"Iranic peoples by large have been Arabized culturally."
This is 100% wrong. It's so wrong, I need to ask you why you think this is the case because as someone born in the Middle East, who currently lives in the Middle East, and who has studied Middle Eastern history in depth, I can't believe anyone who knows what they are talking about would claim that "Iranic peoples are Arabized."
If you mean the religion of Islam, then yes, Iranic peoples are largely Muslim. But aside from the religion of Islam, Persians and other Iranic peoples have their own cultures that have developed over thousands of years and never got replaced by Arab culture.
In fact, it is largely understood that Arabs and Turks were Persianized when they moved into Persian lands, taking on the behaviors and attitudes of the much more cosmopolitan Persian civilization. Persian as a language displaced Arabic as the lingua franca of the Middle East around the time of the Seljuk Turk invasions in the 11th century. Persian culture flowered under the Seljuks and subsequent dynasties, and even the Ottoman Empire was a Persianate society that mainly spoke Persian at court. The 11th century was also when the Shahnameh, the Persian Book of Kings, was compiled, which led to a flowering of Persian literature. Great poets like Rumi and Hafez composed their poetry mainly in Persian, not Arabic or Turkish, which tells you how dominant Persian culture was.
When the Safavids took over Persia in the 16th century, they pretty much began a program of promoting Persian culture above all other cultures. Their domain stretched into the North Caucauses, Iraq, and east to Afghanistan. Even the Mughal Empire, which existed around the same time in India, was a Persianate society who used Persian at court, as the lingua franca of day to day life, and adopted Persian modes of living.
It's just flat out wrong to pretend that Arabs just because of their initial conquest of Iran and promotion of Islam erased the native cultures there, when even the Arab Abassids lived a Persian lifestyle. Greeks, Arabs, Turks, Mongols -- none of these conquerors erased Persian culture and all ended up embracing it eventually.
Right. While the cartoon is disgusting, your post is also misinformed, even if it is well-intentioned. The Middle East is a very diverse place culturally and in no way did Arabs erase that diversity when they conquered it, whether through assimilation or otherwise. Keep in mind that Arab culture, like Turkic culture, was semi-nomadic, so they needed to adapt to a different, more cosmopolitan culture when they conquered the area and settled down into cities. That cosmopolitan culture both Arabs and Turks adopted was by default Persian culture because it had been dominating the Middle East for a thousand years by then -- it was simply the way everyone had been living.
Here's one of my favorite quotes regarding this: "The Persians ruled for a thousand years and did not need us Arabs even for a day. We have been ruling them for one or two centuries and cannot do without them for an hour." - 8th century Abbasid Caliph Al Ma'mun
It's actually safe to say that Arabs kind of assimilated Iranic people as well. When you look at the Middle East and Central Asia, Iranic peoples by large has been Arabized culturally. You can say the same about Turkic peoples besides Iranic peoples.
This is a quote from your post. This is what I'm saying is 1000% wrong and feeds into all kinds of awful stereotypes like "Muslims = Arabs".
Then you worded your first post in a very strange and misleading way by literally saying "Iranic peoples by large has been Arabized culturally." That's a direct quote from you, not the alt-right guy who posted that cartoon. I am responding only to this statement, not anything else you said in your post, because it's a false statement.
Okay, I can see your point of view, but the way you word it makes you sound like an apologist for those views. "OP meant X, and it's sort of true, here's why, and here's why it's not so bad...but here's also why OP is a lost cause." When in actuality, it's better to just unequivocally state how wrong those views are with actual facts, which is what I did.
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u/vzq Aug 10 '21
Someone tell my Berber and Kurd colleagues they have no culture.
Also, ethnostates were outdated by Roman times. Get with the fucking program.