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Subject: Kneeling down to the Arabs five times a day
eu4ea    8/2/2006 1:53:04 AM
I have several Persian friends, and most of them are heavily dismissive of the Arabs - lazy, dumb, ignorant, incompetent, corrupt.. the list goes on They are also generally unimpressed with most things things Arab (culture, history, industry, technology, academic institutions, arts, etc..) Some of it may seem odd at first, but their point is that what we look at as the heights of Arab culture (poetry, mathematics, medicine, architecture, arts, trade and so on) is Persian; there's nothing Arab about it. Not just historically, also in a contemporary sense. Iranian cinema, for instance, has produced some sublime world-class movies while Arab cinema is a total joke. From that point of view, many are also dismissive of Islam and even look at it as 'kneeling down to the arabs five times a day'. I'm wondering to what extent other folks have encountered this perspective when speaking with Persians - admitedly the Persians I know are hardly average joes; all have studied abroad and most have post-graduate and/or Ivy League degrees. Heart, eu4ea
 
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xylene    RE:Kneeling down to the Arabs five times a day   8/2/2006 3:21:18 AM
I have muslim friends from North Africa and Asia that can't stand Arabs. I thought it was strange at first, but they all complain of the Arab arrogance and laziness.
 
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Cato    RE:Kneeling down to the Arabs five times a day   8/2/2006 5:58:28 PM
L.A. has the largest concentration of Persians outside of Iran. The feeling here is much as you described. Persians I know find Arabs boorish and indolent. They also take a jaundiced view of Khomeni's revolution, unsurprisingly as most of em got the hell out when the getting was good. Like any expat community, their views may not reflect popular sentiment in their native lands (see Cuba, Iraq etc). Cato
 
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Herc the Merc    RE:Kneeling down to the Arabs five times a day   8/2/2006 6:11:37 PM
Generrally speaking Iranians are sophisticated shrewd and ruthless in business. Arabs fit the rich dumb kid profile, but I have been particularly impressed by the House of Saud and its politicians. Iranians maybe smarter or educated but they produced a nitwit like the Shah and now Ahmedxxxx. Also note the original Iranians were fire worshippers (Zoroastrians), they ran to India (I guess Los Angeles was non-existyent). A community in Bombay India is from these Iranians known as the Parsis-a family TATA is the #1 industrial group in the country. Iranians are smart but can be eccentric (really)--it is a character trait that produces genius and stupidity.
 
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eu4ea    RE:Kneeling down to the Arabs five times a day   8/3/2006 3:14:36 PM
Right - indeed that (arrogant, lazy, ignorant, incompetent) the common stereotype view of Arabs that most non-arabs have in the middle east. That part is well-known, as is the fact that amongst their various neighbours, Persians are probably the most dismissive of Arabs. However, what was news to me was the fact that these guys tied disdain for Islam into disdain for Arabs - hence their expression about how Islam ("submission") is all about "kneeling down to the Arabs 5 times a day", something they are just not OK with. Worth noting, these guys were not Zoroastrian, B'hai or anything like that - they were all nominally Muslims, but they radically downplay that side of things (the arab comentators, arab sharia, the quran, etc..) and look at mohamed as a sort of distant relation, kind of like christians may look at, say, abraham. Just wondering if other folks had encountered this same perpective - one tends to think of Iranians as taking their Islam *very* seriously, but it was pretty much the opposite here - they took it significantly less literaly than most christians outside of Europe take theirs. eu4ea
 
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