Farrukh Dhondy | Amid the Crisis Raging in Iran… Will Zoroastrian Faith Rise Again?

The Orangeeboob of Trumpistan declared that he would take action against Iran if the regime killed more protesters. It has to date killed 2,500 and maimed and injured thousands. Yes, Boobyboy has now declared 25 per cent extra tariffs on nations who trade with Iran. Scary???

It won’t stop the Ayatollah’s murder squads slaughtering more protesters on the streets who are being cheered on by the Trumpistan resident son of the late Reza Shah Pahlavi, who was overthrown and exiled by the “Islamic” revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini. The best thing he can do is forget any ambition to return as crown price to Persia and instead fervently assert that he is an Iranian republican and a democrat and would favour and perhaps participate in elections.

The fellow has no legitimate claim to any Persian “throne” as his grandfather was placed on it in 1921 through a British assisted military coup. So really, he is plain Mr Botany B.

His father, who succeeded that first Reza Shah, was a bit of a nasty, repressive fascist himself, and the only decent, if symbolic, gesture of his was celebrating the pre-Islamic Zoroastrian historical past of Persia.

The present protests and those in 2022 which followed the murder through torture of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini by the “Islamic” Gestapo for refusing to wear a hijab, aim at regime change. Let’s hope.

What might the millions of protesters (or should in my humble opinion) want?

My judgment is prompted by a memory:

A few years ago, I was at a literary festival in Toronto in the downtown Bay Area and one evening went to my cousin Tehmina’s in a twenty-mile away suburb (Toronto is vast). The evening ended in the small hours and she called me a taxi.

The driver, as is etiquette in American cabs, asked me “How was your day, bud”. He had what was definitely a heavy foreign accent, pronouncing day as “dhay” and bud as “Budh”.

I said it was good and I’d just had a brilliant dinner with my cousin.

“From your aksenth, you are noth Canadian?” he said.

“And from yours, neither are you?” I responded.

“I am from Persia,” he said. I noted that he didn’t say “Iran”.

I told him I was Indian-British and he asked my name. I told him.

“So, you are Muslim?” he asked. A common confounding.

“No, I am Zoroastrian, Zardushti,” I replied. It was as though I’d punched him in the face as he swerved the car and stopped by the side of the hill road.

What???

“So am I,” he said. So, I asked his name.

“Mohammed”, he said.

“But that’s a Muslim name”, I said.

I won’t reproduce the expletives that then emerged from his mouth about Islam. He started to drive again as he spoke.

“Zardushti, only belief. What else do you need but “Humata, Hukta, Huvareshta” -- he quoted the three Zoroastrian tenets of good thoughts, good words, good deeds!

“Whole of Persia is now want to be Zardushti,” he said.

I didn’t think that was true, but didn’t contradict him.

When we got to my destination, he absolutely refused to take the cab fare.

Back in Britain I met my friend, Alexander Waugh (Evelyn’s grandson) and somehow the conversation got to discussing the religion of my birth and I told him about my cab ride in Toronto. He named some dear Parsi friend, and, over a pint, we talked about Parsi migration to India in the eighth century after the Arab-Muslim invasion. We frivolously decided to form the Zoroastrian Liberation Front to restore Iran to the true faith.

We declared ourselves co-presidents of the ZLF. Since Parsi Zoroastrians decree that children born to Zoroastrian fathers are indeed Zoroastrians, 99 or more percentage of Persians will have descended, through the centuries since the 642 AD Arab invasion, with paternal Zoroastrian blood in their veins. They may have believed they were Muslim through the ages, but surely have DNA-sanctioned claims to be Zardushtis. They wouldn’t need to formally “reconvert” -- they are already there!

Alexander, alas is dead. Still, the ZLF now has at least five members -- the vice-president, Mukul Ahmed, is a Bangladeshi Muslim theatre director. Of course, we welcome new recruits, and all membership fees are also definitely welcome.

Gentle reader, don’t regard the above as frivolous sacrilege in the context of Iran’s crisis. Accept my recalling the tongue-in-cheek formation of the ZLF as a journalistic statement of principles towards the reform of Zoroastrian practice as the ZLF favours, on firm historical grounds, the tenet that Zoroastrianism is a religion and not a race and so the conversion of anyone who chooses to enter the belief is guaranteed. It automatically abolishes the “paternal-descent” rule and equalises the DNA of mothers.

And suppose the Toronto cabbie’s declaration is true? There may actually be a current of opinion in Persia -- including a majority of its women? -- favouring a return to the old religion. Watch that space.