Persia – Brown Pundits

In the 1920s, Soviet Azerbaijan produced a remarkable satirical magazine called Molla Nasreddin. It mocked clerics, superstition, empire, and authority with a sharpness that would soon be extinguished by Stalinist conformity. One cartoon from that period shows two figures standing side by side: Lord Zoroaster in red, radiant and amused; Prophet Muhammad in green, solemn and slightly defensive. Below them, a crowd leaps over a fire.

Lord Zoroaster turns and says: “You claimed to bring them a new religion, but they still jump over my fire.”

The joke is simple. The implication is not. It is a jab at how ancient Persian customs; Nowruz, fire-jumping, seasonal rites, survived Islamic conversion not as relics, but as living practice. Islam arrived. The civilisation did not leave. The fire stayed lit.

Iran Is Not a Regime Problem Continue reading Lord Zoroaster’s Fire Still Burns

The Clip That Explained a Civilisation

A short video of an Iranian woman is circulating on X. In it, she says Islam is not Iran’s native religion and was imposed on Zoroastrian Persians through torture, massacre, rape, and enslavement. The clip is amplified by familiar accelerants, including Tommy Robinson, and is now being treated as a one-line explanation for a fourteen-century transformation.

Almost immediately, a counter-narrative appears. It insists there is “not a single piece of evidence” for forced conversion in Persia; that Islamisation was slow; and that many Persians, especially Sasanian elites, moved toward the new order for political, fiscal, and social reasons. A further layer is added: nostalgia for the Sasanians is misplaced because late Sasanian society was rigid, unequal, and harsh, and early Muslim rule improved conditions for ordinary people. These are two different claims. They are routinely fused. History does not require that fusion.

Conquest Is Not Conversion Continue reading Between Arab Conquest and Persian Conversion: The Sasanian Inheritance