Over here Ralph Peters does away with Islam and puts the decal on the multiple faces of the struggles within the struggle of cultural religions of jahiliac dimension.
In essence he relegates Shiism to a heretic zoroastered version of Islam, which btw actually is a product of the persian hillbillies...No doubt the Achaemenids spinning in the graves somewhere have an alternate view.
1) I have a feeling that's a hard sell to many Shia
2) It's STILL the jooz fault anyway
Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie
No doubt some folks like Crassus, Caesar, Callimachus, Miltiades, Leonidas, Themistocles, and Pausanias might have a different view of the historic and cultural dimension of dealing with the Persians.
Peters' article is worth a read but he is as far off the rails as the excellent Stephen Schwartz (who not so bizarrely, once you know his personal history, waxes gentle over the guy who gently came back to persia in 1979) with regard to Shia Islam.
Is there a cultural gap between the Arabs and the Persians, and the Mesopotamians? Sure.
But it doesn't explain all history there, Ali, or Husayn. Or why a racist, genocidal clearly uncontrollable antisemitism has infected the descendants of a man who FREED the jews from the first disapora, and who now govern a nascent nuclear power, whose deterrability is at best, QUESTIONABLE
But here is where Peters in most wrong... his attempt to inoculate his own opinion from rejection..
Many will reflexively reject this interpretation of Shi'ism and Sunni Islam as two separate faiths with profoundly different inheritances. Blog Bedouins and "scholars" alike will feel threatened. That's part of our problem: We're often as close-minded as our enemies. The greatest power in history thinks small.
BIG MO WITH FRIES
ReplyDeleteOff topic, but this is unbelievable:
http://drakesdrumuk.blogspot.com/2007/02/murder-too-far-for-msm.html
Could it have been a grooming gone wrong?
http://drakesdrumuk.blogspot.com/2007/02/grooming.html
Infidel Blogger .. In case you didn't know it, Stephen Schwartz is actually a muslim.
ReplyDeleteSo, Ralphy would argue that Germany should not be attacked back in World War II because many Germans were opposed to the Nazis? When these good Germans did not resist the Nazis when they had the chance, they effectively doomed themselves to become cannon fodder. In case you haven't noticed, there is no time to cultivate the reformists or forment an effective armed rebellion in Iran because Iran's going nuclear SOON.
ReplyDeleteI would say the Persian civilization was re-primitivized by the ruthless barbarian horde streaming out of the Arabian peninsular. In that regard, Iran serves as a useful example of the fate that awaits effete western nations unwilling to climb down from their 21st century moral high horse to do a necessary 7th century deed.
I think, anon..most of us are very aware of Mr. Schwartz's choice.
ReplyDeleteSo?
It's a giant, SO WHAT.