April 21st: Flowers, Flags, and the Fight for Names

Saadi, Riḏván, Azizam, and the Architecture of Memory

Today marked a strange and layered convergence: the 1st Day of Riḏván, Saadi Day in Iran, Easter Vigil, and the release of Ed Sheeran’s Persian-coded “Azizam”.

Each moment—spiritual, literary, liturgical, and algorithmic—carries its own weight. But taken together, they tell a deeper story:

A story about naming, memory, and the silent wars over cultural survival in a world addicted to erasure.

Three Gardens

For Bahá’ís, Riḏván commemorates Bahá’u’lláh’s divine declaration in the Garden of Najibiyyih—truth revealed under the shade of roses.

In Iran, thousands gather around the tomb of Saadi Shirazi, who composed the Gulistān in 1256—a literary garden of parables, ethics, and eternal couplets.

And then, in a third garden—Instagram—Ed Sheeran drops the word Azizam, surrounded by Googoosh, Andy, and the digital applause of a million exiles.

Three gardens.

Three registers of meaning.

All still blooming.

Team Jesus, Westminster, and the Persian Schism

That night, I found myself at Easter Vigil in Westminster Cathedral—an accident of scheduling, but also a moment of clarity.

One of the baptisms was a name I recognized: Mahyar Tousi, a conservative Iranian YouTuber, publicly announcing:

“Team Jesus assemble for Easter Vigil ✝️ I’m getting officially baptised tonight with the very sound @andrejpwalker as my Godfather.”

The incense hadn’t faded. The Latin still echoed. And yet this moment felt unmistakably Persian—a spiritual pivot made visible under the vaulted English sky.

Meanwhile, back in Iran, the pendulum swings harder:

Gharbzadegi—Westoxification—pulls one half of the diaspora toward performative Westernization. The homeland, meanwhile, is doubling down on Shi‘ism.

There is no “middle way.”

Just a widening chasm between the aesthetic and the absolute.

Memory Isn’t the Problem. Misnaming Is.

A viral tweet this week sneered at a Tajik child reciting the Qur’an by heart:

“This is our intellectual culture: just memorization, no critical thought. And we wonder why we fall behind.”

But this critique misunderstands what’s happening.

The problem isn’t memory.

The problem is dislocated memory.

Not rote—but rootless.

Not repetition—but removal.

A child reciting scripture is not a failure of pedagogy—it’s a civilizational act.

What fails us is when memory becomes performance, and performance becomes currency.

The Dupatta, Rebranded

This week, a Nordic fashion label released pastel “Scandinavian shawls.”

They’re clearly dupattas—drained of history, rebranded without context.

A thing is renamed.

The origin is erased.

The prestige is reassigned.

It’s not homage.

It’s aesthetic laundering.

Civilizations like India and China can survive this.

Smaller ones disappear.

Naming is power.

When you lose your name, you lose your story.

The Iranian Line Holds

Here’s something I’ve always noticed:

Iranians don’t venerate their conquerors.

Hazrat ‘Umar is not a hero in Iran.

Hazrat ‘Ali is exalted. Yá ‘Aliyyu’l-A‘lá is whispered in every corner of the soul.

This matters.

It means Iran has retained civilizational self-respect in a way many post-colonial nations—especially Pakistan—have not.

Pakistan’s endless identity crisis can be suffocating.

But it also allows a kind of flexibility—a permeability I benefit from, writing this from a Pakistani-owned dessert café, scrolling through Persian-coded reels on Instagram.

I’m not confused.

I’m multilingual in civilizational memory.

Ed Sheeran and the Algorithmic Garden

Let’s be honest: Ed Sheeran is strategic.

He didn’t just throw in a Persian word for fun.

By invoking Azizam and featuring Googoosh and Andy, he tapped directly into nostalgic Persianate elite longing. The pop version of Persian soft power.

What the Shah once wanted for Iran—recognition through elegance—Sheeran delivers via a viral reel.

It’s not appropriation.

It’s diplomacy, dressed as a duet.

But still:

Is it possible to be seen without being renamed?

The Long Decline and the Rejected Prophet

Sometimes I wonder:

Had colonization not derailed the Islamic world, how far would Islam have gone?

Manila was a Muslim sultanate. Islam reached the Balkans, sub-Saharan Africa, India’s courts.

Would salāt have matched the cross in global scope?

We’ll never know.

What we do know is that Islamic decline has been swift. And for those of us in the Bahá’í Faith, there’s an explanation:

The rejection of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh wasn’t just religious.

It was civilizational.

And decline often follows refusal.

A Juxtaposition on Persian Identity

In the wake of my co-writer’s piece on the Pakistani bourgeoisie, I’ve been struck by how much Iran has held the center. Not just geopolitically—but culturally.

Persian identity today splinters into three visible currents:

Reform Shi‘ism – Grounded in Iran, adapting slowly.
The Western Converts – Catholics, exiles, seekers of Rome and respectability.
The Azizam Crowd – Secular, stylish, steeped in Googoosh-era nostalgia.

I straddle none of these cleanly.

Bahá’í by faith, Persian by blood, Hindu by philosophy—my life has become a braid of paths.

Not a crisis.

A choice.

As Anandamayi Ma once said:

“Everyone is right from his own standpoint.”

“All paths are my paths. I have no particular path.”

There is freedom in that.

But also responsibility.

Because to walk a path, you must name it.

And to name it, you must remember where it began.

The Day of Gardens, and the Naming of Things

So today, we honor:

Riḏván: the divine garden of truth revealed
Gulistān: the literary garden of ethical beauty
Instagram: the algorithmic garden of cultural remix

And we ask:

Can memory survive translation?

Can identity survive remix?

Can sacred names remain sacred when said by strangers?

The Persianate world hasn’t answered these questions.

But it’s asking them—urgently, beautifully, painfully.

And sometimes, the most radical act is simply this:

To grow new roots, in soil of your choosing.