What you do not know about Iran - Amazon Web Services



What (I bet) You Do Not Know About Iran

Dr. Law Chi Lim

Introduction

Let’s play a mind game. Think of the word “Iran” and name the first five things that come into your mind. It is a pretty safe bet at least some of the following visual images will come into your mind: Arabs , women in black dress, fist-waving crowd in demonstration, gun-toting soldiers, war in Iraq…………...

However, Iran may not be exactly like this. For one thing, Iranians consider themselves Persians and they dislike being lumped together with the Arabs, and their women are not obliged to be in black all the time. And guns? Well, unless you go near a military installation, the only guns you will see when you go to Iran are the toy-guns in the shops. And the war in Iraq? Well , just in case you have not noticed, Iran spells with an n at the end, not a q.

A Brief History of Persia/Iran

To understand a place and its people, one must have some ideas about their history. This is particularly important because Iran is a place with a long history.

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Iranians consider themselves Persians and they do it with pride. While hunter-gatherers did live in what is now modern day Iran more than 5000 years ago, the Indo-European Aryan tribes from whom the Persians have descended only began to arrive from the north from around 12th century BC onwards. By the 6th century BC, the Persians had established the greatest Empire the world had ever known until then. In fact, the Archaemenid Empire (often known as the First Persian Empire, 550-330 BC), at its height, stretched from the Indus River in the East to Greece in the west and included Northern Africa (modern day Egypt and Libya). At around that time Confucius ( 551-479 B C) in ancient China was busy shuttling between the various small kingdoms in China and Socrates ( 479-399 BC) was deeply engaged in philosophizing in the city-state of Athens in Greece. It was during the Archaemenid period that the spectacular Persepolis was built as a showcase of the grandeur of the empire to all its subjects. Even today, the average tourist wandering around the ruins can easily imagine that numerous ingenious architects, engineers, and artists must have been at work to produce such an awe-inspiring monument to foreign subjects coming to pay their tributes or respects to the Archaemenid kings. It is also noteworthy that the famous “silk-road” that joined the East with the West began to be established at the time of the Archaemnid Empire.

The invasion by Alexander-the-Great (naturally, he was often called Alexander-the-Not-So-Great by some in Iran), the ancient Greek king from Macedonia, in 330BC put an end to all these. For the next 2000 years, Persia was ruled by a succession of local Persian dynasties interspersing with foreign invaders----- the Arabs in the 7th century A D, the Turks in the 10th century A D, and the Mongols in the 15th century A D. Perhaps the most significant foreign invasion was the one in 645 AD by the Arabs from the south. While the Arabs ruled Persia for the following 300 years, the former adopted the architecture, arts and administrative practices of the latter and the so called Arab culture ( as any modern-day Iranian will proudly tell you ) that has spread across Europe during the zenith of the power of Muslims were in fact Persian in origin. Readers of this column may be interested to note that the main popular medical textbook, Canon of Medicine, used throughout medieval Europe was written by the Persian physician and philosopher Ibn Sina ( 980-1037) .

The Arabs have also forever changed much of the culture in Persia. Thus, whereas Zoroastrianism was formerly a state religion, it practically disappeared from Iran and was replaced by Islam. This has also led to the rather ambivalent attitude of many Iranians towards the Arabs----- a natural resentment of foreign invaders and yet they owe the introduction of Islam to these very invaders.

Islam in Iran

The term Shiite Muslims should be familiar to anyone who watches the news about the war in Iraq in recent years. It seems that the Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims are always at each other’s throat. Well, indeed they have been, for over 1300 years.

What happened was that after the death of the Prophet Mohammed in 632 A D, there was a dispute as to who should succeed him. The majority decided that his father-in-law should become head of the Muslim community and he was called Caliph( meaning successor or representative) , while others backed another man called Ali who was Mohammed’s son-in-law and cousin. Ali was passed over three times until the year 656 when he finally became the fourth Caliph. He was, however, assassinated five years later and the Muslim world was divided into two factions: the Sunnis (followers of the new Caliph) and the Shiite (followers of Ali). Subsequently Ali’s second son Hossein was also killed in battle with the Caliph’s troops in the year 680 and the split became ever more bitter and permanent. Sunnism gradually became the dominant branch and most (overt 80%) of the world’s Muslims nowadays are Sunni. However, in Iran, Shiite Islam has been the official religion since the Safavid Dynasty (the so called Third Persian Empire, 1501-1732 A D) and currently over 90% of the Muslims there belong to this sect. Even in Iraq, 66 % of the population are Shiite Muslims.

Shiism differs from Sunnism in that the former recognizes a succession of 12 holy persons they called “imams” (meaning leaders or saints) who were the successive descendants of the Prophet Mohammed. The first imam was Ali mentioned above and the last imam was believed to have disappeared into a cave under a mosque in the year 874. He has since been known as the Hidden Imam and Shiite followers believe in his due return in some distant future when he would, with the prophet Jesus by his side, guide the world to peace and righteousness. In the meantime, Shiite Muslims are to be guided by the clergy who will act as the representative of the Hidden Imam until his return. Ayatollah Khomeini, the cleric leader of the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, was conferred the honorary title of imam after his death.

According to the people we met in Iran, Shiism is a more moderate form of Islam in that Shiites allow the Quran (the holy book of Islam) and Islamic laws to be continuously interpreted in accordance with the changing world. Thus, followers are only required to pray three times a day in contrast to the standard five times a day prayers. In fact, very few people in Iran go regularly to pray in the mosques. According to our tour guide in Iran, people usually just pray at home. During our time in Iran, we only very occasionally saw people dropping down to pray when there was a call from the mosque tower to remind people to pray. In fact, in the schools in Iran, there are no official prayer times and children are not obliged to pray at designated times. This also explains why our coach tour was never interrupted by having to wait for the driver to finish his prayer.

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