[puranjay]

I've never understood the Iran hate. Iranian culture is very distinct from Arab culture. It is truly one of the oldest and greatest human cultures, and it's a shame that more people don't get to experience it because of this irrational hatred and suspicion

[fooker]

>It is truly one of the oldest and greatest human cultures.

Very little of that Iranian culture has survived the Islamic 'revolution'.

[srean]

There is some of it India.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsi#History

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irani_(India)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsi#Prominent_Parsis

[mikhailfranco]

Iran (language, culture) is Indo-European.

Arab (language, culture) is Semitic.

[idibidiart]

What's wrong with Arab culture?

It's like an Irish man at the turn of the century arguing that Irish culture is different from Italian culture and is worth checking out.

Ridiculous.

[mikhailfranco]

The comment (puranjay) did not denigrate Arabic culture, just said it was 'very distinct' from Iranian culture, which is often not appreciated by many people in the West. I'm not sure what you mean by your analogy.

Irish language is much closer to Italian and Persian (and Hindi and Urdu), than any of them are to Arabic, because they are all distantly related through the Indo-European language group, spread by the steppe-living horse-domesticating chariot-riding war-mongering peoples from Central Asia. Ireland still has a strong tradition of horse breeding, trading and racing. Note that Celtic is not the indigenous language or culture of Ireland, but was brought by Indo-European invaders from what is now Germany, during the Iron Age.

Irish artistic culture is more closely analogous to Arabic culture - and Italian to Iranian - in the sense that Irish is primarily a tribal oral tradition of poetry, song and story-telling, with a geometric style of art in metalwork, textiles and illuminated manuscripts. Italian and Iranian are settled urban civilizations, with architecture, engineering, writing, banking, ... etc. Note that Ireland was not occupied by the Romans, and Dublin was founded by the Vikings, who are more usually associated with raiding, plundering and destruction (another exception for Viking founding of urban settlement might be Ukraine).

However, in religion, there are more analogies between Shia Islam (Iran) and Roman Catholicism (Ireland), as contrasted with more austere Protestant (Quaker, Methodist) and Sunni (Wahhabi) ends of the spectrum; the former:

- Recognize priestly leaders and interlocutors with God (Popes, Imams), as opposed to direct unmediated prayer.

- Favor rich adornment of places of worship, rather than plain undecorated rooms.

- Favor showy external displays of religious devotion, rather than (or perhaps, in addition to) extremely self-disciplined personal piety. For example: compare Sunni and Shia approaches to Ashura; or Catholic and Protestant approaches to personal wealth.

I sometimes see similarities between Irish and Polish cultures, as the two main Catholic countries (in Europe) that were not occupied by the Romans.