Iran's Pre-Islamic Past

Iran isn't an Arab nation and, unlike most Arab Muslim nations, it has a pre-Islamic past which is arguably grander and more important than its Islamic history. This has been a source of embarrassment to Iranian mullahs who believe that there is nothing of value outside of Islam, but it may becoming more appealing to Iran's huge youth population.

The Economist explains:

Iran’s debate about distant ancestors—whose writ, at the peak of their power in around 500BC, ran from India to north Africa—rumbles on. Admired by the last shah, the Achaemenids (Cyrus and Darius among them) have been mostly disdained under the Islamic Republic. Soon after the Islamic revolution of 1979, a prominent ideologue suggested bulldozing the remains of Persepolis, the magnificent Achaemenid city that Alexander the Great razed in 331BC (and whose surviving treasures are an important part of the show).

More recently, Ali Larijani, when he was head of state television (he has since become Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator), lauded a purportedly scholarly book which claims the Achaemenids had no civilisation to speak of.

Younger Iranians are evidently rejecting this attitude. Having been force-fed a steady diet of Islamic triumphalism that hasn’t translated into an Islamic society that provides political liberty or economic prosperity, people are seeking sources of pride and identity outside of Islam. Iranians have a lot to choose from, since their pre-Islamic past was so important, but their government doesn’t provide them with the resources to learn enough.

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• Religion in Iran
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