Shahnameh
-
Is Kabir Right?
X.T.M tests Kabir’s claim that many Hindu-nationalist readers come to BP to litigate Pakistan and Muslims. The essay argues that blaming outsiders gives India a permanent excuse, since caste, corruption…
-
Zahak versus Husayni
X.T.M reads Reza Pahlavi’s statement on Khamenei’s death through the Shahnameh’s Zahhak against the Husayni archetype. He weighs contested data on Iranian religiosity and asks who Iran is, with the…
-
Iran as a modern Zoroastrian nation
A speculative satire imagining Iranians returning to Zoroastrianism after a counter-revolution: Isfahan’s square torn down, Persepolis rebuilt, Muslim heritage neglected, the Persian language purged of Arabic words, and the Muslim…
-
India as the hydra against Islam
Razib Khan asks why India stayed mostly non-Muslim after some five centuries of Muslim rule, and rejects the claim that violent resistance explains it, noting that Iran’s Tabaristan kept Zoroastrian…
-
Semitised Iran, Aryanised India
X.T.M argues that modern Persian identity owes more to Safavid and Islamic-era figures such as Sa’adi, Ferdowsi and Hafez than to Achaemenid or Sasanian pride, and that Persian has wrapped…
