Tag Archives: islam
The Occupation
Napping deep in his easy chair with cigarette smoldering, Behrooz Kermani dreamed. He dreamt of the white grapes of the Zagros, the mountains east of his home, and the white wine of Shiraz; the forbidden wine of the poets and mystics of Persia. The wine of so many songs and so few lips, the forbidden [...]
Priest Dogs of Iran
This is a continuation of a thread on dogs. Zoroastrian funerary rituals appear to indicate that ancient Iranians believed that dogs had a unique power to discern whether the life had departed from a body. What follows next is known as the dog-sight (sagdid) ceremony. A dog, generally a “four-eyed” dog (a dog with two [...]
Religious Tolerance in Ancient Persia
The Vendidad is the Zoroastrian book of laws that was supposed to have been authored, if not written down, roughly around the time of Christ. The content, though, seems quite ancient. There is very little in the Vendidad that suggests that it was written for a civilized (urban) people, or even a warring people; yet, [...]
Last of the Starry-Eyed Orientalists
Since Iran deteriorated into Islamic fundamentalism in 1979, and the Ayatollahs resurfaced to rid Iran of unclean things such as infidels, heretics, and homosexuals, we haven’t heard much from the starry-eyed orientalist; that scholar who tires of the daunting empiricism, formal scientific process, excessive prosperity, and agnostic materialism of the West, and turns to the [...]
Parsí Dualism in Shí‘a Islám
Continuing from our discussion of ketman … Some aspects of Islám are reminiscent of Zoroastrianism in ways unique to Islám, for example As-Sirát (Arabic: الصراط), the Bridge of Judgment, which is reminiscent of the Zoroastrian Chinvat Bridge. Other Zoroastrian influences, such as those involving eschatology and angelogy, appear to have entered Islám by way of [...]
Ketman: Veiling God
“There is not a single true Moslem in Persia.” —Reported statement by a Persian to Arthur Comte de Gobineau (cited in “Versions of Censorship”, by McCormick & MacInnes) One of the great accomplishments—or offenses—of Islám was in conquering and subjugating the Persian Empire. Alexander had conquered the Persian Empire a millennium earlier, but it hadn’t [...]
I am God, and so are you.
Agnostic Religion Only God exists; He is in all things, and all things are in Him. Sufi pantheism, as defined in a footnote to the Seven Valleys of Baha’u’llah We have previously considered that Islam’s strength is that it forbids idolatry, that is, associating partners with God, and that Islam’s weakness is that its object [...]
The Agnosticism Intrinsic to Monotheism
I recently wrote here about the strict monotheism of Muhammad. It occurred to me that the ultimate logical end of monotheism is free thought and tolerance; something of the sort that one might expect from a Unitarian congregation. In this sense, Islam is essentially a modern religion. Existentially, Islam seems quite primitive and barbaric, but [...]