The myth of "Islam is spread by the sword"

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Q
by Q
18-Dec-2009
 

This was originally intended as a comment for this blog which was about the letter-ultimatum from the Islamic khalif Omar to the at-the-time-teenage King of Iran, Yazdgird III. That particular letter is a historial forgery, but the discussion on the blog quickly descended to one of the most favorite topic of some Arab-obsessed Iranians: the so-called "forced Islamicization" of Iran.

I thank Avaznia and Farid for their excellent points. It is of course a myth that Islam, or any religion for that matter could be spread by the sword en-mass as is always claimed by those who are short on facts, short on fuse, but long on self-righteous fantasies.

I have made the same points regarding Islam's spread to other locations many times. To begin with majority of Muslims in the world live in lands that no Arab army ever set foot in. The spread into Egypt and North Africa was hardly "Islamification by sword" of Africa. These Arab armies were at best confined to Egypt and coastal mediterranian. The idea that they could have converted half the continent and sub-saharan parts like Nigeria, Kenya, Zanzibar and Tanzania "by force" is ridiculous. By contrast most of Spain and Portugal was occupied for hundreds of years and there was hardly a mass conversion there. As with China, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Phillipines and Bangladesh, the spread through peaceful trade and dialogue is the most likely explanation.

The problem here is that some people just can't accept reality because the sense of rage and victimhood instilled in them (by mostly Western, or West-worshipping sources) is designed to perpetuate continual division and self-hatred in the region. This combined with a need to blame someone else for their problems has made these people completely delusional.

We can't accept their nominal excuses that they are simply "concerned" about bloodshed and violence against Iranians 1400 years ago because they are never concerned about other historical events where Iranians have suffered. Alexander the Great, Ganges Khan, Taimur Lang, Turks, Afghans, Brits and Russians have all defeated and occupied Iran at some point. Many of these invasions were much more violent and bloody. However these incidents don't seem to matter. Mongols alone nearly destroyed all of Iran, burning entire cities and libraries and Iran suffered genocidal massacres. The Mongol invasion is discussed today in neutral terms, even positive terms as a historical event subject to academic discussions. The Arab invasions, on the other hand are treated like they happened last week! All historical perspective and dispassionate objectivity goes out the window. Instead an ugly and at-times-racist attitude is angrily applied to the situation, overwhelming all common sense and scientific facts.

These people spend 95% of their energy demonizing Arabs and Islam and trying to blame everything on what happened 1400 years ago in Iran, all in the name of righteously "correcting" some kind of "historical injustice" to Iranians. They don't seem too bothered by the much-more-bloody historical events before and after which have caused much suffering to Iranians.

Where's the outrage for Mongols destroying much of Iran, including entire towns in the land of Attar and Ferdowsi? Where's the outrage for Russian occupation of half of Iran and forcible taking of Iranian territory only 200 years ago? It's not there because it's all fake!

Iranians themselves often engaged in just-as-cruel wars and occupations of other countries. Only a few short years before the rise of Islam, the Sassanids controlled almost all Arab lands and subjected their populations to taxes and allegiance. Iranians themselves ended a great and ancient civilizations by basically killing the last Pharaos in Egypt, basically subjecting that proud land to 2000 years of foreign rule. Why does that never enter the discussion? Don't these other people matter?

Of course they don't! The entire position is not only self-centered and hypocritical but also disingenuous.

It's not about the violence, or the suffering, or the occupation. That's just the excuse to hide the underlying bigotry. Unable to accept the reality that Iranians converted to Islam, much the same way as anybody else has converted to any other religion, these people have to construct fantasies and rewrite history in an attempt to give themselves license for bigoted, racist and islamophobic hate speech.

Arab defeat and occupation of Iran was nothing specially more bloody or cruel than all the other occupations before and after. In fact, in many respects, it was more benevolent and tolerant than the others.

This is besides the point, however, the explanation of "Islam by the sword" has been debunked by most objective scholars.

Even if we discard all the evidence and pretend somehow it is true, it would be a great insult to Iranians. Whoever really believes it must not have any respect for his/her own ancestors.

We know for a fact that millions of Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians did not convert to Islam because their population was still practicing their older faiths into the 20th century. These are populations that were also under Arab control. I'm talking about Lavantine Christians, Spanish Catholics, the Armenians, Georgians, Ethiopians, Copts in Egypt and Sudan, Hindus in present day Pakistan and Afghanistan, Zoroastrians in Iran, as well as Jews in Iran and all over the Arab world.

Are we supposed to think that these populations were more brave and cared about their religion more than Iranians did? Did their faith mean more to them? Was their morality at a higher level than the majority of Iranians who did convert? I thought "spread by the sword" means, you have to convert or die, so why do we have so many Arab Christians, Jews, Armenians and Copts? Where's the evidence that these populations even suffered more than Iranians who after all DID convert?

The truth is you can't really convert any sizable population by force. At best you would need 3 Arab soliders for every "convertee" to watch him for the rest of his life, just in case he's really acting and just going through the motions. The entire population of Arabia was only a tiny fraction of the Persian empire. It's just not possible.

And what stopped an anti-Islamic revivalism immediately after Arab rule ended? Why didn't everybody convert back to Zoroastrianism?

Mass conversion by force is not unheard of. Of course it is possible and it has been done in history, but only by forcibly seperating children from their parents, keeping them seperate and raising them with new culture and values. This was done to native Americans and native Australians, enslaved Africans in the Western-controlled world, as well as to some extent enslaved Slavic Europeans in the Ottoman empire, itself resembling an older Greek system of forced assymilation. This, however certainly did not, and could not have happened to Sassanid Iran.

I've told the usual suspects on that blog and other people these facts many times. But what we must realize that most of these people don't care about facts. They don't want to listen to reason and evidence. They are consiously or sub-consiously looking for an excuse to express self-righteous anger and hostility toward people they want to scapegoat for Iran's problems. It gives them a satisfying simplified explanation and a target to channel their anger, all while removing all responsibility from themselves.

Here's a good explanation on the subject from a respected scholar:

Some other prominant scholars on the subject.

De Lacy O'Leary wrote:
"History makes it clear however, that the legend of fanatical Muslims sweeping through the world and forcing Islam at the point of the sword upon conquered races is one of the most fantastically absurd myths that historians have ever repeated." --De Lacy O'Leary, ISLAM AT THE CROSSROADS, London, 1923, p. 8.

Karin Armstrong:

With disturbing regularity, this medieval conviction surfaces every time there is trouble in the Middle East. Yet until the 20th century, Islam was a far more tolerant and peaceful faith than Christianity. The Qur'an strictly forbids any coercion in religion and regards all rightly guided religion as coming from God; and despite the western belief to the contrary, Muslims did not impose their faith by the sword.

The early conquests in Persia and Byzantium after the Prophet's death were inspired by political rather than religious aspirations. Until the middle of the eighth century, Jews and Christians in the Muslim empire were actively discouraged from conversion to Islam, as, according to Qur'anic teaching, they had received authentic revelations of their own. The extremism and intolerance that have surfaced in the Muslim world in our own day are a response to intractable political problems - oil, Palestine, the occupation of Muslim lands, the prevelance of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, and the west's perceived "double standards" - and not to an ingrained religious imperative.

source: //www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/sep/18/religion.catholicism

Even the neo-con sage and history professor Bernard Lewis from his new 2008 book:

"The fanatical warrior offering his victims the choice of the Koran or the sword is not only untrue, it is impossible."
//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Lewis#Primer_...

"Generally speaking, Muslim tolerance of unbelievers was far better than anything available in Christendom, until the rise of secularism in the 17th century."

Opinion of Mahatma Gandhi on the matter:

"I become more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet, the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers and his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle." -- Young India, 1924
//www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/65279.Mahat...

See also Le Gall and McDonough.

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more from Q
Nur-i-Azal

You are funny

by Nur-i-Azal on

And completely out on a very long lunch break, dude. If you take,

 

Since Qur'an is scripture the understanding is that to denote the notion of love in any erotic denotation is conceptually as well as linguistically and grammatically inappropriate.

 

as a vindication of your position, then I submit you are in serious need of deep psychological counselling because  your cognitive dissonance and utter confusion runs soul deep when it is blatantly doing no such thing. But, hey, it is understandable that you would feel that way since that is what happens during a lifetime of cult brainwashing by your Bahai organization when up is made to be down and down up, wrong right and right wrong, and especially when your leaders like Douglas Martin tell you that "freedom of conscience is a dangerous delusion of Christianity" and not part of the Bahai teachings.

 

  magnum opus and not opus magnum

 

Stop pontificating about a language you know even less about than Arabic which you know virtually nothing about. Both are correct Latin usage. That said, I am now convinced more than ever that Iran and the whole Iranian experience without or without the mullahs is absolutely doomed with people like this hooshie of which there seems to be an abundance these days! Good Lord Almighty, help us!

Allahu Ajmal (the response to Allahu Abha)!


hooshie

Never mind about eshgh Q. Just show the source!!!

by hooshie on

I don't expect you to involve yourself in subjects which are too big for you to comprehend. All I ask you is this: show if any of your so called sources have denied the ghazavat. If you don't understand its meaning ask Azali (Nur to you). Perhaps then you know why you are such a big laugh on this site.


hooshie

Thanks Azali . You vindicated me.

by hooshie on

Thanks pal. You unwittingly vindicated me

Since Qur'an is scripture the understanding is that to denote the
notion of love in any erotic denotation is conceptually as well as
linguistically and grammatically inappropriate.

 

There are many ways that one can admit defeat. You choose the coy one. In your latest babble while admitting that the main type of love used in sufi poetry is eshgh , which btw you confuse it with eros (lust), there is no trace of it in Quran - only its equivalents or interchangeable ones! You repeatedly failed to show any trace of eshgh in Quran and even blamed me for not specifying it properly in my challenge (another lame excuse). Long before Mirza Yahya tried and failed to be accepted as the legitimate successor to Bab the issue was debated and it is universally accepted that there is not a single mention of eshgh in Quran and there is a big reason for it - stop this babble about grammar and lexicon - poor Mirza Yahya - he didn't deserve such poor con artists as his followers).

Your beef with me is why before you raised this issue, I did it. Well, sorry pal but your big issue is to prove Mirza Yahya was he who claimed he was. Leave the question of eshgh to those who are arifs and not self righteous zahids like you (that is of course if you know the difference between arif and sufi - or are prepared to admit it - lol). 

By the way I now know why you see everything upside down: the coomonly accepted form is magnum opus and not opus magnum (your latin needs some polishing too - more lol).

Now keep barking.

Allaho Abha


Q

Nur jan,

by Q on

you can add "sense of Historical victimhood" and "obsession with cultural purity" to that list. I think you'd be hard pressed to find any totalitarian ideology without those elements.

Jamshid: First, I did answer. I just didn't make it easy for you to label me based on the answer, which was the "point" so your frustration is understood.

I'm sorry the world is not that simple.


Nur-i-Azal

Jamshid

by Nur-i-Azal on

I suggest you read my sentence again and also get yourself a copy of Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism and Karl Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia.

Also, this isn't just about opposing views. Totalitarian minds, whether right, left, center or sideways, all skew, whitewash and otherwise re-Imagine history in some form. You will note that I have specifically criticized Baha'is right here on Iranian.Com on precisely this very point. Islamists and Khomeinists have done this as well (and continue to), and I have been merciless on them in their cases. But many contemporary Iranian nationalists in their anti-Arab ideology are guilty of exactly the same thing as well. This is what I am pointing out. Now that doesn't mean I am calling you personally a fascist or Nazi. What it means  is that this tendency to romanticize one aspect of history then to white-wash or skew history in its other aspects to your own favor, is indeed a totalitarian hallmark.

For example, I have pointed out that to call Salman Farsi a traitor to Iran is a total historical anachronism, and when contextualized properly it makes not one iota of sense. But this is a refrain that much of the anti-Arab Iranian nationalist discourse continually repeats. 

 


jamshid

Nur-i-Azal

by jamshid on

"Karl Mannheim and a a whole  host of 20th century social scientists have pointed out that this is one of the hallmarks of totalitarian thinking whether of the right or the left."

It is you who is labeling an opposing view as "totalitarian" or other things. This makes you and your cohorts the "totalitarian". You have no tolerance to hear an opposing view. When in power, you crush it with sword. When not in power (as in this stie), you resort to labeling or similar.

You are fighting a losing battle. You cannot silence opposing views forever. History is the proof.


jamshid

Good job Q

by jamshid on

Good job dodging the question. The "fantasy" question was not meant for an answer that would entertain or amuze me; it was meant to make a point.


Nur-i-Azal

Tribute v Jizya

by Nur-i-Azal on

For those who complain about the Jizya (religious poll taxes) levied on the dhimmi (non-Muslims) in medieval Islamicate civilization, could someone please explain to me what the difference was to this system and the system where potentates regularly sent out their armed tax collectors to collect annual tribute for the ruling sovereign, foreign or domestic?

Q

Hooshie,

by Q on

you are totally a waste of time.

I can't add anything to what others have told you already regarding your "eshgh" discussion.

You also exclaimed (!!) on my sources, trying to say they are not objective, but I noticed you were silent on any details. I take it you just didn't know what you were talking about, which is entirely consistent with the rest of your behavior.


Q

on Taxes

by Q on

MM

The fact that taxes were lower under Arabs is a historical fact. Whether or not it makes sense to you, doesn't change the fact.

But even so, there was still a benefit to paying even lower taxes or no taxes by becoming Muslim. So there was obviously some incentive.


Q

Divaneh Khan(um)

by Q on

Q, you have not met Haleh challenge.

OK, I don't know why I have to repeat myself. I hope you are not just trying to waste time.

There was no challenge! Haleh simply listed a series of battles. I never disputed there were battles or conquests. Haleh is trying to say existence of battles means there was religious conversion but this is not logical or supported by evidence. As I pointed out most muslims in the world do not live on those conquored lands on the list. I hope you understand.

We all know that the residents of the defeated lands had to convert to Islam or die if they did not belong to a Saami religion i.e. Jewism, Christianity, and derivatives.

First of all, please prove whatever you say, right now it is only your opinion. It is not true thtat people had to "convert or die." This did not happen for 99% of the people. There might have been some isolated cases. Second, most people in the middle east were either Jewish or Christian. This included Christian Egypt and all of North Africa and Spain. Third, Iranian Zoroastrians were given the status of people of the book, even though the Koran had mentioned nothing about them! Even the Hindus who are not even monotheists were given this status.

So who exactly had to die for not converting?

There was also social and financial pressure on non-muslim to encourage conversion.

The question of this blog was not only Iran. It was forced conversion in Islam.

I began the blog by referring to the discussion in another blog. That was on forced conversion of iranians. In any case, that's what people seem to care about most.

And yes, the non Arab armies such as Mughuls and Turks had a big share in spread of Islam.

No, not really. First of all, this was not a factor for Iranians. So at the very least, we can say Iranians were not converted by the sword.

Second, nobody is seriously saying Moghuls or Turks invaded other countries with the intention of converting them to Islam. if you are saying that, give the evidence, not from a blog, but from scholarly sources. Second, if you are saying that, doesn't it mean those armies must have accepted Islam willingly themselves? Are you saying you can be "forced" into believing Islam when you really don't want to and then right after you will try to force someone else to believe the thing that you don't really believe? How is this possible?

Your link is not schlarly work and the person has a serious bias (I found a few racist statements just scanning it) even he does not assert conversion of the population by the sword.

The Qassim invasion got only as far as middle of Pakistan. But Islam got far beyond that. Most Muslims who are in Pakistan today are actually migrants from India in 1945. And India itself has more Muslims than Pakistan, same with Bangladesh. There are muslims in Sri Lanka too and then further East Asia. Most scholars agree that individual Sufis were mostly responsible for conversions in India, not force. Gandhi also agreed.

You are right, it is not all because of Islam, but it has lended itself as an effective tool to suppressors

I'm sure it has happened. Show me one religion or ideology that hasn't been abused in history.


Nur-i-Azal

Utopian thinking

by Nur-i-Azal on

Q: Don't knock me when I compliment you on your fantastic imagination. You and assorted others...have always had strong fantasies about history, often at the expense of common sense and reality. Hannah Arendt, Karl Mannheim and a a whole  host of 20th century social scientists have pointed out that this is one of the hallmarks of totalitarian thinking whether of the right or the left.

Q

Fantastic imagination

by Q on

Jamshid,

Don't knock me when I compliment you on your fantastic imagination. You and assorted others who are Arab-obsessed (it's fair to say) have always had strong fantasies about history, often at the expense of common sense and reality.

For the sake of the readers, I will indulge your high school level time-travel exercise.

If we are talking about doing this with "current views" as you put it, the only moral thing to do in this or any time-travel situation is to make sure you affect nothing. The entire world, including everyone you will ever have known might cease to exist because of your actions. I don't want to change anything about myself, my wife, kids, relatives.

Option 2 might 'guarantee' that Iran will not become a Muslim country, (by the way, this far from reality. Even if Arabs lost, all available evidence suggests Islam would have spread in Iran anyway), but does it "guarantee" there will be an Iran at all? What if Iran turned Mazdaki or Jewish or Christian or was taken over completely by Ottoman empire, or Russia? Would that be better in your opinion?

If Iran was not Muslim, there's a good chance Mongolian invaders would not have converted to Islam, and perhpas lacking that connection would have continued to kill and plunder all of Iran and depopulate it, so that Iran would resemble Chinese Turkestan today. Is that better?

Instead of wasting time with fantasies, and "what ifs" and trying to blame who was responsible for your problems 1500 years ago, isn't it better to focus on the present and the future? Even if you are somehow correct that only if Islam never existed, all would be peechy keen, do you really think you can undo what has happened? Is the best use of your time to constantly attack Islam and blame it's followers?

High School is over for a reason. Get out of your dream world and enter into the real one.


Nur-i-Azal

Anonymous8

by Nur-i-Azal on

You nailed it in 1. Like Greek, Arabic possesses several different words all meaning 'love'. I highlighted the words and then cited the verses of the Qur'an where they occur. Now Mr Hooshie jun seems to have gotten a huge bee in his bonnet because he was made to look pretty stupid over his challenge. But let me highlight the following as well: In a few lexicons and Arabic qamuses (like lisan al'arab) the word 'eshq' and and its masdar (root) 'ashaqa' denotes 'love' in its erotic form and as such is analogous to the Greek 'eros'. Wudd or w-dd and hubb or h-bb would be analogous to the Greek agape and philia - although not strictly. There is a whole tradition of grammarians and philosophers who have gone through this discussion endlessly centuries before Hooshie jun's most distant ancestor was even a spark in their daddy's eyes, and so there is a lot of material on this. Avicenna (Abu Ali Sina) devotes at least one chapter of his opus magnum the Book of Healing (k. al-shifa') to this very discussion.

Since Qur'an is scripture the understanding is that to denote the notion of love in any erotic denotation is conceptually as well as linguistically and grammatically inappropriate. Myself and a whole tradition of mystics beg to differ, and that is why whereas in the Qur'an the notion of love appears in the Greek forms of agape and philia as hubb and wudd, Arabic and Persian Sufi writings and poetry more than compensate for this when they are constantly characterizing the Divine/human interaction in totally erotic (both suggestive as well as often outright sexual) terms. But note this, the Andalusian master Ibn 'Arabi outright states in both his Meccan Revelations (futuhat al-makkiyya) as well as the Bezels of Wisdom (fusus al-hikam) that wudd, hubb, 'ishq as well as raghaba are totally interchangeable concepts.

 


hooshie

I said informed respondents, not another mini me

by hooshie on

 anonymous8

If you had any knowledge of Arabic, you would have known that no other word has the same meaning as eshgh, this why it is totally avoided in Quran.  Next?


Anonymous8

hooshie you are acting like a child

by Anonymous8 on

please, everyone can see how pointless your argument is. you admit there are other words for eshgh and those words are present. so what is your point? just to prove how childish you can be?

different languages use different terms for endearment. your argument and challenge is pointless and childish.


hooshie

Don't dodge the issue Azali

by hooshie on

Show me a single record of eshgh

(  عشق   )

in Quran or clear the space for an informed respondent. You are a sad loser

The Challenge remains standing. 


بت شکن

بابا ول کنین تو

بت شکن


بابا ول کنین تو رو حضرت عبّاسی. اینم که بدل شد به دعوای بین بابی و بهائی ؟ این طفلک "کیو" یه چیزی نوشت یه نون و آبی‌ در آره،خودشم دست برداشته رفته دنبال نون دونی بعدی.   حالا شما‌ها هنوز دارین بر سر خر ملا دعوا می‌کنین؟


Nur-i-Azal

So Hooshie jun

by Nur-i-Azal on

You are actually Baha'i, since only Baha'is call Subh-i-Azal Mirza Yahya. And that explains your adamant stupidity in this matter after I publicly wiped the floor with you and why naravad mikh-i-ahanin bar sang!

So the majority of the Iranian.Com dumbasses are actually Baha'is. Go figure... 


hooshie

Poor Mirza Yahya!

by hooshie on

Is this how you defend Mirza Yahya's legacy too - LOL? With followers like you the poor soul must have turned Bahai by now - more LOL.

Just show me one "eshsgh" Azali, and I'll let you off the hook. 

 

Boy, this is serious fun :)


Onlyiran

These arguments serve no purpose

by Onlyiran on

Whether Islam was spread by war or peaceful means is really irrelevant.  It was probably a combination of the two.  But what does it matter now?  It is literally ancient history.  Iranians have shaped Islam in their own vision, and it is now an inseparable part of our rich culture. All religions have good and bad aspects, and they can all be used to wage war or peace depending on who is in charge of "interpreting" the religion at any given time.  The goal for everyone, at a personal level, is to focus on using the positive aspects of whatever religion they believe in to better themselves and their community.

All of that being said, at this juncture in our history, we should stay away from these divisive arguments that will only serve IRI's purpose in its 30 year long divide and rule policy.  Our brothers and sisters in Iran are chanting "Allah'o' Akbar" when they are attacked by Basijis.  We should not insult their courage by getting into these silly arguments.  Instead, we should focus on ways to unite in our struggle against dictatorship in Iran and find ways to achieve our goal of bringing about a secular democracy to our homeland.  Until that is done, everything else, including who should be blamed for a war that happened 1400 years ago can just wait!  


Nur-i-Azal

Hooshie jun

by Nur-i-Azal on

Let it go. The challenge was met and you lost. Be a man and deal with it instead of hanging on.


hooshie

Azali - Challenge Remains Un-met

by hooshie on

Nothing is lost - except your face - :o))

next? 

 

 

 

 


Nur-i-Azal

Hooshie jun

by Nur-i-Azal on

Ghorboonet dadash! Vell kon, baba. You have lost the argument and now are grasping at straws all the way.


hooshie

A word from Terry Culhane

by hooshie on

 

Now I know what is wrong with you Nima Wahid Hazini/Azal! (endearingly known as Azali). Here is what your good old friend, Terry, wrote about you (thanks to Faryam's expose):

"It is my prayer and hope that Nima will some day engage the heart surrender and know the joy as well face the fear that comes with such surrender. It will require he let go of his anger, hatred, and bitterness and let go of the desire , so common in children, of wanting the entire world to be their personal "oyster". If and when that day comes we will once again be friends. In the meantime I can only watch and pray from a distance knowing full well that such things are impervious to reason or evidence."

The last sentence sums it up.:
"... impervious to reason or evidence."

After searching up and down and copying and pasting tens of verses, you still have failed to come up with single record of the word, eshq, being cited in Quran.

Defeat is hard Azali, but, hey, at least you learned something. 

The challenge remains standing.  


faryarm

A rare instance of agreement.

by faryarm on

A rare instance agreement, If I may interject.

Nima Hazini /Wahid Azal's  assertion about the reason for demise of the Sassanid empire is historically correct.

Faryar 


Nur-i-Azal

Jamshid

by Nur-i-Azal on

Considering the Sassanids weakness, and with time and like in many
other countries, these movements had a good chance to create reforms.
And they did that very thing after the collapse of the Sassanian empire.

But the Arab invasion not only crushed the Sassanids, but it also
crushed any hope of change from within.

Bro, I think you need to go back to the books here.  Let me recommend volumes 1 & 2 of Marshall Hodgson's THE VENTURE OF ISLAM. The change from within actually came pretty fast, within less than a century after Ghadisiya in fact. The whole Shu'abiya movement that finally helped displace and overthrew the Ummayads and brought the Abbasids to power, was precisely this change from within politically because as soon as the Abbasids came to power it was Persian dynasties who became the effective political force  and power brokers throughout the Abbasid state. Furthemore, on the religious horizons, the entire edifice of both Sufism and Shi'ism was formulated predominantly by Iranians. The Manichaeans, Mazdakities, Christians and various Gnostics were pretty brutally suppressed by the Sassanians, but arguably after the Arab conquest they reconstituted themselves within the early Islamicate period precisely under the guise of these movements within Islam. And as far as I am concerned, the entire history of Islam from this earliest stage to now is pretty much a footnote to Iranians. In other words, without Iranians, Islamicate civilization would not exist.
Iran's army was worn out due to countless years of useless war with the
Romans. The economy in those days was so bad that most soldiers were
left unpaid. In-fighting among general were common.
  And add to that the general oppressive nature of the Sassanian state itself, and the fact that the Sassanian generals, army and minorities deserted the cause at the first opportunity en masse,  and things begin to make a lot more sense. When the Muslims where preaching equality under the Spirit and a generally egalitarian message, even if propaganda, of course the malcontents thoughout the Sassanian state (within it and without it) would defect and join them. Why wouldn't they, when deep down they hated the Sassanians and everything they represented?

His loyalties layed with the Arab invaders. Period. He was a traitor in
as much the same way that an Iranian would be a traitor today, if he
joined Iraq or Turkey or the US attacking the "corrupt" IRI with the
ultimate goals of subjugating the Iranian nation. 

Bro, you are projecting a notion of nationalism, predicated on a  largely modern concept of the nation-state, ethnicity and national identity, that did not even exist at that time. As such your label of "traitor" upon Salman Farsi is a massive historical anachronism and misnomer that has no valid historical application given the operative historical contexts and subtexts. Let's pose the question this way: if we took a time machine and went to AD 570/620 and interviewed the various Manichaean, Mazdaki, Christian, Gnostic, Buddhist, Jewish and even some non-Sassanian/non-Mobadi Zoroastrian sects  (i.e. Zurvanites etc) as to what national identity they identified themselves as, how do you think they would respond? The question wouldn't even make any sense to them! When no critical/developed concept of national identity separate from the Sovereignty of a given king or potentate even exists; when the national identity is literally bound to the person of such king/emperor himself rather than to the land or its people; you can call Salman Farsi a traitor (or, more accurately, dissident) to the Sassanians. But from the point of view of proper historical contextualization, it is absolutely false to then validly call him a traitor to Iran. Do you see the configurations of this argument now? 


Nur-i-Azal

Hooshie jun are you Monty Python's BLACK KNIGHT?

by Nur-i-Azal on

The putting up has been done, and then some. You seem to be so attached to the result, and the fact that you were made to look idiotic, that you can't seem to let it go. Bro, let it go! Your challenge was met and you have lost. Simple as that. Stop acting like the Black Knight character from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

Anonymous8

age old debate

by Anonymous8 on

thanks for the video. i think he's right on the money. i  get the other point of view. we did suffer the invasion, occupation. historical grudges are hard to get past.

Influence of sufism in spread of islam is very big. sufis travelled to every corner of the world and carried the message of islam.


vildemose

The Fear of the sword is

by vildemose on

The sheer Fear of the proverbial sword is enough to subjugatge a whole nation as we've witnessed time and again in the Islamic Republic of Rapists.

Google Islamic Imperialism or Islamic conquest or Fall of Byzantine empire.

At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. I sometime think that political Islam starting a new phase of a very old war.