A Persian Letter

O people of Persia, this is a letter
From a member of a nation as ancient as yours;
Written in the hopes of a small improvement
Before the guns of war drown all out with their roars.

In the days of king Koresh
You were most blessed.
In an age of ruthless empires,
You are still numbered among the best.

We, the nation of Israel, still remember your king,
As does all the world, for he is in the Bible recorded;
For his tolerant rule, granting us return to our land,
God him the status of anointed accorded.

We remember you for good, except for one period
When you let a non-Persian go against your needs.
God be thanked, Haman ended up hanged, and his family,
But everyone is condemned to repeat history unless he its lessons heeds.

People think of Persia, and they imagine:
The carpets, the cats, the courtly festivals of wine;
The rich ornamentation of Khosro’s palace,
With its golden halls and dresses of silks fine.

Iran is known for its gardens, so much so
That we have from Persian the word, “Paradise”;
Gardens of beauty, the envy of the world,
Looked upon by desert nomads as the afterlife prize.

And even after those nomads took what was not theirs,
Persia still maintained its creative pulse, its original rhythm,
Providing the world with poets and scientists,
Innovators like Al-Khwarizmi, for whom is named the algorithm.

But ever since the people of the desert robbed yours
And placed you within their caliphate’s pale,
O people of Persia, can you not see?
The best you can hope for under them is to be the lion’s tail.

It is better, of course, to be the fox’s head, as you were,
Than the lion’s tail, or even a human riding a camel;
Far worse, then, O people of Persia, is what Islam has for you:
Not to ride, but to be ridden by the camel!

Is it becoming for Koresh’s nation to prostrate
In the direction of a small, black cube in the desert?
Is it the fitting destiny of Ardashir’s descendants
To carry out tasks to the Arabs’ whim and comfort?

HaShem is our guardian, He does not sleep,
He executes judgment on those who assault his city, Zion.
He told Abraham, after Ishmael tried to murder our father Isaac:
“Drive him out as your wife says—I will make another nation his scion.”

And now the Muslims repeat their forefather’s transgression:
Attempting to murder those who came out of his half-brother;
Why should you, O people of Persia, be entangled
With the ongoing feud of a family other?

Come, O people of Persia, return to your former glory,
Leave subservience to interests not yours, to purposes foreign.
Abandon enmity toward those who need not be your enemies,
Stay away from a conflict whose end could only be barren.

Iran was once master of a vast area of land,
Its culture radiant, its achievements legion,
But now, for over centuries thirteen, it is in slavery,
To the black stone in the desert, to Ishmael’s religion!

Such would be one of history’s greatest tragedies,
If Persia is used by Islam to its demise.
It need not be so: if only you throw away those alien chains,
Iran will live in peace, in prosperity—a paradise.

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[UPDATE, October 31, 2007]: Happy Cyrus Day to you too, Mr. Imani! May Iran soon be ruled by true Iranian, non-Islamic leaders of her choosing, instead of people who serve Ishmaelite-Islamic interests.

A Question of Trust

To all those armchair statesmen calling for dragging Israel to negotations table:

Non-Muslim actions and the immediate Muslim reactions. Click image to view full size.

Yes, I know the replies: “It’s not about religion, it’s about land, it’s a nationalistic dispute between two equal claimants” (that’s why we find this pattern of “resistance” all over the world), “The people on both sides want peace, it’s just their leaders who push for belligerence” (paging Daniel Goldhagen… and see also Ben Shapiro’s recent column, hat tip to Steven Plaut), “Tiny minority of extremists” (yeah, that’s why Osama Bin Laden has never been excommunicated, while a Friday mosque sermon is enough to drive thousands upon thousands into a frenzy). Please, get your heads out of the sand and look at reality: Islamic fascistic imperialism is the elephant in the room, and it can’t be persuaded to stop its stampede by any gifts of appeasement. Fighting back is the only way.

Living In The Past

Don’t go telling me this is the year 2007,
I’m not ready for living in a world post-9/11.

For me, the clock stopped ticking forty years past,
And I’m keeping the banners from then flying on the mast.

Rip van Winkle is peanuts next to me,
I follow the thought-patterns of decades ago to a T.

If you think like me, I call you progressive,
And if you don’t, then you’re a reactionary, a regressive.

It’s still the world to which was born Rosa Parks,
The world when radical and untried were the ideas of Karl Marx,

The world where everything could be explained by people’s color,
And all the evil things were the cries of those living in squalor.

I’m a taboo-breaker, fighting all forms of oppression,
Defending women from patriarchal suppression,

Because, we all know, ever looms the threat of the Inquisition.
“Women in the Muslim world”? Stop your racist condescension!

I remember what fun I had back in the day,
When I asked hard questions of that tyrant LBJ,

And now I’ve come to relive that history book’s page,
And take part in a demonstration where everyone’s my age.

“Islamic supremacism”? “Rise of the Caliphate”?
You vile hatemonger! You purveyor of race-hate!

It’s all about the grievances, the brown people’s lament,

And the real danger is the one to our environment.

I have the courage, I have the power,
To take on the primitive Bible a short shower.

Fighting for freedom of speech, liberty of expression.
But I’m sensitive toward the “other” of Arabian desert persuasion.

Tomorrow belongs to me,

Progressive radical that I be,

Or maybe not—my gray-haired cheeks have never felt

The kiss of a child, for I was so concerned that the planet would melt.

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Credits: zombie, Age of Hooper and Urban Infidel (1, 2), for the demonstration photos; Midwest Conservative Journal and a commenter on The Anchoress whose memory escapes me, for the last two, respectively.

Gandhara, A Photo Essay

The kingdom of Gandhara was located in what is now the north of Pakistan, but then an inseparable part of India, for Pakistan was created in 1947 as a state specially for the Muslims of India (but, unlike another state whose nation, in contrast to the latter, has an upstanding historical claim to it, does have a right to exist in the eyes of all but a few). The most interesting and noteworthy history of Gandhara begins, in my opinion, in 180 BCE, when the Greek king Demetrius of Bactria conquered it. The Greco-Bactrian kingdom lasted only 40 years, until the Kushans stormed into Bactria, but the Greco-Bactrian rule was to have lasting effect: Gandhara became the center of Hellenism-influenced Buddhist culture for centuries, not finally dying out until the Muslim Ghaznavids left it to be forgotten in 1021.

It would not be truthful to say the conquests of either Demetrius or the Kushans were tranquil, unmarked by taking spoils and later tribute; but when the conquerors settled down they adopted the culture of the conquered people and infused it with their own. So it is we find statues of the Buddha in Gandhara as in all Buddhist lands, but the specialty of Gandhara is that those statues are in Greek style. This unique blend of East and West is the hallmark of Gandhara art, and spread to other regions of India as well.

Head of Buddha from Amaravati, Andra Pradesh, India.

The Kushan Empire was multicultural in the good sense of the word, that is, as multiculturalism should be: many ethnicities and religions living under common rule, abiding by common law. Greeks, Persians, Indians and Scythians made up the ethnic constituency of the Kushan Empire, and Greek religion, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism and Buddhism were the four religions living peacefully together in it.

Standing Buddha, Kushan art.

Although the Kushan Empire had been riven internally, from the 3rd century CE onward, before being conquered by the Huns and later the Muslims, the internal strife was the result of power struggles, not ethnic or religious tension. That in itself says much about the success of the Kushan melting-pot: more than 350 years after the Greco-Bactrian conquest, the region of Gandhara was solid enough in cultural unity to be subjected to power struggles rather than ethnic or religious divisions.

Head of Buddha, Gandhara art.

Because the Huns had already ravaged Gandhara in 450 CE, the Muslim Ghaznavid invaders of the 11th century left it to neglect instead of giving it the treatment Muslims gave so many other teeming areas of India: plunder followed by destruction of the un-Islamic artifacts. Had the Muslims found Gandhara in its 2nd-century glory, we would see none of its Greco-Buddhist art today. Like the Taliban of Afghanistan, and like Egypt’s Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, Muslim invaders over the ages have destroyed the cultural artifacts of the conquered peoples as part of the “Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” activities. (The Torah’s injuction against statues and engraved images, in case you bring it up, is, again, for Jews only—seeing a statue of a Hindu god in India, the only thing the Jew is instructed to do is not worship it or show any reverence toward it.)

Smiling Buddha head, Mathura school of Gandhara art.

Islamic animosity toward other cultures has been tempered only by situations where economic necessity proved to be too strong. For example, Islamic law stipulates that Hindus, like any non-Muslims who are not of the People of the Book (Jews and Christians), must be given the “choice” to convert or die; that the Hindus during the Mughal Empire were accorded the status of dhimmis instead, like the People of the Book, was because mass forced conversion to Islam would have brought the economy of the Mughal Empire to its knees. And Grand Mufti Gomaa’s decree against sculptures in Egypt is resisted by Egyptian Muslims themselves because they know full well Egypt’s economy is dependent on tourists coming to see those sculptures.

It is not, however, a given that economic necessity will keep the Muslims’ hand away from the non-Islamic cultural artifacts for ever. The Bamyan Buddha statues are a case in point: they were brought down as soon as there arose an Islamic government more pious than economically realistic. Destruction by Islamic fanatics, therefore, hangs on the artifacts in countries under Islamic rule like the Sword of Damocles. This is yet another demonstration of why appeasement of Muslims is a grave error. In recent news, the Thais have installed a government headed by a Muslim (military commander Lieutenant General Sonthi Boonyaratglin) in order to enter negotiations with the Muslims wreaking havoc on Thailand’s south; history shows that such steps lead only to more terrorism, being the leverage for more concessions, until, if the Thais do not do an about turn and show the Muslims terrorism doesn’t pay, the beautiful Buddhist temples of Thailand are reduced to smoking heaps, and the number of tourists to the country is cut down wholesale.

The Kushan Empire was a multicultural success because all its ethnicities and religions accepted a common system of law. Muslims, in contrast, subvert any multiculturalist state into a shariah-ruled state, first by living apart from the state’s laws, as communities which function as states within a state (French term: communautarisme), and then, through the demographic jihad, democratically replacing the law of the host state with theirs.

Even if you’re not a religious non-Muslim, you should wake up to the threat at least for the sake of the works of art you patronize, such as the sculptures of Michaelangelo and Bernini and the paintings of Rafael and Botticelli. They’re not guaranteed to be preserved under a shariah-ruled state.

Ode to the Ewoks

We all love the Ewoks,
They’re our kind of creatures,
They have everything we require
In the way of left-wing features.

They’re unsophisticated primitives
Against the tyranny of Empire,
Using stone-age weapons to sink
The oppressor in a quagmire.

Everything they do is heroic,
For they’re fighting for common dreams,
Their enemies soulless cogs in a war machine,
so it’s OK to smash them to smithereens.

Don’t you go judgmental on them, you racist,
You need to respect the others’ cultures,
It’s a contribution to our rich tapestry
Of colorful variety, diversity and gaiety
When some make a custom of burning their enemies
Or leaving them to be eaten by vultures.

We all love the Ewoks,
They’re our role models,
Our poster boys for the underdogs
That our worldview embraces and coddles.

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Hat tip (for inspiration):

Strong? Then You’re Wrong! by Russ Vaughn (yeah, again… I like the way the man thinks) and Oona Goota, Solo? on Gates of Vienna (for reminding me of the Ewoks, by association).