01-13-2006, 03:05 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-mitradena+Jan 13 2006, 07:29 AM-->QUOTE(mitradena @ Jan 13 2006, 07:29 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The claim that the Reddys are descendents of Pallavas must be because of the many goodlooking Reddy actors and actresses, I'm guessing.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->This is a good guess. I agree the Iranians are just as superficial as the Europeans.
[right][snapback]44721[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->That's not what I actually meant. They're not respresentative of Iranians in general. I was talking about the Iranchamber site thinking that Reddys "must be" the descendants of the Iranian Pahlavas. I wasn't clear in my post.
Most Iranians don't really know what Indians look like unless it's on TV. They don't know that if they met many people in the South or East of India, they would mistake them for North-Indians or even confuse them with Iranians. (Just like they might confuse people from Central and the rest of North India).
In fact, I am guilty of this too. Often I think that someone looks Indian and they turn out to be Iranian...
And also, Iran, like much of the rest of the world, has been affected by the AIT. Differently than we have been. The entire world has been forced to acknowledge that the mythical "Aryans", equivalent to "Caucasians" in my opinion, are some super-race: goodlooking (huh? what, more goodlooking than everyone else in the world?), masterminds behind all civilisations (Persia, India, China anyone?) and all kinds of other super-abilities. This has bred an inferiority complex in practically every non-European nation. The only ones who can still keep their head high are the Finnish and the Basques who are not IE. Though non-IE, the pro-AIT Indo-Europeans (whoever that is referring to), at least have to concede that the Finnish and Basques look Caucasian. It is to be noted that both these pre-European European people have been oppressed for long periods of time.
Coming back to Iran, it is a country that has gone through very difficult changes. In WWII, the country because of its Islamic leadership allied itself with Nazism. I suspect some at least came into contact with the Nazi race-literature that the Nazis aimed at Muslims (as was the case with the Yugoslavian-Muslim Hanjar who were recruited by the Nazis and were made to read anti-Semitic and anti-Serb literature). It is to the Iranians' credit that so little of that has influenced them after WWII.
Their ruler Pahlavi tried to subtly and not so subtly bring back the ancient Zoroastrian faith. It was tied to Iranian Nationalism and the Mullahs/Ayatollahs could no longer watch the populace slowly slipping into westernisation and worse .... pre-Islamic glories. Even after the nasty Islamic revolution, many people are still proud to identify themselves as Iranian rather than Muslim. However, with that identification, they wish to separate themselves ethnically from what they identify as the original Islamic ethnicity: Arabians. I'm not talking about the Ex-Muslims even. Some of them still are Muslim, but are proud to be Iranian as well (which should be impossible considering their history). Some of the racial paradoxes have spread into the new movement of people who want to disconnect themselves from Islam but can only see ethnicity as a way out.
The Zoroastrians of Iran (those whose ancestors had never converted) are not interested in race or anything like it. They of course only marry other Zoroastrians, but that is for obvious reasons. Some of the new converts to Zoroastrianism in Iran are converting for nationalist and anti-Islamic-Imperialism reasons. And that's not what Zoroastrianism is about. Perhaps deeper study of the religion they've rediscovered will help them to shake the racial dichotomies perpetrated since WWII and rampant in today's world climate. Once again, not all new Iranian converts to Zoroastrianism have converted for these reasons. Most in fact have an earnest interest in their ancestral religion and race has no bearing on their choice or on their life whatsoever. They are nationalistic though, which I think is a good thing. They also view it essential for other countries under Islam to become more nationalistic and have even discussed how Arabians should shake off the yoke of Islam.
So Mitradena, what I've been trying to say in those long paragraphs is as follows: most Iranians are not interested in race. Many that are tend to be of the Muslim variety or those who've left Islam but want some other identity to hold onto and haven't yet grasped onto the wholesomeness of Zoroastrianism. We can't judge, because they've had a very tough past too. Imagine: their ancestors were like the Parsees until their conversion to Islam. And we know Parsees are not racist.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->This is a good guess. I agree the Iranians are just as superficial as the Europeans.
[right][snapback]44721[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->That's not what I actually meant. They're not respresentative of Iranians in general. I was talking about the Iranchamber site thinking that Reddys "must be" the descendants of the Iranian Pahlavas. I wasn't clear in my post.
Most Iranians don't really know what Indians look like unless it's on TV. They don't know that if they met many people in the South or East of India, they would mistake them for North-Indians or even confuse them with Iranians. (Just like they might confuse people from Central and the rest of North India).
In fact, I am guilty of this too. Often I think that someone looks Indian and they turn out to be Iranian...
And also, Iran, like much of the rest of the world, has been affected by the AIT. Differently than we have been. The entire world has been forced to acknowledge that the mythical "Aryans", equivalent to "Caucasians" in my opinion, are some super-race: goodlooking (huh? what, more goodlooking than everyone else in the world?), masterminds behind all civilisations (Persia, India, China anyone?) and all kinds of other super-abilities. This has bred an inferiority complex in practically every non-European nation. The only ones who can still keep their head high are the Finnish and the Basques who are not IE. Though non-IE, the pro-AIT Indo-Europeans (whoever that is referring to), at least have to concede that the Finnish and Basques look Caucasian. It is to be noted that both these pre-European European people have been oppressed for long periods of time.
Coming back to Iran, it is a country that has gone through very difficult changes. In WWII, the country because of its Islamic leadership allied itself with Nazism. I suspect some at least came into contact with the Nazi race-literature that the Nazis aimed at Muslims (as was the case with the Yugoslavian-Muslim Hanjar who were recruited by the Nazis and were made to read anti-Semitic and anti-Serb literature). It is to the Iranians' credit that so little of that has influenced them after WWII.
Their ruler Pahlavi tried to subtly and not so subtly bring back the ancient Zoroastrian faith. It was tied to Iranian Nationalism and the Mullahs/Ayatollahs could no longer watch the populace slowly slipping into westernisation and worse .... pre-Islamic glories. Even after the nasty Islamic revolution, many people are still proud to identify themselves as Iranian rather than Muslim. However, with that identification, they wish to separate themselves ethnically from what they identify as the original Islamic ethnicity: Arabians. I'm not talking about the Ex-Muslims even. Some of them still are Muslim, but are proud to be Iranian as well (which should be impossible considering their history). Some of the racial paradoxes have spread into the new movement of people who want to disconnect themselves from Islam but can only see ethnicity as a way out.
The Zoroastrians of Iran (those whose ancestors had never converted) are not interested in race or anything like it. They of course only marry other Zoroastrians, but that is for obvious reasons. Some of the new converts to Zoroastrianism in Iran are converting for nationalist and anti-Islamic-Imperialism reasons. And that's not what Zoroastrianism is about. Perhaps deeper study of the religion they've rediscovered will help them to shake the racial dichotomies perpetrated since WWII and rampant in today's world climate. Once again, not all new Iranian converts to Zoroastrianism have converted for these reasons. Most in fact have an earnest interest in their ancestral religion and race has no bearing on their choice or on their life whatsoever. They are nationalistic though, which I think is a good thing. They also view it essential for other countries under Islam to become more nationalistic and have even discussed how Arabians should shake off the yoke of Islam.
So Mitradena, what I've been trying to say in those long paragraphs is as follows: most Iranians are not interested in race. Many that are tend to be of the Muslim variety or those who've left Islam but want some other identity to hold onto and haven't yet grasped onto the wholesomeness of Zoroastrianism. We can't judge, because they've had a very tough past too. Imagine: their ancestors were like the Parsees until their conversion to Islam. And we know Parsees are not racist.