Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Out of context: Reply #133
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Persian culture is alive and thriving. Their language, culture, song, dance, and traditions, predate Islam and are forces of extremt nationalistic pride. Their culture is spread into Central Asia where dialects of Dari-Persian, their food, the customs, their manners of greeting each other are distinctly farsi.
In Iran, parts of Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, Nourouz is the most important yearly festival - it is the Persian New Year, which predates Islam and can be traced back to the time of Darius the Great. The Iranians recognise their civilisation as one of the world's great civlisations along with China and India. Their widespread adoption of Shia Islam was a form of independence from the Arab Sunni variety, with whom they had been at war for millenia. Sort of like the schism with the Catholic Church in Eastern Europe, and the development of Orthodoxy as a continuum of Byzantine culture.
In North Africa, after the unification of warring Arab tribes under the Caliphate, Islam spread and proliferated econommically. Vast tracts of barren lands in Morocco, Algeria and into the Iberian peninsula were settled by nomadic Arabs. These regions were converted to fertile agricultural lands, and Muslim populations grew and flourished. They estbalished trade with sub-sahran Africa, and Islam spread into the West and East coasts of Africa.
Arab and Muslim traders were prolific, and the earliest proseltysers of Islam. Following the Monsoon winds, these traders established outposts along the costs of India and into the far east. These traders were responsible for the conversion into Islam in the regions of West India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia. Today these regions account for 500 million Muslims - more than half the total number of Muslims in the world.
Through trade along the Silk Routes, Arab, Persian, and Indian traders were able to spread Islam into the lands of the Mongols. Genghis Khan kept Muslim advisers in his courts, who vied for influence with Buddhist and Nestorian Christian acolytes, amongst others. After Genghis' death, his empire was split between his various successsors who at various points professed different faiths, along with Islam, and their own traditional mongolian shamanistic cult of the sky (Tengri). Over the years Islam was cemented as the religion of the court in some central Asian empires, perticularly in the West (eg, Sufism of the Golden Horde in the lower Caucus). Timur Khan (Tamarlane) was perhaps the most succesful Mongolian ruler since Genghis, and was also the most self-identified as a Muslim. His allegiance shifted variously between Sunnism, Shiaism, as-well as the Buddhism of his forefathers. Tamarlane, was also the scurge of the Muslim world as he went around genocidally sacking Iranian cities, the Islamic Sultanate of Delhi, Samarkand, and the lower Caucauses etc.
In the 15th Century, the Mughals, the direct descendents of the Mongols, descended on India. Their experience as guardians of the Silk Roads had exposed them to all the different religions of the great Asiatic planes. In India they developed an exceptionally diverse form of Islam, and venerated saints, pundits, gurus, and fakir's in the hindu tradition. One Mughal ruler (Akbar) even attempted to create a great hybrid religion incorporating Islam, Buddhism, and various Hindu practices etc.
Obviously wikipedia doesn't find these facets of the spread of Islam as exciting as the rape and pillage of the Moorish hordes, and satan's soldiers of the Ottoman's terrorising Eastern Europe.