''Inside a nation's Persian soul''

''You can't really separate out Iranian identity as one thing or another- broadly speaking, it' s part Persian, part Islamic, and part Western, and the paradoxes all exist together. But there is a Persian identity that has nothing to do Islam, which at the same time has blended with the culture of Islam (as evidenced by the Muslim call to prayer that booms from loudspeakers situated around Persopolis, a cue to visitors that they are not only in a Persian kingdom but also in an Islamic republic). This would be a story about those Iranians who still, at least in part, identify with their Persian roots. Perhaps some millennial spillover runs through the makeup of what is now one of the world's ticking hot spots. Are vestiges of the life-loving Persian nature (wine, love, poetry, song) woven into the fabric of abstinence, prayer, and fatalism often associated with Islam- like a secret computer program running quietly in the background?''

by Marguerite Del Giudice,
ANCIENT SOUL OF IRAN. NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, august edition



Friday August 15, 2008 - 07:49pm (EEST)