Justice, patriotism, and religion in Persian literary works

Author / Creator

Derayeh, Minoo, author

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Physical

Summary

This book explores justice in the stories of kings, gods, religions, cultures, political systems, and especially the sacred aspects of all these in Iranian mythology, Persian poetry, Zoroastrian re...

This book explores justice in the stories of kings, gods, religions, cultures, political systems, and especially the sacred aspects of all these in Iranian mythology, Persian poetry, Zoroastrian religion, and documented history. It describes the ways that religion and patriotism have often converged in Iran to establish justice and bring about cultural, religious, social, and political changes. During the 18th and 19th centuries peoples under the Ottomans and in Iran under the Qajar dynasty encountered the West's military, commercial, and colonial expansionism. This created an awakening alarm that influenced Muslim thinkers of the 19th and early 20th centuries to understand nationalism as a movement for guarding a nation's independence and freedom in the face of an external aggressor. The 20th century brought an end to the Ottoman empire and the Qajar, weakened the West's colonial expansions, and created Muslim states and nations, resulting in a change in the perception and application of nationalism with nationhood triumphant over patriotism. This book addresses critical issues such as justice, religion, culture, patriotism, patriarchy, discrimination, violence and human rights with the goal to avoid the influence of Eurocentrism, Orientalism and colonialism on the literature. It focuses not on nationalism but on how the Iranian quest for justice ("daad") is historically intertwined with patriotism ("patasti" or love for the homeland) and religion, beginning with examples from the great medieval Iranian poet Abulqasem Ferdowsi in his epic, the Shahnameh (The King's Letter).

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