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Pellevoisin posted an update 10 years, 3 months ago
Spent time today trying to explain how the Twelver Shia notion of the Mahdi is deeply informed by late Zoroastrian writings expecting the Syoshyant (the Saviour) to appear. Zoroaster himself did not write of “a Syoshyant” but said that all of us who believe the Truth are required to become syoshyanto – saviours. The original Zoroastrian idea was that all of us were called by Ahura Mazda to save and redeem each other, the world, and the creation with the help of the Angels who were loyal to Ahura Mazda. I saw lots of lights go on in the eyes of some today as I talked about the difference in theological ideology among the disciples of the dead Ayatullah Khomeini and essentially all of the rest of the Shia in Iran. No one seems to know that Khomeini was engaged in a “sunnification” of the Shia faith, and those tenets gave rise to both the Islamic Revolution and Hizbollah.
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Write more about this please.
Sorry, Dan, that I am so late in replying. Regarding Khomeini, he believed that his voice and the Voice of Allah were one. He also believed that his mind and the Mind of Allah were one. He believed he was to become the great unifier of all of the Muslim world. He greatly underestimated the Wahhabists and Salafists as well as the resolve of the House of Saud and Qaddafi to resist him.
In the religious context within Iran, many of the hardline religious establishment believed that in the end with the war with Iraq that Khomeini had become a heretic believing that he and Allah were one and that he had gone completely insane. There is a good book called “The Shia Revival” by Vali Nasr. The broad brush strokes of his argument is correct though there are a number of fine details with which I disagree.
I have believed that Khomeini and his brigades greatest enemy within Iran was not a living person but was rather the Zoroastrian layer within the civilisation. Khomeini wanted to be the Islamic Pope, so to speak, but Zoroaster taught in one of his most famous prayers that each individual must choose what to believe and in whom they believe.
I recall that Ayatollah Khomeini was exiled on France for quite a number of years (prior to) and then conveniently “airlifted” back into Iran to be the figure head of the Revolution….perhaps you’re totally right to say that “Khomeini was engaged in a “sunnification” of the Shia faith”….I’m old enough to remember the many images and TV news reports of Iran from the late 1970’s to ’80’s to what it’s society looks like today…for me there is a huge difference to the positive
He wanted to be the grand leader of all Islam. That meant he had to make the Shia more like the Sunni, and the Sunni more Sufi in orientation. He made terrible miscalculations making an enraged enemy in the House of Saud
No one currently in power is a believer or follower of Khomeini. Most in the West do not realise that this shift was completed a while ago. The Khomeini true believers are increasingly becoming an inward looking sect who worship “Imam Khomeini” the saint of God. Many of the young regard them as more ridiculous than dangerous. The conflict of the young with the government is the simple desire for a secular state where the religion is relegated to a correlative function rather than headship over all..
According to Zoroaster, external force or coercion in matters of faith is immediate evidence of the falsity of their claims to authority. So this idea has endured both openly and under the surface in Persian culture.
That is all fascinating and shed new light on an old mess. I’m grateful you took the time.
Are there any modern practicing Zoroastrians?
Yes there are. There is a community in India and a community in England in addition to the communities that endure in Iran. But there numbers are small. The communities in Iran were all but destroyed and erased during the Khomeini years. His hatred for them was almost as intense as his hatred for those of the Baha’i faith.