Good God, you really are entirely impervious to facts. No, Arab is not a synonym for Muslim. That is why I said it was Arabs that conquered and wiped out Zoroastrians, not “Muslims”.
Because I asked you:
Let’s say you’re an Arab. Your father is an Arab. His father was an Arab. Count backwards. At what point is one of the fathers NOT an Arab?
So yes, for the top of the chain, take my definition. Then count backwards. At what point is one of the fathers not an Arab?
I find myself having to bow to your amazing rebuttal of an emoticon good sir. Bully to you on proving that the Israeli-Palestinian situation is entirely unique in the field of human endeavors because unlike all other wars and conflict throughout history it lacks “a common understanding and kind of consensus regarding the questions of peace, justice and what really is happening or has happened.” Your rolly-eyes certainly show me that you were entirely correct that Serbia and Serbians are “accepting of what transpired and why NATO bombed it.”
Oh wait, actually the complete opposite of that.
I’m aware that is what you have said, what you don’t seem to be able to grasp is that neither of those is true; Zoroastrianism wasn’t and hasn’t been wiped out, and it wasn’t the Arabs who didn’t do it.
Wrong.
You think the Safavids and Qajars were Arabs?
Please explain.
Do you think Sa’ad ibn Abi Waqqas and Khalid ibn al-Walid were not Arabs? Ah wait you do. No one was Arab. LOL.
You insisted that it was “Arabs” who “wiped out” the Zoroastrians. As was pointed out, the Muslims who actually persecuted the Safavids and the Qajars?
Presumably then you believe they were “Arabs”.
Please explain your reasoning.
I have to say that you’re going to a lot of trouble to avoid admitting that you were mistaken in claiming that “Arabs” “wiped out” the Zoroastrians.
As mentioned already, the Zoroastrians weren’t “wiped out”, most simply converted.
At this point it’s pretty clear you’re being dishonest and not debating in good faith.
I asked you what you considered “an Arab”.
You said
I pointed out that the people you’ve claimed were “Arabs” didn’t call themselves “Arabs”.
Yes, western observers often referred to them as “Arabs” but that merely betrayed their own ignorance and was similar to the way Muslims referred to the Crusaders as “Franks” even those who weren’t French-speakers.
As Bernard Lewis noted, westerners had a long tradition throughout the Middle Ages of using ethnic terms to refer to Muslims that the Muslims themselves didn’t use. “Moor”, “Tartar”, “Saracen” are all examples.
Similarly, just because 17th Century Americans referred to the Natives they massacred as “Indians” didn’t mean that the Wampanoags, Mohawks, Iroquois etc. actually viewed themselves as “Indians” or even thought of themselves as the same people.
Your response rather than admitting that you were wrong was to whine.
Again, it’s clear that you were either lying or that you have huge issues with reading comprehension since I never “asked [you] who the top one in the chain would be.”
Anyway, I’m done with this discussion because either you’re intellectually dishonest which makes discussion pointless or your reading comprehension skills are non-existent which also makes further discussion on this topic rather pointless.
Just to nitpick that, a culture or religion can be wiped out even without physical destruction of the people who practiced that culture or religion. For instance, the ancient Babylonian religion and culture are gone, totally destroyed, wiped out, what have you. That’s true even though a lot of modern Iraqis are probably their descendents. There was never an actual extermination of people, just a destruction of the culture.
Likewise, if those 210,000 Zoroastrians converted tomorrow to another religion, Zoroastrianism would be wiped out, even though nobody would have died.
Fair enough, but it’s rather obvious what he meant when he claimed that the Arabs “wiped out” the Zoroastrians.
Granted, I think ignorance rather than dishonesty was the reason for his initial claim based on his other errors regarding the Middle East(I.E. Jews prior to the mandatory period calling themselves “Palestinians”).
Moreover, like I said, while what happened to the Zoroastrians is wrong, there’s a difference between being converted and being “wiped out”.
I have to say, while I knew this thread would go off the rails, I didn’t expect it to go *this *way. Kudos for the originality.
We aim to please, the usual unfortunate derails that occur in any thread that has Israel or Palestine in the title just get far too boring.
Unfortunately threads on Israel/Palestine tend to draw people with really superficial but completely unshakeable understandings of the situation like moths to a flame.
Dont be so harsh on yourself.
The initial conquerors and, yes, persecutors, were Sa’ad ibn Abi Waqqas and Khalid ibn al-Walid and their armies. All Arabs.
I see you could not answer a simple question. Now who’s intellectually dishonest.
They were the ones who took Persia over, sure, but any persecution by the original Arab armies was pretty low key. You don’t get the big persecutions until later, with the Safavids and Qajars.
"Muslim chronicles state that, in the subsequent battle of Ullais, the Arab commander Khalid ibn al-Walid, tired, angry, and frustrated with the resistance put up by the Persians, once victorious, ordered all the prisoners of war be decapitated and their dismembered bodies be thrown into the river. In order to fill the entire river downstream with the blood of the Persians - perhaps as an announcement of his total victory and as a way to strike fear into the remaining Persian armies defending the heartland - Khalid ordered the gates of a dam upstream on the river be opened. The cascading waters swept the bodies and their blood downstream earning it the name - the River of Blood. "
After the Arabs had conquered the Persian ruled lands west of the Zagros mountains, they began their campaign to conquer the Iranian heartland. Once they had crossed into the kingdom of Persia itself, the ruling kingdom of the Iranian peoples, they advanced on the Zoroastrian religious centre of the Istakhr, took the city and slaughtered its 40,000 residents.
Low key indeed.