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Dogs in Iran Hate Moslems, Love Zoroastrians
From Front Page Magazine.... Mary Boyce, Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies and a scholar of Zoroastrianism, spent a 12-month sabbatical in 1963-64 living in the Zoroastrian community of Iran (mostly in Sharifabad, on the northern Yazdi plain). During a lecture series given at Oxford in 1975, she noted how the Iranian ancestors of the Zoroastrians had a devoted working relationship (i.e., herding livestock) with dogs when they lived a nomadic existence on the Asian steppes. This sustained contact evolved over generations such that dogs became âa part in (Zoroastrian) religious beliefs and practicesâŠwhich in due course became a part of the heritage of Zoroastrianism.â Boyce then provided an historical overview of the deliberate, wanton cruelty of Muslims and their children towards dogs in Iran, including a personal eyewitness account: In Sharifabad the dogs distinguished clearly between Moslem and Zoroastrian, and were prepared to goâŠfull of hope, into a crowded Zoroastrian assembly, or to fall asleep trustfully in a Zoroastrian lane, but would flee as before Satan from a group of Moslem boysâŠThe evidence pointsâŠto Moslem hostility to these animals having been deliberately fostered in the first place in Iran, as a point of opposition to the old (pre-Islamic jihad conquest) faith there. Certainly in the Yazdi areaâŠMoslems found a double satisfaction in tormenting dogs, since they were thereby both afflicting an unclean creature and causing distress to the infidel who cherished him. There are grim stories from the time (i.e., into the latter half of the 19th century) when the annual poll-tax was exacted, of the tax gatherer tying a Zoroastrian and a dog together, and flogging both alternately until the money was somehow forthcoming, or death released them. I myself was spared any worse sight than that of a young Moslem girlâŠstanding over a litter of two-week old puppies, and suddenly kicking one as hard as she could with her shod foot. The puppy screamed with pain, but at my angry intervention she merely said blankly, âBut itâs unclean.â In Sharifabad I was told by distressed Zoroastrian children of worse things: a litter of puppies cut to pieces with a spade-edge, and a dogâs head laid open with the same implement; and occasionally the air was made hideous with the cries of some tormented animal. Such wanton cruelties on the Moslemsâ part added not a little to the tension between the communities. ... Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-06-03 |
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