From: farhad@cwi.nl (Farhad Arbab)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.iranian
Subject: Food for thought
Date: 19 Aug 92 22:04:36 GMT
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam

I have received a number of complementary messages for my earlier
postings to SCI, encouraging me to contribute more.  In a moment of
weakness, my vanity took the better of me and I decided to use the
opportunity to reply to a followup of one of my earlier messages, to
make another contribution.  The posting of Mr. Saleh would usually not
seduce me to punish him (:-) with such a long followup by itself, and I
certainly would not have done so in public, had he not reacted to my
message in public!

I apologize for its length to all, and to Mr. Saleh for using his
message as an opportunity to make a contribution.  Much of what I have
to say here is in fact in reaction to a good deal of postings by many
other people that I have seen in the last three years or so on SCI, not
just to Mr.  Saleh.  My real points are even more general, and I offer
them as food for thought for everyone.  To reach a more diverse
audience, I also changed the subject line of this message from "Re:
IRAQ and IRAN" to "Food for thought."  Mr. Saleh and those who
encouraged me to make more contributions to SCI (and shall remain
unidentified) share the blame with my own vanity for this posting.

Cheers,

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


In article <1992Aug19.035112.8846@news.clarkson.edu>, saleham@cauchy.mcs.clarkson.edu (Anwar M. Saleh) writes:
|> farhad@cwi.nl (Farhad Arbab) writes:
|> 
|> >
|> > Check it out, Kurds and most Turkish speaking people in Iran, as
|> > well as most other ethnic groups in Iran ARE Iranians.  Kurds
|> > and Persians are two of the major ethnic Iranian sub-groups.
|> >
|> > To clarify, by Iranian, I do not mean living in the geographic
|> > boundary of the country called Iran; I mean as a "people" or a
|> > race.
|> >
|> > Furthermore, most of the population of Turkey is not ethnic Turks
|> > (descendants of the nomadic tribes who came from the East) and most
|> > people who speak (very different dialects of) Arabic (e.g., in Egypt)
|> > are not ethnic Arabs (from Arabia).
|> >
|> 
|>   Yes, Arab does not mean a gene.

No one was talking about genes.  True Arabs were and are the Semitic
tribes that lived (and essentially, still do) in and around a certain
peninsula named after them.  They are a specific race of people with a
long history, traditions, and culture.  They have lived there since
prehistoric times, long before the Aryan settlers (about 4000 years
ago) and then the Aryan conquerers (about 3000 years ago) migrated down
south to Mesopotamia, north of India, and the Iranian plateau.  Like
any other ethnic group, they are entitled to recognition and respect
for their unique heritage, and their identity must not be lost in the
rush to identify all Arabic speaking and/or Moslem peoples as "Arabs."

|>                                   For me, the question of who is
|>   an Arab? is the same as Who is American?

That's OK as long as you define your own terminology and can
remain consistent, and can be sure that your audience also
interprets your statements as you intend.  There is a big
problem with the analogy you draw here: there are true Arabs,
whereas there are no true Americans (ethnically). 

"America" is still a new invention and there simply has not yet been
enough time for a distinct ethnic group to evolve to be
identified with this name.  The original inhabitants of this geographic
area were not called "Americans" and to date, rightfully so, preserve
their unique separate nationhoods.  Unfortunately, they are also often
excluded from recognition as bona fide members of the
heterogeneity called "Americans" in the common usage of the term.

The problem is then that you short-change the true Arabs, if you
are not very careful, by calling anyone who speaks Arabic an Arab.
In case of "Americans" since there are no true ethnic Americans,
there is no danger and the term is generally understood to refer
to the variety of ethnic groups who presently live in a certain
geographic area.

|>                                            similarly with who is
|>   Iranian?  

No!  There is another problem here.  The term "Iranian" has two
distinct meanings.  It primarily means the Aryan people, their
languages, culture, religion, customs, etc.  It also means the
citizens of what is today called Iran.  Iranian in the first
sense is by no means confined to the boundaries of the country
Iran.  Only a small fraction of the population of what is now
Iran is non-Iranian in the first sense.

|>             This is something we all should be proud of. The
|>   more you are mixed, the more you are human being. 

I think you have the order of your statements reversed, or else,
there is something missing before the first sentence above.  If
what you mean is what I understand of these statements, then

  (1) you are no longer dealing with facts, but rather, propose a
      theory and express an opinion (which I respect); and

  (2) you should perhaps express it differently, because as it is,
	  it is easy to mis-interpret your statements to sanction
	  bigotry and implicitly justify racism (neither of which I
	  believe is your intention).

The only things a human being can justifiably be proud of are her
accomplishments.  Feeling proud of the outcomes of accidents and
statistics is vanity and breeds bigotry.  Every one of us was born of a
pair of parents, in some geographic area, with specific physical
characteristics, and had our care and rearing entrusted with some
adults whose behavior and views affected our physical existence and who
often implicitly affected our views and patterns of behavior.  None of
us had any way to influence any of this.

Many people do not hesitate to
ridicule a person who feels proud of his physical attributes and
identify it as vanity.  And yet, most still sanction and even
promote the same feelings about other results of dumb luck, such
as one's clan, race, citizenship, and culture.  Like her beauty,
a person's accidental association with a group X may be
appreciated and even cherished, but it is nothing for her to be
proud of because she did not do anything to accomplish it.
What a person should feel proud of is her contributions to the
group X.  But this puts an onus on most happy-go-lucky people who
need to feel proud of something and find their citizenship or
culture an easy target; an onus most of them are unprepared to
fulfill: that they must first make some contribution.

Let us all appreciate our own cultures, understand or at least
tolerate that of the others, and confine our pride in this area to
our personal contributions that enrich, promote, and perpetuate
our cultures.  There is something vulgar about me feeling proud
of the contributions of Molavi, Hafez, Sa'di, Ferdowsi, Khayyam,
Kharazmi, etc., simply because I was born some 1000 years later
in the general vicinity of where they lived and speak the same
language, don't you think?

On the subject of "mixing" you may be proposing an interesting idea,
but be careful of the consequences of your statement.  I suspect you
don't really mean to imply that no member of the human race is a
complete human being because the races have not completely mixed yet.
I believe, and I would like to persuade others to recognize, that every
one of us is a full-fledged, complete, intelligent, beautiful,
precious, loving, caring, and perfect human being.  We don't always
behave that way, which is sad because it is contrary to our nature.
But this is only a malady inflicted upon us through hurt, and from
which we can recover.  No matter how "pure" or "mixed" our heritage,
each of us is a wonderfully unique individual who deserves appreciation
of everyone else.  We are very rare: there is exactly one of each of us
and that is all that there has ever been and that there will ever be.

|>                                                     People who
|>   never mixed with others (and claim to be pure) are RACISTS.

Your statement here is VERY ambiguous.  Racism has nothing to do with
race.  Sexism has nothing to do with sex.  Nationalism has nothing to
do with nationality.  All these "-isms" are hurtful traits of behavior
that exploit differences in arbitrarily selected attributes of
individuals for the soul purpose of subjugation and oppression of one
group by another.  There is nothing inherent in any nationality that
leads to or can justify nationalism.  There is nothing inherent in the
differences between the sexes that leads to or can justify sexism.
There is nothing inherent in the differences between the races that
leads to or can justify racism.  It is always the other way around:
every form of oppression always looks for differences that it can
exploit to perpetuate itself.  Every form of oppression is hurtful to
all of its victims:  not only the oppressed group who suffers the most,
but also those who play the role of its perpetrators are hurt by being
deprived of a part of their own humanity.

Such hurtful patterns of behavior have nothing to do with an
individual's gene pool.

If I interpret "people" and "mixing" in your above statement in a
slightly different way, I end up with a statement that may have
certain statistical validity:

	Statistically, people (individuals as well as nations) who
	come in contact and deal with a richer variety of other
	people, tend to behave more liberated from racism.

I don't really think this is what you meant, but my observation is in
agreement with this statement.  I think more contact is statistically
bound to result in more understanding and appreciation that in turn
cannot help but to erode the substrate of fear and insecurity which
feeds racism.

|>   In Modern Iran, Persians, Arabs, Turks and others are mixed.
|>   Something you should be proud of.

Well, first, it is mostly Persians and other Iranians (like Kurds,
Baluchis, Azaris, etc.) who have lived there and have mixed.  Second,
the mixing is far from complete, because you can still recognize
distinct physical and cultural characteristics in various ethnic
groups.  Third, genetic mixing with non-Iranians has not been as much
as you seem to like to believe, because their numbers have historically
been small compared to the Iranian population.  Fourth, true or false,
none of this is anything I or anyone else should feel proud of or
apologize for.  Was any one of us consulted on how our ancestors, or
any other group, genetically mixed or remained pure?

|> 
|>   The difference is in who is Persian? Persian means the ancient
|>   race.

I don't understand what you mean by the first sentence, above.
As for the second, no: Persians were and are a particular tribe
of Iranians.  They are still here as an ethnically identifiable
group.  They have an ancient heritage, but they are not ancient
history.  They constitute the majority of today's Iranian race, but
by far, they are not the only members of this race.

|> 
|>   Arabic culture was and is the melting pot of many ancient races.

I don't understand this sentence either.  Culture and race are very
different things and do not mix, except in statements such as above.
Perhaps you mean to say that Islamic culture was and is a melting pot
of many older cultures.  This is true.  As a result of this, the
Islamic culture flourished and became very rich.  Its symbiosis with
the cultures that contributed to it, yet managed to survive a complete
annihilation in the melting pot, enriched them tremendously.  This is
certainly true of the Persian and other Iranian cultures.

I don't know how much of a melting pot the Arabic culture has been.  As
for genetic mixing of the true Arabs, I am afraid you are very wrong.
As for genetic and cultural mixing of the Arabic speaking peoples, all
you need to do is to open your eyes and see the obvious genetic
differences among them; observe that aside from the classical Arabic of
Koran, the languages of the people on the streets throughout "the Arab
world" are often mutually un-intelligible; and that their customs and
cultures are at least as different as the cultures of Europe.  The
homogeneity that you attribute to the Arab world simply does not
exist.  It would have required an elaborate, continuous, and
intentional inter- and cross-continental mass migration of people for
some thousand years to materialize.  Even if this was or is desirable
(which is doubtful), it simply was impossible in terms of available
resources and historically, did not happen.

There is an unfortunate message implied by all this "mixing of the
genes" and "mixing of the cultures" ideas that you present.  To paint a
positive and tranquil picture of a group you may personally feel some
affinity to, you seem to ascribe a false homogeneity to the Arab
world.  You also seem to proclaim the way to eradicate racism is for
races to mix.  The sublime message of (existing or achievable)
tranquility through homogeneity is not only false, it is also a
dangerous lie perpetuated by none other than the very oppression it
appears to be against.  It says that to eradicate a certain form of
oppression, the differences that are used as its excuse must
disappear.  It implies that the oppression is the natural consequence
of those differences, and is therefore justified.  This is dangerous
because it diverts attention from the oppression to the excuses used
to perpetuate it.

What is so scary about our differences as individuals and as groups?
Why is homogeneity desirable (if it is), even if possible?  (There is
plenty in anthropology, linguistics, behavioral sciences, and history
to suggest that it is not even possible, but that is a different
subject.)  It is NOT our differences that give rise to various forms of
oppression; it is the oppression that uses our differences as excuses
for its survival, and as there is no shortage of differences among
people, the supply of excuses will never run out.  The only way to stop
oppression is to oppose it in every form, not fall victim to it in the
role of its perpetrators, and to help its victims to fight it.

Its non-existence and unattainability aside, homogeneity is boring.  We
must recognize, acknowledge, appreciate, and celebrate our differences,
not turn them into ammunition to hurt each other, wage wars, and
perpetuate bigotry and oppression.  Unity of individuals and nations is
meaningless if we ignore or deny their differences.  Denying the
differences that people associate with their own individual or group
identities is disrespectful of their dignity as human beings.  Denying
the differences between individuals or nations to force a union
invariably either fails, or robs them of the very identity that made
them interesting candidates for the union in the first place and makes
the union meaningless.

|> 
|> > People are entitled to respect for their cultural and ethnic
|> > heritage.  Broad categories are sometimes useful if used properly.
|> > But often, a broad category as "the Arabs" or "Turks" or even
|> > "Iranians" is too general and becomes a means to perpetuate
|> > bigotry through malice and ignorance.  "The Arabs" as often used
|> > to refer to multitudes of distinct peoples with different
|> > cultural and historic backgrounds (generally with the Arabic
|> > language and Islam as their commonality) is inaccurate and robs
|> > people of their individual cultural heritage.  Calling an
|> > Egyptian, a Sudanese, a Moroccan, an Iraqi, and a Saudi-Arab
|> > "an Arab," as if they were interchangeable, is just as meaningful as
|> > using the term "English" to refer to anyone who speaks English
|> > (even if only as his/her first language) in today's world.
|> 
|>  No. word Arab means all of these people. Just like the world
|>  American. In 1000 years, you will find it very difficult to distinguish
|>  between an American of German origin and an American of Iranian
|>  origin. Not only that but people will call themselves Amercians
|>  and won't give a damn about their origions. This is happening now
|>  and just after 200 years with Early immigrants.

We don't know what it will be like in 1000 years from now.  It is
true that certain behaviors in most surviving cultures of today have 
lasted well over 1000 years in the past.  But, this is no reason
to believe that they will still be there 1000 years from now.

I understand that the word Arab is often used as you suggest.  I hope I
made it clear why there is a difference between "Arab" and "American"
as you mention here, earlier on.  I also hope it is clear why I beg to
disagree with your statement "word Arab means all of these people."
While I support the unity of the Arabic speaking nations, the Islamic
nations, the African nations, etc.  in their causes against various
forms of oppression, I resist indiscriminate uses of unqualified
statements like yours, because they betray the very cause of unity.  I
understand what proponents of Arab unity (like you) mean when they use
such statements.  I wish they would use a different way to express what
they mean.  I have seen too many hurtful conclusions drawn from such
statements on both sides of the fence.  It is untrue and hurtful to
portray Egyptians, Sudanese, Moroccans, and Palestineans as
interchangeable, disinfected, homogenized members of a monolithic Arab
community.  They share many things, but also have different cultures,
histories, and ethnicities that form their separate identities.  It is
also hurtful to brainwash individuals into believing that they are
members of such a hypothetical and intangible monolithic community and
cut them off of their own tangible historic and cultural heritage.
When people are cut off or are made to deny their own heritage, they
lose their own dignity and self respect.  This is pathetic and the
unity among such castrated people is meaningless and ineffective
against oppression.

|> 
|>  Egyptians and others did not just adopted Arabic and Islam,
|>  they got mixed.

This is simply not true.  Yes, there has been some mixing,
obviously, but far less than what you seem to believe.  There
simply was no systematic migration of people across and between
the continents to accomplish this in the history.  Language
and ideas spread and mix much more easily than people.

|> 
|> >
|> >
|> > Cheers,
|> >
|> > Farhad Arbab
|> > Interactive Systems
|> > Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science
|> > Kruislaan 413, 1098 SJ Amsterdam
|> 
|>   Anwar Saleh
Newsgroups: soc.culture.iranian