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Oct 3, 2022Liked by RTSG

Great stuff, well-written.

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Patriots in Control

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Sep 28, 2022Liked by RTSG

Incredible read, thank you RTSG.

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Banger

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Jun 2, 2023Liked by RTSG

Sunni Islamic thinkers have A LOT to learn from their Iranian counterpart. They should stop peddling with the fake-conservative-liberalism-ladden bullshit if they really wanted to preserve Islamic civilization.

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"should Iran submit to the West’s liberal world order, or are they entitled to their own independent civilizational reality?"

Does having an independent civilizational reality necessitate having a islamic society ? Iran had a non islamic society for a long time before invasions converted it to Islam. The change was so drastic that dugin should call it as destruction of history.

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Iran's conversion to Islam did not destroy Iran. In fact, if anything, it raised Iran's civilizational influence across everywhere Islam spread. The Islam that arrived to the Turkic nomads, Indian subcontinent, and later through the Turks, to Southern Europe, was a Persianized Islam. Many of these groups would form "Persianate" societies adopting a Persianized Islamic culture, such as the Ottomans, Mughals, and many other Turkic/Indic Muslim polities. It is why many of these groups have substantial Iranic cultural traits imprinted on them from shared vocabulary, grammar, and expressions to customs such as Nowruz celebrated among Albanians, Central Asians, and many Indian Muslims.

The narrative that Arabs spread Islam by force and "destroyed Iran" is largely bogus romanticization of history by 20th century modernists and 21st century Israel-aligned Pahlavi monarchist propagandists. I recommend you read "Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran" by Parvaneh Pourshariati. It goes into detail about how the Parthian great houses of Iran's nobility, who were feuding with many Sassanian kings ever since Khosrau I's centralization efforts in the 6th century, in effect caused the collapse of the Sassanid Empire; many such nobles defected to the Arabs and retained their fiefdoms while having to contribute less to the central state, and would go on to found some of Iran's first post-Islamic dynasties a century and half later as the Caliphates declined.

The process of Iran's Islamization was a very gradual, three century process rather than a rapid, brutal process as is commonly narrativized. It wouldn't be until the 900s when Iran was finally majority Muslim. And reasons for conversion had in most cases very little to do with force, but rather social benefits. For the nobility, it would be to integrate themselves with the new elites; for the commoners, it would be to no longer pay the jizya poll tax, social status, and/or to liberate themselves from certain Zoroastrian practices in some cases. Like for instance, blacksmiths were commonly looked down upon in Sassanian society as their field of work involves working with fire, something Zoroastrian society believed shouldn't be "corrupted" by man's breath and touch. Converting to Islam would in turn make their line of work less ostracized.

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Jan 25Liked by RTSG

I will read "Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran" when I get the chance. Thanks for the recommendation.

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"Iran's civilizational influence across everywhere Islam spread."

Civilizational influence of a civilization that got drastically changed by islam. Whether over time or within a short time frame, there were drastic changes to the iranian civilization. I am not denying that some structures survived but as far as I can tell most got changed. If the current iran becoming liberal can be called a "destruction", I don't see why the former iran becoming islamic cannot be called a "destruction"

"For the nobility, it would be to integrate themselves with the new elites; for the commoners, it would be to no longer pay the jizya poll tax, social status"

Pretty much the same tactics used by the brits in south asia. How is jizya not force ? At the very least it's at least coercion.

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Saved for further reading

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deletedOct 9, 2022Liked by RTSG
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Oct 10, 2022·edited Dec 21, 2023Author

Yeah, we don't disagree. Shariati and Al-e Ahmad weren't at all in the "third position", rather disillusioned by the rigid, pro-Soviet Tudeh party. Al-e Ahmad himself had a preference towards Mao & China which was noted in this article, as more authentic than Khrushchev's USSR which caused a flocking towards it by "leftists and pseudoleftists". Al-e Ahmad's quote below is in a way also comparable to Stalin's comment in how the socialism of the future, even the King of England can be "socialist".

“No longer is the specter of communism dangled before the people in the West and that of the bourgeoisie and liberalism in the East. Now even kings can be ostensibly revolutionary, and Khrushchev can buy grain from America. Now all these "isms" and ideologies are roads leading to the sublime realm of mechanization. The political compass of leftists and pseudoleftists around the world has swung ninety degrees to the Far East, from Moscow to Beijing, because Soviet Russia is no longer the "vanguard of the world revolution".”

Perhaps the wording and focus on this article regarding Heidegger's influence on the revolution & connections to the German conservative revolution, as well as the revolution's anti-modernist aspects, may have made our article come across that way. Considering it was our first substack, there is a lot to improve. There will be a second substack follow-up to this in the future covering the Islamic Republic itself and how it is authentically closer to communism than the rigid Soviet-inspired parties. Part of that will go into further details regarding the influencers of the revolution itself such as Ahmad and Shariati. Iran will be frequently revisited topic lol, though for now there are other substacks being planned.

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