Talk:Khuzestan province/Archive 1

message: I have just finished an extensive chapter in Encyclopaedia Iranica about the history of the Arab tribes before and after the muslim conquest. It begins with the resettlement of some arab tribes in Ahvaz by Shapur II around 300 A.D., as a means to punish them since they had attacked Sassanids Empire from Bahrain. Then some Arab tribes settled in the region of Ahvaz during Ummayad and Abbassid dynasties. This follows by yet another arab tribe in 10th century during Buwayhids (Al-e-Buye in persian) dynasty. The last tribe, of course, is well known which is "Bani Ka'ab" as many of you already know. However it is important to notice that according to Encyclopaedia Iranica, it was only after 16th century that Khuzestan became extensively arabized. So probably, previous tribes did not manage to secure a big majority. ( or Arabs may have been a minority up to 16th century). However, the presence of tribes is undisputable. (from 300 AD ). The funny part is, it all started as a way to punish Arabs! It all looks like a historical joke!
I also added some links to the Siege of the Iranian Embassy in 1980 (from BBC), which according to most news sources, was a terrorist act, with some possible links to Saddam. Also some links about Human rights situation from HRW. 
One more thing, The Encyclopaedia Iranica does not call the Arab/Muslim victory over Sassanids as (invasion), rather it calls it (conquest). So, Let's remain faithful to the history and don't be more Catholic than the Pope!
Heja Helweda 07:22, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree.--Zereshk 23:51, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

text: Encyclopedia Iranica is written by proper scholars, and now reached 13 vols in print, please refer to . Also you should refer to The Encyclopaedia of Islam.--Kotoito 17:04, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Encyclopaedia Iranica

message: If we want to be neutral on this issue then we have to explain all the historical facts.
By the way, I have read all the discussions.
Heja Helweda 00:57, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Good. If youve read the discussions, then you should know that we edit from top to bottom. Not the other way. Neutrality is not the issue here. Facts are. The evidence is by far overwhelming. "Arabistan" has turned into a political tool by the British (and Canada to some extent) to get back at Iran for its influence in Iraq and its nuclear issue.--Zereshk 01:55, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Neutrality

message: formerly known as Arabestan  or Arabistan ) 
Heja Helweda 00:06, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. But before it was called "Arabistan", it was called something else. Guess.......khuzestan. See: Origin of the name Khuzestan.--Zereshk 00:10, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Other Former Names for Khuzestan

message: Don't start a war between you. Discuss politely and try to get a solution to your argument. --Neigel von Teighen 14:34, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with you, however I think you may also agree that it is extremely difficult and frustrating (and ultimately pointless) to debate with someone (Zora, in this case) who consistently denies established history and insists on pushing what is undeniably a 'pan-Arabist' agenda promoted by a fringe anti-Iranian political group which she picked up from their website. The revisionism (and blatant denial of established history) that she has attempted to promote is not accepted at all by any academic or scholarly source and I invite you, as a third-party, to research this for yourself. As far as I'm concerned the issue is closed as I do not have the time nor the inclination to entertain her denial of history in the name of furthering of a POV political agenda, which I personally and sincerely find extremely offensive. SouthernComfort 23:22, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Southern Comfort: I have tried to give a neutral account of Arab heritage in Khuzestan on the "ethnic conflict in Khuzestan" section and you and another have denied there is any Arab heritage (a revisionist standpoint), insisted that I was anti-Iranian (which I am absolutely not), deleted parts of what I wrote that did not conform to you beliefs and accused me of lying. There is absolutely no way anyone can write about the racism, forced migration, unequal access to education, healthcare and media or any other aspects of Persianisation apartheid enforced on the Ahwazi Arabs by the regime in Tehran. I think that sometimes you act as an apologist for these mullahs. No-one else is allowed to write on Iran but you and your friends.--Ahwaz 23:51, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I did not delete anything that you contributed, so please do not start making things up. You did not even add anything related to the so-called 'Arab heritage,' instead focusing your efforts on these fringe (yes, fringe - find me some evidence that any Iranian Arabs support these groups) political groups, and I did not delete that section, and instead simply pointed out that the views of these groups adheres to historical revisionism and that it is uncertain whether Iranian Arabs support these groups or not. You call me an apologist for the mullahs? Who the hell do you think you are? My family is from Khuzestan, and I still have many relatives there, most of whom have suffered through not only the barbaric atrocities of Saddam's invasion, but also through the fact that the regime has almost totally ignored the restoration of Khuzestan - which has affected EVERYONE, not just the Arab minority or any other minority. The whole province has remained stagnant since the end of the war thanks to the regime. We've gone over all this again and again and again. As to your other comments, there is nothing in these pages that is historically inaccurate or false. Khuzestan has always been a part of Iran, and it's dominant heritage has always been Iranian throughout history. I challenge anyone to prove otherwise. SouthernComfort 01:06, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Southern Comfort: You are wrong on this. You are wrong that Arabs are a minority of just 500,000, when in fact there are 4.5 million Arabs in Iran, most of them in Khuzestan. I have shown you a document to prove this, but you still believe the Mullahs' lies. Arabs suffered the most from the Iran-Iraq War. It was Ahwazi Arab children who were forced to walk to their deaths in "human wave" attacks in the war, with the Persian mullahs promising them "paradise" for their martyrdom. It was Ahwazi Arab girls who were employed to carry out mine clearance. It was cities with Ahwazi Arab majorities - Khorramshahr, Abadan, Susa, Ahwaz City, Khafajieg, Shadegan, Susangard - that were worst affected. Ahwazi Arabs were the human shield in the war between two tyrannies. Only 10-20 per cent of Arab towns have been rebuilt since 1988, while the government is busy building new towns for "loyal" non-Arabs it is bringing into the province to change its ethnic make-up. The regime is planning to divert rivers in Khuzestan, such as the Karoon, to supply cities such as Kerman and deny Arabs access to vital water sources. The current regime, like the Pahlavis, is based on ethnic supremacy. The difference between the Pahlavis and the Ayatollahs is that the latter justify their racism through religion. The denial of Iran's multi-ethnic identity and the assumption that there is only one Persian identity is an aspect of this racial supremacy that has surfaced more than once on Wikipedia.--Ahwaz 11:58, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Firstly, my opinion that Arabs are a minority in Khuzestan is just that - an opinion, and we agreed to avoid any mention of the current ethnic proportion on these pages. Why do you keep bringing up dead issues? As for your other statements, they are extremely POV and cannot be backed up. Like I said, EVERYONE suffered through the war and under this regime - regardless of their ethnicity. To say that one group suffered more than the other is POV. The way you talk, you make it seem like Arabs are the only people who exist in Khuzestan and are the only ones having a hard time, which is totally false. By the way, have you ever considered that a lot of the 'non-Arabs' who are moving to Khuzestan are actually Persian Khuzestanis returning to the province after all these years? Anyway, this discussion has nothing to do with the fact that you and Zora have declared your intentions to rewrite what already are NPOV and factually accurate articles (Khuzestan and Ahvaz). SouthernComfort 15:50, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course my statements can be backed up. They are backed up by every human rights organisation and independent journalist who has visited Khuzestan and covered the Iran-Iraq War. Of course the Ahwazi Arabs suffered more from war than others. The war was largely fought in Khuzestan, where the Arabs are the largest ethnic group. Anyway, this is not simply a matter of factual accuracy, but putting forward the debates surrounding ethnicity and heritage in Khuzestan. You refuse to even consider publishing alternative viewpoints, unless they are accompanied by a refutation that they are make-believe. Is this not POV? Anyway, where have I declared my intention to rewrite articles? I just want to expand articles so they have some balance. I don't want to delete anything. You are the one who is rewriting and deleting content, not me. Show me one example of where I have done anything like rewriting content. I just want balance, that's all.--Ahwaz 17:38, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Politeness, please 

message: I have started the Sheikh Khaz'al article, which is currently a stub. Feel free to expand. SouthernComfort 07:35, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Sheikh Khaz'al

message: I have also removed the 'See also' links to Ethnic conflict in Khuzestan and Iran-Iraq war from the Ahvaz article (since they are already linked elsewhere in that article), and placed them here in the main Khuzestan article (though Iran-Iraq war is also linked elsewhere in this article). SouthernComfort 08:09, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Ethnic conflict and Iran-Iraq war

message: I have made many minor edits in order to further achieve NPOV, which I believe it already was to begin with, but nevertheless. Most especially references to which group has constituted a majority in recent decades have been removed. In the meantime I will attempt to find official ethnic demographics from the pre-revolutionary era if they exist for the history section, but I suspect they didn't exist back then either since I have a number of books from the Pahlavi era, none of which mention this sort of information. Some further information concerning the illustrious Sheikh Khaz'al (and his Kuwaiti origins) has also been added, which is also given on his page. The 'History of Iran' table has also been added to the history section to aid the user in the chronological navigation of Iranian history, which is necessary in order to understand Khuzestan's place in Iran. Information possibly considered trivial like the referemce to the Persian Khuzestani diaspora in Texas has also been removed for now. Though I will be going over the history section again, which I don't mind since I love going over the source material, I think it's safe to say that this article is as NPOV as it's going to get.
And once Ahwaz has started the articles concerning Iranian Arabs and their culture and current realities/problems (and any other articles related to Iranian Arabs), those should be linked in the 'See also' section here. SouthernComfort 10:23, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV

message: Why delete details? Because both you guys have a bad case of "everything I know or can copy-and-paste must be shoveled into this article". There are relevant details and irrelevant details. If you throw too much at a reader, the reader gets MEGO (my eyes glaze over). You have to look at the article with the jaundiced eye of a reader (who is going to say #@$%@#$ and stop reading if you bore him/her) and not with the fond and approving eye of the author. Good authors know that you must "kill your darlings". If you are particularily attached to a piece of prose, that's probably the one that sticks out, obstructs the flow of the narrative, and has to be killed. 
I kibitz in a Usenet writing group, which used to do group critiques of short bits of writing. If you said to a good writer, "This doesn't work; that doesn't work ..." the writer would say, "Um, I didn't see it that way, but if it doesn't work, I'll fix it." The bad writers would defend every word of their precious prose with utmost ferocity. You can't improve as a writer if you can't step back from your prose. 
There are folks here on Wikipedia who are darn keen editors and have hacked my prose to bits. I respect them. Usually when they make a change, I look at it and say, "They're right, it works better that way". Not that it doesn't HURT, sometimes <g> .... Zora 07:15, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why delete details? 

message: User:Jguk continues to change the dating convention in this article from BCE/CE to BC/AD. Thoughts? SouthernComfort 01:20, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Change it back when we make other changes, rather than just playing revert war. I have faith that his CRUSADE will be stopped dead in its tracks by the ArbCom, so it's just a matter of waiting. Zora 06:14, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Please stop being deliberately offensive to me by using charged words such as "crusade", especially as it is SC and Slr and not me that is arguing about religion. I am confident that Fred Bauder will get shot down and Slr, and other users, will be told to accept that his proposal failed (as it quite clearly did). Incidentally, remember that before SC visited this article it used BC/AD. It is SC who is arguing for change (despite the community clearly rejecting that argument). I ask SC to respect the majority of our readers and to stop deliberately causing offence by his changes, jguk 10:37, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: BCE/CE vs BC/AD

message: The Human Rights section is too similar to the Ethnic politics of Khuzestan entry. I proposed merging the content with this entry.--Ahwaz 08:52, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The Ethnic politics of Khuzestan refers to a UNCHR report on the forced confiscation of land owned by Laks, a Persian tribe, but there is little material available to expand on this. Perhaps you can do some research on this, instead of vandalising articles and complaining about others' work.--Ahwaz 10:10, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Hajjagha: None of the content I have written has been anti-Persian. In fact, I have been at pains to show that the Arab unrest is not a communal Arab-Persian conflict but related to dissatisfaction with government policy. If there is any anti-Persian racism, please modify the article and change the phrases or insert counter-arguments instead of simply deleting content that others' have spent time working on.--Ahwaz 10:29, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Your last sentence above applies to yourself as well. You cant delete info you dont like, supplant it with your own version, and call the opposing version "persian nationalist" and "propaganda".--Zereshk 04:42, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The parts I deleted were an unsubstantiated rant about ethnicity in Iran in the human rights section. It was little more than propaganda with no attempt to point to secondary material and anyway the English was appalling. I decided to make references to reports by HRW, Amnesty and UNCHR (I don't think these are pan-Arab or anti-Persian organisations), but also added a "criticism" section countering human rights allegations. I believe I summarised many of the points made before. But if you would like to expand on this and perhaps give reference to other secondary material substantiating the arguments, then go ahead. You, Zereshk, have made a point about the importance of secondary material to counter Zora's analysis of Khuzestan's history. I believe I have met the standards of proof you are demanding. But this does not seem to be good enough.--Ahwaz 07:18, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If it's bad English, then fix it. That's no reason for deletion. Secondly, youre eclipsing the page with ethno-political material, which was already mentioned in 2 sections in the article, and had its own linked page. Also, your edits were not balanced. Write any anti-Iranian rant you like. But also be fair and write the view of your opposition. I dont see you doing that. You deleted the opposition on dubious reasons. One paragraph against 3 sections? That's biased. Try again please.--Zereshk 07:28, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I did not write any fucking anti-Iranian rant. I wrote about the fucking human rights situation with evidence from human rights organisations, you fuckwit.--Ahwaz 07:30, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sweet.--Zereshk 07:35, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal 

message: SC, that's just plain wrong. The technology that led to the expansion of the Indo-European languages is believed to have been horse-drawn chariots used in warfare. The originators were peoples of the steppe, and the technology, and associated language, seems to have spread from the steppes down into the Afghan plateau (per Witzel) and thence into India and Persia. The Medes and Persians seem to have been peoples of the central Iranian plateau, speaking Proto-Iranian languages, and from there spreading down the Karun valley into the Mesopotamian plains. They didn't "settle" in Elam -- they conquered it! You've distorted history to make a nationalist point. I don't think that you'll find ANY historian who would, or would have, endorsed your version. Zora 07:46, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Firstly they did settle, because waves of Aryans were observed into the pre-Indo-European societies there. Then other waves came and settled, before the third overran the area. 69.196.139.250 03:44, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Claim that early Iranians "settled" in Khuzestan 

message: ::All the beheadings, murder of foreign reporters, mosque bombings, and terrorist activities in Iraq are committed or sanctioned by Anglo-American occupation forces or ISrael. Israel is very much so involved in North Iraq that is why there is new claims that Kurds and Jews are one and the same race by Israelis. This has resulte din an alliance between a very small minority of Iraqi Kurds and ISraelis. Connect the dots with what is happening from Iraq to Iran.  
Here is proof:
British Special Forces Caught Carrying Out Staged Terror In Iraq?: Media Blackout Shadows Why Black Op Soldiers Were Arrested: USA, Information Liberation
[]
Britain "apologizes" for terrorist act in Basra; Rescue of SAS men who were planning to place bombs in Basra City Square: Global Research.ca, Center for Research on Globalization
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The next link is photographic evidence taken by Iraqi Police, before British Military attacked police station and freed the British terrorist operatives.
[]
Caught red-handed: The Raw Story, North America
[]
Troops free SAS men from jail: The Telegraph, United Kingdom
[]
Iran accuses UK of bombing link: BBC, United Kingdom
[]
Basra council severs relations with British: Daily Star, Lebanon
[]
Basra Council Cutting Ties with British: China Radio International (CRI), China
[]
69.196.139.250 03:44, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Anglo-American Forces and Israel are fostering these artificual problems in Iran

message: Isn't it neccesary to have an english translation for the arabic poetry? It could be plain propaganda... :|
:You are certainly right.--Zereshk 03:01, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Translation