From: farhad@cwi.nl (Farhad Arbab)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.iranian
Subject: Re: About arab invasion of Bilad Faris...
Date: 26 Aug 92 17:35:18 GMT
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam

I was not going to enter this discussion at all, but since Mr.
Minhas in a more recent posting asks people to stick to facts and
avoid racial prejudice, (and because I have a few minutes on my
hand :-) I decided to put in my two-cents (worth about 1.26 US
cents these days ;-).

In article <1992Aug25.051504.9576@ucunix.san.uc.edu>, minhaszt@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Zafar T Minhas) writes:
|> In article <1992Aug24.204256.13392@EE.Stanford.EDU> mack@isl.Stanford.EDU (mack) writes:
|> >hermi@shape.mps.ohio-state.edu (Lotfi Hermi) writes:
|> >
|> >>Here is a true story about the Arab opening (Fath) (Not invasion) of
|> >>Faris.
|> >
|> >    [poorly written story deleted]
|> >
|> >Two questions:
|> >
|> >1. By the same token, US opened Panama and [former] Soviet Union
|> >   opened Afghanistan, right?
|> >
|> >2. Where is Faris?
|> >
|> >    --mack
|> >
|> >--
|> 
|> I see that good ol' mack has misunderstood what lotfi was saying. for one 
|> thing, the story that lotfi wrote which you deleted, was true. the persian
|> leadership did treat the poor people like crap, worse than slaves of a few

Let's not be blinded by nationalistic propaganda that (judging
from what I infer the age group of Iranian SCI readers must be)
was ever-present in the prevalent value-system of the society as
we were growing up.  I wouldn't use the terms "crap" and "worse
than slaves," but the Iranian system at the time was in a pretty
bad shape.  The rosy picture of the tranquil rule of a just
King-of-the-Kings over a content and prosperous population is far
from the truth.  (Even the "dAd" of "Anooshirvan-e-dAdgar" has
been questioned by some historians, by the way.)

The clergy had a lot to do with the corruption of the system and
disinfranchising of the populace.  They had the monopoly over
many things and were in a good position to subtly manipulate
kings and essentially rule through them with immunity.
Remember that even literacy was considered almost a divine
privilege reserved primarily for the clergy and the nobles.
(If memory serves, there were even kings who were taught only how
to read, but not how to write.  Yes, reading and writing were
different arts.)

|> hundred years ago in this wonderful country. and true the arabs did come to
|> liberate those people living under the wonderful sassani leadership, they

Bad as it was, the Iranians certainly did not need any foreign
force to "liberate" them.  They, as any other nation, could have
managed just fine, and the Arabs would probably not have been on
the top of their list for them to invite into their country to
change their system.  The ideology of Islam was like fresh air
for a good deal of the oppressed masses in Iran, and they
welcomed it and its promises.  But the Arabs had nothing to do
with that.

|> people were thankful for it. read some unbiased history. in the area of
|> forcing religion down the throat of iran, islam took 200 hundred years to gain
|> only an absolute majority. if islam was spread by telling people to take islam
|> or die, it would have spread much faster. 

The cliche of the sword-swinging Arab invading the lands of the
infidels to spread Islam, and its twin cliche of Islam being
forced on the population of the conquered lands by the sword, are
both very distorted pictures of historic facts.  It is amusing
that these cliches are so popular among many different
groups on all sides.  I am confident that such incidents happened
and were not even rare.  But they were *not* the norm at all.
Islam had already reached certain parts of eastern Iran almost
100 years before any Arab set foot in those territories.
Not only in Iran, but throughout the Islamic Empire, "accept
Islam or the sword" generally had a third option which people
often fail to remember: a special tax on the non-Moslems.

The Iranians eventually embraced Islam, but never asked for, nor
accepted the Arabs, their rule, and their oppression.  These are
very separate issues.  As soon as it became clear what Islamic
government was all about, Iranians rejected it as anti-Islamic
and were instrumental (to be conservative) in the formation of
the movement that became known as Shi'ism.

As for the Arabs and their intentions in "opening" of the infidel
lands, I am afraid what is popular belief is just as big of a
misrepresentation.  You see, the cliche of the Arab swinging his
sword for Islam does not do justice to Arabs either.  The
assumption that the spread of Islam was the issue for the Arabs
quickly leads to contradictions.  If Arabs
as a whole were so fanatic about Islam as an ideology that they put their
lives on the line and resorted to use the sword to spread it,
then why would they stop and not convert (or obliterate) all of
the population of the conquered lands -- fanatics are like that
you know.  On the other hand, if they were intellectually
competent enough to understand the real teachings of Islam, then
they would have realized that their ideology can spread, perhaps
even more quickly, without the sword.  So why did they resort to
the sword, conquered the lands of the infidels, but stopped at
setting up their system of government and left the issue of Islam
for the people?

The above argument is not a proof of anything, just a trigger to
encourage people to jump-start their rational thinking and do not
accept cliches on face value.  There is plenty in the history to
show that Arab conquests and spread of Islam were separate
phenomena that happened to overlap each other.  Of course, it is
highly improbable that the former could have been possible
without the latter.

The fact is that the Arabs were intellectually much more
sophisticated than "fanatics" and had much less holy intentions
than spreading the word of God when they began their conquest.
Oh, there was no shortage of fanatics among the Arabs, to be
sure, but the decision to embark on such conquests were intelligent,
risky, and in retrospect, quite successful, moves made for
economic and political reasons.  Spreading Islam was
a good pretext, to be sure, but Islam was much more than that.
In Islam, the Arabs found a powerful tool to amass fighting
forces, destabilize their enemies, and when victorious, stabilize
their own rule over the conquered nations and subjugate them.
This was Arab Imperialism and beginning with the first Khalifs,
they realized the potential of their assets and played their
winning hand well.

Among others, Iranians suffered long and hard under the
oppression of the Arab Imperialism.  No matter what one thinks of
Islam, this has nothing to do with Islam.  The Iranian psyche
bears an ugly scars from this experience to this day, which often
shows itself in the form of unjustifiable attitudes towards
anything associated with the Arabs, irrationality, and sometimes
downright racism.  Unfortunately, it seems like the separation of
Arab Imperialism from Islam is sometimes less clear for many
contemporary Iranians than for those Iranians who actually
experienced the oppression of the Arab imperialism ages ago.

The Arabs of today have nothing to do with any of this.  Although
this statement appears to be ridiculously self evident, you don't
have to look long and hard to find Iranians (Moslem and
non-Moslem) and Arabs whose behavior denies its truism.

|> 
|> you are comparing the us formation of panama and the soviet "opening" of
|> afghanistan to the arab opening of the land referred to as balad-e-faris.
|> your lack of historical knowledge or your racial prejudice would lead you to 
|> make such a statement. i don't know which is worse. anyways it doesn't matter 
|> to me. i just hope you read up on it.
|> 
|> oh in another followup, farhad talks about paris. actually, paris, pars, erin,
|> iran, all have a direct link. the same huns that went into northern europe were
|> the aryans of iran and even india, the ones that set up the caste system and
|> messed up the poor peoples lives there as well

Wait, wait, wait.  Yes, there were Aryans roaming around Europe
including in the area which is today's Hungary.  They may also have
been the glue linking Paris, Persia, and Ireland, as you seem to
suggest.  But they were not the same as the Huns, as you state.  The
Huns came from the far east to what is today's Hungary quite some time
later.  Like their cousins, the Mongols, the Tartars, and the Turks,
they were nomadic tribes that attacked and devistated the west.
Remember Attila the Hun ("Attila the blood drinker" in Persian) who in
the 5th century, pretty much did to the parts of the Europe that he
visited what Genghis Khan did in 12-13th century to, e.g., Iran?  The
Huns pretty much wiped out the Aryans from Hungary.  Later on, some
other cousins of the Huns, the Magyars came to the same area and
settled there.  Although some of the heritage of the Huns is still
visible in Hungary, I am told the Persian name for the country
(MajArestAn) is a more accurate name for the composition of today's
"Hungary," which is derived from "Hun" and "Magyar."

Out of all of the peoples of Europe, you happened to choose the
only ones that definitely have nothing to do with the Aryans!
Hungarian is not even an Indo-European language (it is related
to Turkish and Finnish).

|> 
|> sincerely
|> 
|> zafar


(By the way, note that I am a different Farhad than the one
mentioned above.)

Farhad Arbab
Interactive Systems
Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science
Kruislaan 413, 1098 SJ Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Email: farhad@cwi.nl                    Fax:   +31 20 592-4199
Phone: +31 20 592-4056                  Telex: 12571 mactr nl