Arab/Persian

["Shahab Mesbah" <meteor2@moscow.com>]

Dear friends,

Some more information I hope you will find helpful. Although it should be
noted that Persians also populate that eastern Iraq and western Afghanistan.
When these countries were formed out of Persia the arbitrary borders did not
respect family ties and cultural and religious norms of the area. This is
the reason why Iraqi government kills the Iraqis on the east side and has
mistreated them for decades... they are Persians not Arabs! Instead the
powers to be just drew lines and separated the area. This region is actually
ripe for a US like government style of united states which incidentally was
exactly what the Persian empire was like! It was a monarchy but not like
what most are used to. The structure was more like an alliance of united but
independent regions, which came together in cooperation. The key to the
Persian Empire's success was not its military conquests... it was that they
gave total freedom to people so the people preferred to be a part of Persia
instead of other governments. Western history talks about the huge armies of
Persians conquering everyone but there is no indication of this. In fact the
rise of the empire was facilitated by a strict code of tolerance and peace.
The Jews for example believed the Persians to have been sent by God to save
them... which they did. This is the reason why Persians have a natural
affinity to US. US governmental system is more similar to the Persian system
than any other form.

By the way I am not known for my love for our current president but I have
to appreciate recent actions and comments clarifying his resolve to help the
Afghani people by getting rid of the Taliban. By the way the work Taliban is
plural form of the word Taleb... which is supposed to be a student of
knowledge and religious wisdom. In my days in Iran this true goal of the
Talebs had drastically changed. We used to consider the fanatical religious
clerics and talebs as the lowest life form on earth. It would be the
ultimate insult to be called an Achund (a derogatory title for the clerics)
and the Talebs were known to be searching money instead of knowledge! They
were the criminal underground under the camouflage of religion. Does this
sound familiar to any of you? Do we have people like this in the US? I hope
this clarifies the type of dirt-bag we are dealing with!
"Your brother in arms"
Shahab...


                        Is Iran an Arab Country?
                        By Chris Suellentrop
                        Posted Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2001, at 3:11 p.m. PT



                        Several readers objected to Slate's
                        characterization of Iran as an "Arab neighbor" in a
                        dossier in the Saudi royal family. Who are the
                        Arabs, and is Iran an Arab country?

                        The answer to the second question is easy: No.
                        But explaining why Iran isn't an Arab country
                        requires the answer to the first.

                        Who are the Arabs? It's not a facile question.
                        Historian Bernard Lewis devotes 14 pages to the
                        subject in his introduction to The Arabs in
                        History. Part of the problem, Lewis warns, is that
                        the term Arab "may be used in several different
                        senses at one and the same time, and that a
                        standard general definition of its content has
                        rarely been possible."

                        The easiest definition is to say that an Arab is
                        simply someone who speaks Arabic. But that's
                        not satisfactory. Not all Arabic-speaking peoples
                        identify themselves as Arabs.

                        Lewis cites two broader definitions as more
                        accurate. A group of Arab leaders once stated
                        that "whoever lives in our country, speaks our
                        language, is brought up in our culture and takes
                        pride in our glory is one of us." The scholar Sir
                        Hamilton Gibb put it this way: "All those are
                        Arabs for whom the central fact of history is the
                        mission of Muhammad and the memory of the
                        Arab Empire and who in addition cherish the
                        Arab tongue and its cultural heritage as their
                        common possession."

                        Both of those definitions encompass more than
                        just language. The first definition adds a
                        geographic element and a cultural element, and
                        Gibb adds religion to the mix. Encarta Online
                        gives a fairly succinct definition that includes all
                        four elements: "the ancient and present-day
                        inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula and often
                        applied to the peoples closely allied to them in
                        ancestry, language, religion, and culture." Part of
                        the problem with understanding the meaning of
                        "Arab," Lewis writes in another book, is that
                        secular Westerners have "great difficulty
                        understanding a culture in which not citizenship,
                        not nationality, not descent, but religion, or more
                        precisely, membership of a religious community,
                        is the ultimate determinant of identity."

                        To those definitions, Lewis adds a more recent
                        usage that excises religion by regarding "the
                        Arabic-speaking peoples as a nation or group of
                        sister nations in the modern sense, linked by a
                        common territory, language, and culture." Arab
                        Christians--who weren't designated that way until
                        the 19th century--were particularly attracted to
that
                        version of Arab nationalism because it would
                        make them full members of the state.

                        What territory do Arabs inhabit? The Arab
                        conquests of the seventh century spread the
                        Arabic language and civilization from North
                        Africa to central Asia. Under the Islamic
                        caliphate, Arabic became the language of
                        scripture, government, law, literature, and science.
                        Majority Arabic-speaking countries remain in
                        southwest Asia, Egypt, and North Africa. The
                        Arab League includes Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros,
                        Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon,
                        Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, the Palestine
                        Liberation Organization, Qatar, Saudi Arabia,
                        Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab
                        Emirates, and Yemen.

                        Note the absent country: Iran. Alone among the
                        Middle Eastern peoples conquered by the Arabs,
                        the Iranians did not lose their language or their
                        identity. Ethnic Persians make up 60 percent of
                        modern Iran, and modern Persian is the official
                        language. (Persian also has official status in
                        Afghanistan, where Dari, or Afghan Persian, is
                        one of two official languages.) In addition, the
                        majority of Iranians are Shiite Muslims while most
                        Arabs are Sunni Muslims. So Iran fails most of
                        the four-part test of language, ancestry, religion,
                        and culture.