take part in a body in the tarawih prayers in these mosques during the month of Ramadan, and the imams lead them in these prayers. The male musicians do the same. I myself saw the male musicians on the occasion of the wedding of the amir Sayf al Din Ghada, son of Muhanna (a Syrian nobleman) when each one of them had a prayer mat under his knees and on hearing the call to prayer, rose, made his ablutions, and performed the prayer."

He makes similar observations about the variety of Islam he found closer to his home, when he visited the Malian territory and found semi-naked Muslim women.

Indeed, by 1300, very distinctive forms of Islam were apparent, from West Africa to Central Asia and Canton, north India to East Africa.

[Az]

All of what you're saying is correct, but it falls squarely into the separatist sub-denominations that I've alluded to in my short post. It's more of a huge exception that proves the rule - The mere fact that you mention 'revealed' women in Mali as a counterpoint, just reveals that in 'vanilla' Islam, the woman remains in the shape and form of the women in pre-Islamic helenist-non-influenced arab society, which can be traced back to deeper Arabia, and the heart of the creation of Islam.

It's a kin to claiming that Christianity isn't at it's very heart a european religion. The fact that denominations of Christianity vary so strongly doesn't change that fact. ( although it's possible that the last 100 years, and the emergence of atheism as a dominant force in europe can change this, for good )

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Az
All of what you're saying is correct, but it falls squarely into the separatist sub-denominations that I've alluded to in my short post. It's more of a huge exception that proves the rule - The mere fact that you mention 'revealed' women in Mali as a counterpoint, just reveals that in 'vanilla' Islam, the woman remains in the shape and form of the women in pre-Islamic helenist-non-influenced arab society, which can be traced back to deeper Arabia, and the heart of the creation of Islam.

But veiled women were not exclusive to Islam or Arab culture- Roman women and Byzantine women and some Iranian women went veiled, before Islam appeared.

It's self-evidently true that Islam has adopted the characteristics of countries that have adopted it as the major religion- even the burqa in Afghanistan, mistakenly thought of as being 'traditionally' Islamic, is nothing of the sort- and not all Muslim Afghan women even under the Taleban wore the burqa.

Veiled, semi-veiled, unveiled, sari wearing, chador wearing, employed, in strict purdah, authors, scientists, illiterates- there's as many varieties of rules for women in Islamic countries as there are Heinz soup flavours.

The Taleban could confine women to the home allegedly in a back to basics approach to Islam- odd, given that a wife of Muhammad was a business woman and he was her employee. If the distinctively Arab approach to Islam was the cultural flavour of Islam in non-Arab countries, we'd expect to see more countries such as Libya with its forces of warrior women like Muhammad's early supporter Nasibah bint Ka'b al-Maziniyyah rather than the Arab Kuwaiti and Saudi approach to women's positions- prone and mute.

[Az]

We're mixing two somewhat separate discussions - The influence of arab culture on Islam, and the treatment of women under Islam. Also, I think that you've misunderstood my original claim.

I've never claimed that all muslims or even most of them, are arabs, or are followers of arab culture. I've said that many people who were not arabs originally, became arabs, as a consequence of the muslim explosion.

With regards to your references to early Islam as the true Islam, IMHO it's patently false to establish the 'true' meaning of the religion simply by the teachings of alternatively by following the example of the characters of their founding mythical figures. For all purposes, Muhammad could've married Adrea Dworkin, but it wouldn't change the meaning of the religion as a social phenomenon and driving force.