patrick.net

Many centuries ago, ala 610 AD, some guy, Muhammad, living in what's today's Saudi Arabia came up with a story that somehow, his ppl would complete some post-Biblical spiritual teaching. And in his mind, his ppl were these descendants of some Ishmael character, highly referenced in the Old Testament.

Let me start by saying that the desert (because that's exactly what Saudi Arabia is) dwellers, were NOT a literary ppl during ancient times and had minimal access to scrolls outside of major voyages to the Byzantine Empire's Damascus (or Alexandria) or on the northeast side, the Persian Empire's Babylon or Susa that is if they don't run into a garrison, trying to stop their incursion into civilized cities.

In other words, the notion that these desert marauders would even know of someone named Ishmael, nevermind view him as some paternal progenitor of their race/ethnicity, is at best, wishful thinking.

In contrast, the race /ethnicity of ppl known as Persians did in fact have a historic progenitor and his name was Zoroaster.

https://www.ancient.eu/zoroaster/

And now, while the ancient Persians didn't see themselves as his biological children, they did see themselves as his spiritual descendants, carrying his message forward in time. This is what separates civilized societies from tribal nonsense.

As result, the ancient Zoroastrians were not in competition with some Jews or even Christians, in taking Jerusalem and putting a mosque there in retribution for some fictitious historical snub by Abraham's extended family.

Starting with everything I said above ... today we have the Battle of Isaac (Israel) vs Ishmael (not just Palestine but all Arabs) raging on, based upon a desert dweller's feelings of inferiority of being a barbarian and not a member of a rightful civilization.

That is Islam in a nutshell.

And for today's Iranians, Ali vs Abu Bakr isn't going to change that.

https://patrick.net/post/1329757/2020-01-16-let-s-look-at-the-contrary-nature-of-iran-s-version-of-islam