How Iran persecutes its oldest religion

[ای ایران]

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How Iran persecutes its oldest religion
By Jamsheed K. Choksy
https://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/14/opinion/choksy-iran-zoroastrian/index.html

Zoroastrian worshipers pray near the central Iranian city of Yazd in 2004.

Story highlights

• Zoroastrians are not insulated from Iran's tribulations, Jamsheed K. Choksy says
• Followers of this ancient faith are disparaged as "sinful animals," he says
• Choksy: Many Muslim Iranians are rejecting the Shiite theocracy's intolerant ways
• President Ahmadinejad now uses Zoroastrianism's past for political ends, Choksy says

As Zoroastrian funerary processions enter the graveyard overlooking the Tehran suburb of Ray, their sobriety is often shattered by the sound of explosions and gunfire. Frequently, the way forward is blocked by Islamic Revolutionary Guards conducting a combat exercise among the tombs. According to Zoroastrian custom, burial needs to take place within 24 hours, and the Revolutionary Guards will not halt their training activities there for the funerals.

This is just another sign of religious freedom fading in the Islamic Republic.
Much that is written about the Zoroastrians of Iran portrays them as a venerable and quaint religious community. But these followers of an ancient faith are not insulated from the tribulations of their country.

Zoroastrianism is named after its founder, the prophet Zarathustra -- or Zoroaster, as he came to be known in the West -- who preached sometime between 1800 and 1000 B.C. Zoroaster spoke of humans siding with God (called Ahura Mazda, or the Wise Lord) against the devil (called Angra Mainyu, or the Angry Spirit) and fighting for all that is right. In time, those concepts became central to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. So did Zoroastrian beliefs that each soul faces judgment after death before entering heaven, limbo or hell, and that all of humanity will experience resurrection, final judgment and heaven on Earth.

Jamsheed K. Choksy

Ancient Persian kings like Cyrus and Darius followed their faith's basic tenet of doing good by freeing Israelites from the Babylonian Exile and supporting construction of the Second Temple at Jerusalem. Zoroastrianism's clergymen, or magi, are known around the world as the wise men in attendance at the nativity of Jesus. Until Arabs conquered Iran during the seventh century, Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians there could practice their own devotions unhindered. Thereafter, they became minorities who were persecuted and largely converted to Islam.

When the Islamic revolution occurred in 1979, fundamentalist Shiites stormed the fire temple at Tehran. There, Zoroastrians worship in front of a blazing fire, as a symbol of God's grace, just like Christians face a cross and Muslims turn to a qibla pointing toward Mecca. The portrait of Zoroaster was tossed down, a photograph of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was put up in its place, and the congregation was warned not to remove the image of Iran's new leader. Only months later could the prophet's picture be mounted upon an adjacent wall.

Their schools and classrooms began to be covered with images of Supreme Leaders Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and with verses of the Quran that denounce non-Muslims. Those who do well academically nonetheless find no openings within state-controlled universities.

When the bloody war with Iraq raged from 1980 to 1988, young Zoroastrians were involuntarily drafted for suicide missions in the Iranian army. Rejecting the Shiite mullahs' claim that military martyrdom would lead them to a heaven full of virgins was futile. Failing to offer their lives on the battlefield could result in execution for treason.
Then in November 2005, Ayatollah Ahmed Jannati, chairman of the Council of Guardians of the Constitution, disparaged Zoroastrians and other religious minorities as "sinful animals who roam the earth and engage in corruption." When the Zoroastrians' solitary parliamentary representative protested, he was hauled before a revolutionary tribunal. There, mullahs threatened execution before sparing his life with a warning never to challenge their declarations again. A frightened community subsequently declined to re-elect him.

Over the past two years, many Muslim Iranians have begun publicly rejecting the Shiite theocracy's intolerant ways by adopting symbols and festivals from Zoroastrianism. Those actions are denounced as causing "harm and corruption" by ayatollahs like Khamenei and Jannati.

Sensing that popular sentiment among Iran's Muslim majority is shifting away from the mullahs, even President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has begun utilizing Zoroastrianism's past for his own political ends. In September 2010, he arranged for the Cyrus Cylinder, a sixth-century B.C. document that speaks of religious tolerance and Iranian greatness, to be loaned from the British Museum. During a public ceremony in Tehran, Ahmadinejad lauded indigenous traditions as superior to Arab-imposed Islam. Privately, his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, even referred to King Cyrus as "a messenger of God."

Their tottering political base has sharpened the Shiite clerics' ire. Like members of the Christian, Jewish and Baha'i minorities, Zoroastrian activists who protest the theocracy's excesses are sent to Tehran's notorious Evin prison on charges of sedition. At the ayatollahs' instigation, Iranian media characterizes the followers of Iran's ancient faith as polytheists and devil worshipers. Lesser mullahs rant against Zoroastrians not only in Iran, but even at mosques in Toronto.

The Zoroastrian cemetery outside Tehran now faces another challenge: The municipality seeks to lay a highway through it. Some schools and devotional centers in other Zoroastrian strongholds like Yazd and Kerman have also been notified of pending annexation. Communal gatherings are routinely monitored by fundamentalist Muslim authorities who allege that Zoroastrianism "threatens national security and subverts the Islamic revolution."

Protections offered by the Islamic Republic's constitution have been rendered meaningless in practice. Not surprisingly, the daily regimen of discrimination makes Zoroastrians feel wholly unwelcome in their Iranian homeland. Only between 35,000 and 90,000 now remain in a country of approximately 74 million citizens -- and, fearing persecution, many do not readily identify themselves as Zoroastrians.

Yet, Zoroastrians are no mere footnote in human history and religiosity. Their ideas still determine how many of the globe's residents behave. The end of Zoroastrianism in Iran should be prevented. Making religious freedom a priority in U.S. and EU foreign policies will help achieve that goal.
https://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/14/opinion/choksy-iran-zoroastrian/index.html

@Sam. @jamahir @Nilu Pule @lastofthepatriots @AfrazulMandal

Cheers, Doc

This article is exaggerating. It is true that Zoroastrianism as a religion has just a small number of followers left today but it still survives in Iran as a cultural heritage and legacy that can never be erased. Zoroastrianism is still present everywhere in Iran; our calendar is Zoroastrian, our New Year and seasonal celebrations are Zoroastrian, our national epic literature is Zoroastrian, even the most common names given to new born babies in Iran today for both girls and boys are Zoroastrian... Zoroastrianism and Persian heritage is not hard to find in Iran. You just need to look beyond the exterior of politics and you will see it is there permeating the entire culture of Iranians.

The most important thing is how Iranian people and society (including shia muslims) views zoroastrianism today? I can say since 100 years ago till now there is only progress in positive view towards zoroastrianism. This is what counts, not what the rulers think. Even bloody mongols could not hold power in Iran. Most important aspect is how the society thinks.

About the issue of death and what should happen with the corpse, I think Zoroastrian religion is a flexible religion which has values which are surprisingly very advanced/modern, for example not polluting waters. The same can be said about burials, they're actually bad for environment and new methods are still created, for example:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.th...-dried-death-promession-cremation-burial/amp/

Inthe past zoroastrians had kind of above the ground tombs/Graves/coffins:

In the Parthian period, according to Isidore of Charax, kings were buried in royal tombs (Gk. basilikai taphai, at Parthaunisa; Caracalla is recorded to have sacked the tombs of later Parthian kings at Arbela), and burial in slipper-shaped ceramic coffins was also common. In pre-Christian Armenia, whose religion was particularly strongly influenced by the Zoroastrianism of the Parthians, similar forms of interment were common, the word for a coffin, tapan, being a loan from Middle Iranian. Such practices undoubtedly continued in Armenia into the Sasanian period, when in Iran itself methods of interment less conformable with orthodoxy were probably suppressed; hence the Bundahišn decries the particular virulence of the Ahrimanic practice of burial among the Armenians (see, with refs., Russell, chap. 10).

In the Sasanian period, the bones of the exposed deceased were often interred in stone or ceramic ossuaries, called uzdāna- in Avestan and astōdān in Pahlavi; some stone examples bear Pahlavi inscriptions. Literary sources suggest the Sasanian kings were interred in tombs, but there is as yet no archeological confirmation of this. Following the fall of the Sasanians, however, local rulers in northern Iran who adhered to pre-Islamic customs were interred in tomb towers, of which a notable example is the early 5th/11th-century Gonbad-e Qābūs (illustrated in Camb. Hist. Iran IV, pl. 5): the body of Qābūs is said to have been suspended at the top of the tower in a glass coffin on which the rays of the rising sun could fall through a small opening on the east side of the roof (see Matheson, p. 69). This would have allowed the xwaršēd nigerišn “sight (of the body) by the sun” on the čahāromto take place. Many ceramic ossuaries have been excavated on the territory of pre-Islamic Central Asia: Choresmia, Bactria, and Sogdia. Some are decorated with scenes of worship before a sacred fire, indicating that, of those interred, a number were Zoroastrians (see Grenet; on Sogdia, see Gershevitch). Boyce regards the Nuristani (Kafiri) practice of “post-excarnation” burial, i.e., exposure of the corpse in a wooden coffin on a mountain-top, as a “local derivative of Zoroastrian observance” (Zoroastrianism I, p. 113 with n. 24), though the Nuristanis, who do not speak an Iranian language, are unlikely to have been Zoroastrians in the past. Until fairly recent times, it was common custom in southern Ḵᵛārazm to place the dead in a sarcophagus (sagona) or box (sandyk), which was kept above ground. One reason given by informants for not interring corpses in the earth was šafaqat, “compassion” for the deceased (Snesarev, 1969, pp. 148-51; 1963, pp. 127-40). This seems to be a survival of the Zoroastrian belief, noted above, that the soul of one buried in the earth cannot ascend on the čahārom.

In my view there is no difference being buried and eaten slowly by worms, maggots and other vermin that live below ground from being exposed under the sun on mountain tops or funery towers and eaten by vultures. The result is the same either way. One is just much quicker than the other. It takes vultures less than a day to strip a body of it's flesh leaving only bones behind unlike burial where a dead body takes a very long time to rot away and be consumed by worms, maggots, bacteria etc

The only difference is that there is a risk that exposed bodies might be seen by people which would be a grusome sight, unlike buried bodies where we cant see the putrid, horrific state they become unless somebody digs them back out.

Bro, no people are all good or all bad.

People are people.

But I don't buy the bs that all people are equal either.

We Persians were the first chosen ones.

Arabs were simply the last.

God comes to a people through one of their own at the time of their greatest need.

And when He believes they are ready.

The Arabs were always in need.

It's just that they took longest to be ready. For their prophet to be born.

We Persians already had our Prophet.

So this whole thing of accepting and loving someone else's, for a message we had received thousands of years earlier, which has passed unchanged over epochs to first the Jews, then Christians, and finally the Arabs, all Semites, is complete nonsense in my book. And that of all Zoroastrians.

But to each his own I guess.

Cheers, Doc

You're not Persian.

 

[padamchen]

This article is exaggerating. It is true that Zoroastrianism as a religion has just a small number of followers left today but it still survives in Iran as a cultural heritage and legacy that can never be erased. Zoroastrianism is still present everywhere in Iran; our calendar is Zoroastrian, our New Year and seasonal celebrations are Zoroastrian, our national epic literature is Zoroastrian, even the most common names given to new born babies in Iran today for both girls and boys are Zoroastrian... Zoroastrianism and Persian heritage is not hard to find in Iran. You just need to look beyond the exterior of politics and you will see it is there permeating the entire culture of Iranians.



In my view there is no difference being buried and eaten slowly by worms, maggots and other vermin that live below ground from being exposed under the sun on mountain tops or funery towers and eaten by vultures. The result is the same either way. One is just much quicker than the other. It takes vultures less than a day to strip a body of it's flesh leaving only bones behind unlike burial where a dead body takes a very long time to rot away and be consumed by worms, maggots, bacteria etc

The only difference is that there is a risk that exposed bodies might be seen by people which would be a grusome sight, unlike buried bodies where we cant see the putrid, horrific state they become unless somebody digs them back out.


You're not Persian.

Ok.

The script your ID is written in is not Persian.

Cheers, Doc

 

[ای ایران]

40 Years of Discrimination against the Zoroastrians of Iran

@jamahir @Tokhme khar @PakSarzameen5823 @Sam. @Yogijaat

I find the title of the video to me a bit ironic. Only a tad.

40 years?

Try 1000 ...

Cheers, Doc

I dont have a problem generally with Parsis but to be honest, you guys are hardly ones to talk about us. I mean, Parsis were one of the biggest collaborators of Britain's subjugation and control of India. Even today Indians including Parsis are probably the biggest pro-British stooges you will ever come across even though Britain bled your country dry, divided your people along religious lines into different states, and forever changed and contaminated all of the Indian cultures and peoples with British colonial ideas and cultural mutations.

How Britain stole $45 trillion from India
And lied about it.
by Jason Hickel
19 Dec 2018

There is a story that is commonly told in Britain that the colonisation of India - as horrible as it may have been - was not of any major economic benefit to Britain itself. If anything, the administration of India was a cost to Britain. So the fact that the empire was sustained for so long - the story goes - was a gesture of Britain's benevolence.

New research by the renowned economist Utsa Patnaik - just published by Columbia University Press - deals a crushing blow to this narrative. Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938.

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/britain-stole-45-trillion-india-181206124830851.html

 

[padamchen]

I dont have a problem generally with Parsis but to be honest, you guys are hardly ones to talk about us. I mean, Parsis were one of the biggest collaborators of Britain's subjugation and control of India. Even today Indians including Parsis are probably the biggest pro-British stooges you will ever come across even though Britain bled your country dry, divided your people along religious lines into different states, and forever changed and contaminated all of the Indian cultures and peoples with British colonial ideas and cultural mutations.

How Britain stole $45 trillion from India
And lied about it.
by Jason Hickel
19 Dec 2018

There is a story that is commonly told in Britain that the colonisation of India - as horrible as it may have been - was not of any major economic benefit to Britain itself. If anything, the administration of India was a cost to Britain. So the fact that the empire was sustained for so long - the story goes - was a gesture of Britain's benevolence.

New research by the renowned economist Utsa Patnaik - just published by Columbia University Press - deals a crushing blow to this narrative. Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938.

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/britain-stole-45-trillion-india-181206124830851.html

Ok.

You must be right.

I feel strangely lighter now that you do not have a problem with us in general.

Cheers, Doc

 

[zectech]

Zoroastrianism is dangerous because even though it may be founded by a Semite, it has no garden of Eden tale. The Grandfather of all story of stories is from the hidden Caucasus tales. The Father of all story of stories is from the Garden of Eden tale and the Son of all story of stories is from the Mt Ararat tale. The Nordics and European Caucasians missed out on their Garden of Eden tale, but have a near perfect and fully adequate copy of the story in their histories. For that I also include them in the Mt Ararat tale too.

Without the Garden of Eden tale in your religion, those out to steal Eve from Adam might be welcomed as as many Sufis believe.

The Devas in Hinduism is the opposite of the jewish religion. The gods of Hinduism are the devils of the Jewish religion.

There is nothing jewish about the Garden of Eden, it is Semitic and Adamaic. A small amount of Indians have the garden of Eden tale and these are not from jews.

Jews deliberately misplace the Garden of Eden story at 6000 or 8000 years ago. So that the jewish individuals and 0.0001% of the world's population are the only ones who are claimed to be of Adam or Noah to the detriment of everyone else who is of Adam.

Hopefully I spoke in enough riddles.

 

[padamchen]

Zoroastrianism is dangerous because even though it may be founded by a Semite, it has no garden of Eden tale. The Grandfather of all story of stories is from the hidden Caucasus tales. The Father of all story of stories is from the Garden of Eden tale and the Son of all story of stories is from the Mt Ararat tale. The Nordics and European Caucasians missed out on their Garden of Eden tale, but have a near perfect and fully adequate copy of the story in their histories. For that I also include them in the Mt Ararat tale too.

Without the Garden of Eden tale in your religion, those out to steal Eve from Adam might be welcomed as as many Sufis believe.

The Devas in Hinduism is the opposite of the jewish religion. The gods of Hinduism are the devils of the Jewish religion.

There is nothing jewish about the Garden of Eden, it is Semitic and Adamaic. A small amount of Indians have the garden of Eden tale and these are not from jews.

Jews deliberately misplace the Garden of Eden story at 6000 or 8000 years ago. So that the jewish individuals and 0.0001% of the world's population are the only ones who are claimed to be of Adam or Noah to the detriment of everyone else who is of Adam.

Hopefully I spoke in enough riddles.

Yes Spitama Zarathustra was a Semite.

And Noah and Moses were Aryan Sons of God.

Cheers, Doc

 

[ای ایران]

Ok.

The script your ID is written in is not Persian.

Cheers, Doc

Yes it is, lol. Modern Persian alphabet is based on the Arabic alphabet, which in turn is based on the Syriac alphabet. So what? It's still different from Arabic and is Persian.

You try to call yourself 'Persian', but you are ignorant about Persians, Iran and our history.

Persian language never had an original alphabet of it's own. Our alphabets have always been based on Mesopotamian ones, but changed and adapted for our language.

Zoroastrians never believed in writing until the Achaemenids. If you know anything about early Zoroastrian and Persian history, we never wrote because the mythology and superstition of the pre-Achaemenids was that writing was a demonic practice.

When Old Persian was finally written down the alphabet was based on Cuneiform, which isnt 'Persian' originally.

Middle Persian alphabet was based on an Aramaic alphabet.

Avestan alphabet was in turn, developed from the Middle Persian based alphabet.

Before that, Avestan had never been written, only spoken.

All Persian alphabets, like alphabets used in most of the World's languages, have been based on something else.

There are thousands and thousands of languages and dialects that have been spoken around the World throughout history. But only very few alphabets have existed.

So what's your point about the Persian alphabet today?

 

[padamchen]

Yes it is, lol. Modern Persian alphabet is based on the Arabic alphabet, which in turn is based on the Syriac alphabet. So what? It's still different from Arabic and is Persian.

You try to call yourself 'Persian', but you are ignorant about Persians, Iran and our history.

Persian language never had an original alphabet of it's own. Our alphabets have always been based on Mesopotamian ones, but changed and adapted for our language.

Zoroastrians never believed in writing until the Achaemenids. If you know anything about early Zoroastrian and Persian history, we never wrote because the mythology and superstition of the pre-Achaemenids was that writing was a demonic practice.

When Old Persian was finally written down the alphabet was based on Cuneiform, which isnt 'Persian' originally.

Middle Persian alphabet was based on an Aramaic alphabet.

Avestan alphabet was in turn, developed from the Middle Persian based alphabet.

Before that, Avestan had never been written, only spoken.

All Persian alphabets, like alphabets used in most of the World's languages, have been based on something else.

There are thousands and thousands of languages and dialects that have been spoken around the World throughout history. But only very few alphabets have existed.

So what's your point about the Persian alphabet today?

Yes, I agree.

Your Persian script is Arabic.

Cheers, Doc

 

[ای ایران]

Yes, I agree.

Your Persian script is Arabic.

Cheers, Doc

And you are Indian.

So please, respect yourself and dont call yourself Persian.

It is insulting to us when South Asians tell lies about themselves and try to relate themselves to Persians. You have nothing to do with Iran.

For us you are all just a bunch of Hendus to be honest. We dont care what your religion or nationality is. We just see India in your faces.

There is nothing Persian about any of you.

 

[padamchen]

And you are Indian.

So please, respect yourself and dont call yourself Persian.

It is insulting to us when South Asians tell lies about themselves and try to relate themselves to Persians. You have nothing to do with Iran.

For us you are all just a bunch of Hendus to be honest. We dont care what your religion or nationality is. We just see India in your faces.

There is nothing Persian about any of you.

Yes of course you are right.

We see love and peaceful acceptance in your faces.

Cheers, Doc

 

[Tokhme khar]

We accept you as a human being, just like any other shitbilly, hendi, araab or yahudi. That's all you are! Nothing more, nothing less. Just another Joe Blow........that you meet down the street who talks it up.

I have told you before, and will repeat it here again, if you and your people don't move to Yazd, you will go extinct! Our Zoroastrians are in a stable condition. At around 150,000 population, they are not in desperate panic mode as you Indians.

Yes of course you are right.

We see love and peaceful acceptance in your faces.

Cheers, Doc

 

[padamchen]

We accept you as a human being, just like any other shitbilly, hendi, araab or yahudi. That's all you are! Nothing more, nothing less. Just another Joe Blow........that you meet down the street who talks it up.

I have told you before, and will repeat it here again, if you and your people don't move to Yazd, you will go extinct! Our Zoroastrians are in a stable condition. At around 150,000 population, they are not in desperate panic mode as you Indians.

Please post your photo so I can see what pure Persian genes undiluted with Arbi or Turki or Kord or Lur or Mongol or Hindi genes look like Iroon.

Me and Razi have asked you enough times. Why don't you just post it here and end this d bate about bloodlines once and for all.

Post a full length one too, so we can all see how big and powerful Cyrus's pure blood warriors once were.

Please Iroon.

Cheers, Doc

 

[Rafi]

Having been to Iran on a number of occasions and knowing the diaspora, I am afraid if some Parsis are thinking that they are going to be the beneficiaries of some reconversion, they are quite deluded.

The vast majority of them are still dedicated to Shia Islam to varying degrees. And the small amount that are not are atheist.

 

[padamchen]

Having been to Iran on a number of occasions and knowing the diaspora, I am afraid if some Parsis are thinking that they are going to be the beneficiaries of some reconversion, they are quite deluded.

The vast majority of them are still dedicated to Shia Islam to varying degrees. And the small amount that are not are atheist.

Thanks Rafi saab.

In answer to @Tokhme khar jaun's exhortations to move to Kerman and Yazd and Isfahan and Shiraz ....

Very seriously Tokhme jaun, without malice.

We are Athrvan Aryans. Pure blood Zarthosti warrior priest lineage.

We will not mix blood with our Vedic Aryan Hindu cousins. It is not allowed. Never has been. Never will be.

But we would rather die on Aryan soil where the Atash (Agni) is venerated.

Than come back to a Semitic one where it is not.

Hope that is clear enough for you my once brother.

Unlike your Behdin bloodlines, we are not afraid to die.

Our holy duty has always been to protect Ahura Mazda's puthrao. And we will do it till the last man or woman standing.

Cheers, Doc

 

[Tokhme khar]

wtf......lol.....what you gonna do with my photo?......jack off on it?........manhoos hendi.

Please post your photo so I can see what pure Persian genes undiluted with Arbi or Turki or Kord or Lur or Mongol or Hindi genes look like Iroon.

Me and Razi have asked you enough times. Why don't you just post it here and end this d bate about bloodlines once and for all.

Post a full length one too, so we can all see how big and powerful Cyrus's pure blood warriors once were.

Please Iroon.

Cheers, Doc