hello everyone and welcome back to conversations with Tyler here I am today live with raaza oan raaza has a new book out which I enjoyed very much it is called an American martyr in Persia the Epic life and tragic death of Howard Baskerville Raza has many other books I very much like no God but God on Islam Zealot on the life of Jesus and there is more he is a writer scholar producer and
generalist and expert on the history of religion raaza welcome thank you thanks for having me what are some characteristics of a good martyr o well I mean I guess number one would be being willing to sacrifice yourself for other people but not just other people being willing to sacrifi sacrifice yourself for your beliefs um this of course is at the heart of the
the concept of Christianity which is all about sacrifice but it also is at the heart of Shia Islam which is the majority religion in Iran and so basille this Christian Missionary who arrives in this Shia country in a way uh you know maybe they had different religions and and different beliefs but they had a very similar way of expressing those beliefs what makes the Ali story in
shiism an effective story of M martyrdom yeah so shiism as a religion just to be clear so shiism is is one of the major sect of Islam Islam uh has many many sects like most religions do but the the major two sects are the Sunni Islam and and Shia Islam and shiism arose out of Sunni Islam in the 7 Century uh primarily as a as a response to what was fundamentally just a disagreement a political disagreement
over who should uh lead the Muslim Community after the death of the Prophet Muhammad um The Prophet's family lost that argument and over the next generation or so Islam became a kind of arabo centric Empire but one of the prophet's grandsons whoin decided to launch an ill-fated Revolution against what he saw as a corrupt and unjust Empire and in 680 in a city called carala in
modern day Iraq his small band of followers some 70 or so came into confrontation with the cff's uh massive Army and recognizing that you know there was no way to win this conflict Hussein nevertheless went into battle in the name of Justice against oppression he and all of his followers were slaughtered and that moment became sort of the birth of what we Now understand
as Shia Islam which is why earlier I said it has at its heart this concept of the righteous uh individual willing to die uh in the name of Justice against oppression there's a lot of people who are willing to die for different causes if I want to study martyrdom and I ask what does the Shia tradition and understanding of martyrdom add to say Catholic Notions of martyrdom what's the
extra something that makes it different or special or interesting very that's a very good question so of course in Christianity Mar martyrdom is modeled on Jesus's martyrdom and the idea is that Jesus died to um cleanse Humanity of their sins and so there's a very clear spiritualization of that act um it doesn't have a lot of sort of material aspects to it not so in Chism uh Hussein
died not to cleanse anyone of their sins but to save their mortal lives to actually release people from oppression and Injustice it was a very sort of conscious effort to help people where they are now by sacrificing himself for it so that's what I would say is really the fundamental difference between it is that martyrdom in Shia Islam isn't spiritualized in the same way that mdom
and Christianity tends to be so Howard Baskerville the subject of your latest book he's an American missionary in Iran in the early 20th century he's shot he dies is that an effective martyrdom story or have we just forgotten about him because the external trappings were too weak to sustain our interest well we have definitely forgotten all about him actually I I'd say it's more proper to
say that Iranians have forgotten All About Him Americans never knew him to begin with I mean his story never really took hold in the United States although there were you know front page stories about his death and his and his decision to join the revolution but in Iran um the the facts of his martyrdom which is that he was living in a city that was besieged by the the Shaw's
soldiers a city that was slowly starving to death a city that had run out of food and he and his students at the time made this fateful decision to try to break through that Siege and bring help and food to the city and he died in that process which going back to what we were just saying is sort of like the quintessential notion of Shia martyrdom right that this is a suicide mission
there is no way that this will succeed but I'm going to do it anyway way because it is it is to to free people from suffering and Injustice so in a funny way it's not a Christian enough story for the Western audiences or that's a nice way of putting it yeah what do you think of the common criticism that Shia Islam ends up too obsessed with personalities you have all
these imams they're made of light rather than dust they command so much attention it's may be attention with the monotheistic emphasis of Islam what's your take on that yeah no I think that's an absolute absolutely correct uh interpretation of of Shia Islam Sunni Islam which is the majority version of Islam about 80% of the world's you know nearly two billion Muslims would call
themselves some form of Sunni Islam and Sunni Islam tends to be focused on text and interpretation the Quran and the so-called Sunnah which is like you know this vast body I think Jews will know what I'm talking about right like there's the scripture and then there are tens of thousands of pages of interpretation on that scripture and for most sunnis that is the the summon total
of where Authority lies but not so with shiism you're absolutely right shiism has had first a a series of so-called imams and depending on what kind of Shia you are you you recognize a different number of of imams some recognize six some recognize seven some recognize 12 um Iran is what's called called 12 verism so they recognized 12 uh imams and and you said it right these are
different they're not like the rest of us they're infallible they get Divine Authority they have access to knowledge you know from a a Divine source that the rest of us don't have access to uh now of course there are no more imams left they're all they're all gone now at this point but what that does is I think twofold number one yes you're right it does kind of become a religion about
Charisma and a religion about personality and you can very easily see how that can lead to someone like ayahi taking over an entire country because he Taps into that notion of a charismatic personality with access to some kind of divine knowledge that that you know you need to follow the flip side however is that shiism can be much more Innovative than Sunni Islam uh it's open to
experimentation and reinterpretation um because it's not all about trying to figure out new ways of interpreting static text like Sunni Islam is that's all you got is text that's it and people can interpret it in their different ways here you have different sources of emulation different people who have you know authority to kind of interpret and reinterpret sometimes in
Fairly radical and innovative ways that's what he did and we can talk about that later um that allows for all kinds of new ways of thinking about uh this religion so it's much more malleable let's say so there's there's I'd say positives and negatives to that kind of religion if there's more Innovation overall in shiism why do Sufi Traditions seem so strongly tied to Sunni Islam
because that's an innovation right there early sufis in Persia like Al gazali but much later it's about the whirling dervishes and the other side of the world that's Islamic world that is Sufism is of course the mystical branch of Islam all religions have a mystical Branch to them Christianity Judaism Buddhism it's sort of the in scholarly terms we talk about religions having an
exoteric and an esoteric uh version and the exoteric is scripture tradition uh rituals you know all of that stuff uh the external stuff and the esoteric is the you know hidden mysterious spiritual meaning at the heart of the religion and Islam like all religions has that esoteric movement and it's called Sufism and while it is true that Sufism arose out of Sunni Islam in
many ways it has a lot more in common with shiism actually um Sufism kind of you know it it it it kind of balances The Divide if you will uh one thing that sufis are adamant about is that religion and not just Islam but all religion is nothing more than an external shell it's important it's not like we should you know just ignore it but to truly know God requires breaking through that
external shell and getting to the very heart of the matter so in other words sufis have this line that I always loved that they say religion is the signpost to God that religion does nothing more than just point the way to God but to know God you have to rid yourself of the ego and become one with God so in your understanding can Sufism stand alongside the prophetic structure of Islam is
something separate or is it synthesized with it into one consistent picture that's a hardcore brilliant uh theological question because it's one that gets it's been debated for generations and I what I will say is this that Sufism is like all mystical Traditions incredibly eclectic it it comes in thousands of different forms there are some sufis that are very traditionalist very hard to even
sometimes tell the difference between them and your basic Sunni and there are some sufis that take part in the the spectacular displays uh sometimes displays that involve uh you know putting swords through their bodies uh taking part in uh painful acts ways of trying to sort of deny the self and the body in a way um that most Muslims would look at and say that looks nothing like Islam and so
you know Sufism is what a Sufi says it is basically so if I go to Albania and I chat with the Bashi how is their version of Sufism different then say the naksh bandis yeah absolutely so what's great about Sufism and again this it just you know this is sort of a standard uh uh description of all mystical movements is that they absorb themselves into local cultures and local practices um and so
when you have these kinds of deeply spiritual my iCal movements they most often arise from the culture they're not so often uh brought in from the outside right religion in its most Orthodox sense is usually introduced to a culture or to a people right somebody shows up and says this is Islam this is Christianity this is Buddhism Sufism like much of mystical
movements is something something that sort of comes out of the ground itself and then starts to marry itself to that kind of dominant religion and so we see sort of Christian mysticism all around the world that uh in some places looks like paganism and in some places looks like sort of traditional nature worship uh but it's uses some of the symbols and metaphors of Christianity and so it kind
of becomes an indigenous uh indigenous version of Christianity and that's exactly the same thing with with Sufism and Islam it depends on where you go looks different let's say I go to India how's Sufism in India so India of course is the most religiously diverse Nation on Earth uh it every religion that you can possibly imagine exists in India including all the forms
of Islam and so you're going to see the traditional say like nakshbandi version of Sufism which means you you know people sit around in circles and they they take part in breathing exercises and maybe yogic movements as a way of or or they they recite certain verses from the Quran over and over again as a way of kind of achieving Oneness with God but then you go into the villages and
you see uh sufis who are uh walking on hot coals uh for instance uh as a way of denying the body uh it really runs the gamut it really does and how is shiism different in India I was just an Ahmedabad I saw a Shiite religious procession of some kind yes Ashura um there are a lot of Shia in in India um and in Pakistan all of South Asia actually a large number of of Shia but
say how's that different from the Persian tradition what theologically or in terms of practice would stand out so the kind of shiism that one finds in South Asia is primarily what we refer to as ish shiism or sevener shiism remember earlier I said it depends on how many imams you accept and the ishes accept seven imams and the uh uh in Iran they accept 12 uh uh imams and 12 verism is
by far the majority shiism but the ishes are a very robust and expanding religious uh Community a lot of ismaelis here in the United States actually and in Canada uh but they they are primarily focused on in South Asia and they tend to be much more into music and dancing and movement something you don't see that often in sort of the traditional shiism of Iran right there's not a lot
of not a lot of music and dancing in the religious ceremony there's music and dancing but it's not part of the religious ceremony whereas ishes will have um gazals the sort of song SS that are very spiritual exactly exactly and they'll have you know uh concerts that will go on for hours and hours and hours where people will be dancing and and and falling into an ecstatic State um very
much looks like Sufism you know so it it just goes to show you that uh a lot of these religious Traditions are bounded much more by culture um than they are by sort of theology ology or doctrine you know a a Sufi in India will look a lot more like a Christian Mystic then he will look like a Sufi in say Macedonia and the ismaelis in India Pakistan if you were to boil down their
objection to the extra five imams to its most conceptual level how would you explain that what's wrong with those IMS this is one of those this is one of those like you know uh historic arguments that I'm sure made you know it was so important at one point and nowadays we look at it and we think seriously that that's what you guys broke up for but if you look at
Christian debates over the Trinity they correspond to some real difference you know can man be God monophysites and so on right but I mean you know the Christian debates over the nature of Jesus uh you know resulted in in massacres because one person said no he's he's God but in man form and one person would say no but he's man but he has God inside of him the next thing you
know you know there are thousand dead people on the battlefield um the way that this worked was the sixth Imam now remember the imams are infallible that's the that's the note you know very important right so right right the imams with the capital eyes in shiism are supposed to be infallible and the sixth imom before he died uh designated one of his sons uh ishmail to become the the seventh
Imam and then before the sixth Imam died the seventh Imam died the Ishmael died and so the sixth Imam said okay never mind then it'll be um you know this other uh uh Imam and the vast majority of the Shia just kind of said okay and they continued with that seventh Imam but a minority of the Shia scratched their head and said wait a minute that is doesn't make any sense you're
infallible you chose this person and if you chose that person then that's the Imam so maybe he's not really dead maybe he is just an occultation maybe he's just in hiding maybe in fact he's a sort of Messianic figure who will return at the end of time and so they broke off at that seventh Imam and they called themselves ismaelis how would you describe your own relationship to shiism and
Sufism well I mean you know I grew up in Iran um and so I grew up in a Shia family um but you know my religion was more a matter of my identity than really anything else you know like most people you just kind of you go to to mosque or you go to Temple or you go to church on the holidays and and it's kind of how you understand yourself I didn't I wasn't by any means I don't think I came
from a very Pious family that's for sure um and certainly when we left Iran uh my dad who and you're how old then I was seven okay and it was 1979 I was 7 years old and my father was never a religious man so when he came to America he thought great now we don't even need to you know go on holidays anymore so we're done now with with all religion um and maybe that's part partly why I became so
interested in religion you know because when you when uh when you live in a household that where there's no religion anymore you just suddenly start to wonder why um and so I had a very kind of roundabout spiritual journey but for me as a as an adult when I was studying the world's religions and still longing for some kind of spiritual uh you know edification of my
own I began to read about Sufi Islam which is a tradition that I didn't know that much about and it not only appealed to me um the way that I put it is that I was reading things that I already believed I just didn't know there was a word for it you know and so Sufi Islam kind of gave me the the words for these ideas and these feelings and these beliefs that I I felt like I already had
and so that's why I I associate myself with Sufism is it the framework or is it that you personally have a very definite view about each Imam and which ones are appropriate oh no no I couldn't care less about the imams at all I am not Shia I I would not refer to myself as Shia at all but but what appealed to me about Sufism uh beyond the fact that as i'
already said before that it really does think of religion as sort of the starting point and and I often say when you study the world's religions for a living it becomes very difficult to take any one of those religions all that seriously anymore you know it certainly takes it it makes it very hard to take their their claims to absolute truth seriously anymore that's for sure um and
what I love about Sufism is that it doesn't take religion or uh those claims to absolute truth seriously anymore but one thing that Sufism does do which is very appealing to me is that at the heart of Sufism is this notion that God if God is anything is all things that God is all and all is God that you and me and this desk and this microphone if a thing exists it exists only in so far as it
shares in the existence of the only thing that exists and so there's this concept of divine Unity at the heart of Sufism that I've always found very appealing spiritually speaking and that's why I was drawn to it if you had to describe what for you is more beautiful in Islam than in other religions what would it be that that that yeah um now it that is not to say that there aren't other religions that
hold something similar to this notion you know Buddhism also believes that all things are the same except that in Buddhism the thing that all things are is an illusion right all things are nothing there is nothing nothing exists you don't exist nothing exists um it Sufism is sort of like the opposite end of that yes all things are the same but all those things are one
thing and that one thing is god um you worry that that slides into Spinosa and pantheism what what keeps that move away I am a Unapologetic pantheist uh I don't I mean I I don't have a problem being called the pantheist at all I do believe that all things um are united that all things are one um and I do believe that you know if there is a thing called God whatever
that thing is it's pure existence and I share in that existence but if there's this one all-encompassing thing to what do we compare it to to distinguish secular pantheism from religious or spiritual pantheism well I guess what I would say is the difference between monism and pantheism and uh Spinoza's idea is that all things are made of the same thing which by the way he was he
was right as far as we know so far um that everything that exists today has always existed and will always exist as long as the universe exists that's a scientific statement not a religious one but it sounds a lot like Sufism to me that everything that exists always existed and will always exist as long as the universe exists as long as you define the universe as God that's what I
would say is the difference between your your sort of dilation secular pantheism and religious pantheism now as you know wahhabism is often cited as a kind of Whipping Boy for what people don't like about Islam is there something virtuous or beautiful in wahabism or is that a view you're opposed to or are westerners understanding it correctly that's a really really can you stal man wahabism
for me yeah that's good that's good okay no I I I pride myself and being a a scholar of religions and so I should be able to I should be able to talk about the beauty of all all religious Traditions what wahabism has in common with a lot of these religious revivalist movements of the 19th century remember wahabism arose at the same time as the Second Great Awakening was happening in
the United States and what they all have in common is this desire to return to the pure form of the religion this is a Time of modernization and societies look different and mores are different um you know it's funny because we are talking about the middle of the 19th century but we're talking about a time of great technological advances uh we're talking
about uh uh you know coming out of a period of the Enlightenment in which some of our most basic um uh assumptions about the the workings of the universe are being openly question questioned and all around the world there are religious groups that are reacting to this Movement by reverting right let's revert to the fundamentals of our faith this is where the term fundamentalism came from let's
let's purify our religion of all of these you know innovations that have crept inside of it um and and so the the same sense that you know gives you sort of the the puritanical version of Christianity gave birth to the puritanical version of Islam this puritanical version of Islam however had one very big Advantage which is that it became the state religion of what very
quickly became the richest nation on Earth um the the Saudi Clan and and of course Saudi Arabia uh the Saudi Clan was able to control take control over the Arabian Peninsula and defeat all of the other clans by marrying itself to this puritanical form of Islam called wahhabism um and then that Clan learned the lesson that everyone eventually learns which is there's no such thing as
controlling fundamentalism you you you may think that you're in charge of it but you're not and so just look at the last 60 70 years of history and and that will tell you uh what wahabism with Saudi funding and control and power um has done not just to Islam but to the world so I said one nice thing about it is it a motivational problem for Islam that it has a kind of final once
and for all Revelation so it's not as clear what you're waiting for how do you process that if you're a Jew if you're a Christian the stories are different but it's clear what you're waiting for right well so again we have to differentiate between Sunni Islam and Shia Islam so Islam Sunni Islam let's say yeah Islam does have obviously a conception of an end of time obviously a notion that you
know there will be a moment in which all of creation will come to an end and a perfected Society will arise is Islam does have a Messianic figure that they called the MDI uh although that figure to be to be perfectly Frank plays a much larger role in Shia Islam than it does in Sunni Islam I mean sunnis will say well yeah sure I believe in the Mahi shiism begins with belief in the Mii
that the end times and and the and the Messiah to come um in fact many sunnis would say well the Messiah is Jesus Jesus will come back as the Messiah and then the Mahi will maybe come before or after him it's very it's very confused the the Traditions but I think you you have this really interesting point because the way that Muslims understand their scripture is quite different than the
way that Christians understand their scripture it has actually much more in common with the ways that Jews understand their their scripture for for Muslims and Jews the scripture itself is Holy and divine I don't mean to say the meaning of it the interpretation of it I mean literally the words on the page and the Quran itself can be a Divine body of sorts
right correct the actual physical Pages the physical words themselves are uh endowed with Divine Authority Jews you know obviously more conservative Jews believe the exact same thing which is why you have to maintain you know the the the Torah um in a box and you have to be care who can touch it and who can't touch it and you can't touch it with your hands um you get a lot of that
with Islam as well you can't destroy the Torah like you have to you have to burn it you know if you can't throw it in the G you can't touch the ground all those things I think Christians kind of look at that and think wait a minute it sounds like you're you're sort of focusing on the physical scripture instead of what the scripture itself says and that's not
incorrect actually um and has a lot to do with the way that both Jews and Muslims understand the speech of God so the theory is this that if the Torah if the Quran is the word of God then the word of God can't be separated from the self of God that means the word of God is God in some form and so that's why no matter what language you speak you have to learn to read the Torah in Hebrew
same with Islam doesn't matter what language you speak you have to learn to recite the scripture in Arabic even if you don't understand it it's the words themselves the sound of the words the recitation of the words that gives you divine power obviously Christians don't believe that of Christians for Christians it's just words on a page and who cares what language it is and it's
the meaning behind it that matters the words themselves don't have any power it's what the word mean that have power but you can really see this divide uh between um Judaism and Islam on one side and Christianity on the other what do you think of the Kenneth Craig argument that at least in many branches of Sunni Islam the distance between man and God is simply too great and that there's
something cold or alienating about it I love I love Ken KAG a lot by the way you know I got to be honest it it kind of appeals to me the distance appeals to you the distance appeals to me and you know I'm I'm getting a little bit personal here but um you know when I was in high school I um I became an Evangelical Christian for a brief while and uh it was a very you know real and
emotionally resonant uh conversion for me um I fully you know I heard the gospel story and I I thought it was great and I believed it but I will say that when I look back on that time the one thing that always that I always had a hard time with was this idea that like Jesus was my best friend you know that like God God is my buddy you know that you can just kind of like that I I
they it's it's a joke that my friends and I do all the time but you know they they gave us this little card with Jesus's picture on it and it said Jesus in my pocket and you were supposed to keep it in your pocket all the time and I remember thinking to myself do I want Jesus in my pocket that that doesn't there's something that doesn't feel right about that when I went to college
I happened to go to a Catholic um university and I thought oh I don't know anything about Catholicism I'll go and check out this mass and there Jesus wasn't in your pocket Jesus was way up there on the cross and you went to him with fear and trembling and and distance and I got to say I liked it I it appealed to me and maybe it's because of the fact that you know I was
I was raised Muslim even though you know at the time I wouldn't have really understood what that meant uh but there's something about that notion of the distance between man and God that I like you know that that that I want to approach god with that that level of of reverence you know uh that makes that makes God other in a sense I don't know if that makes sense but that's that's my just my
personal opinion on it if I look at the historical data what seems to me to be the regularities is that Islam is can be quite good for Commerce and being a merchant but not nearly so good for having a stable democracy is that a view you would try to talk me out of I wouldn't I wouldn't try to talk you out of it I would say that I disagree with that first of all tell me why you
disagree because Indonesia is a democracy but not for long it's somewhat weak you could say Malaysia but there just aren't many examples right right turkey's falling apart democratically speaking tell me a Christian country that's that's doing well with democracy Western Europe Canada okay Canada Canada is a pretty good one but I don't know if that would say that Canada um here's
what here's what I would say uh to the to the first point uh of that which is that all religion is good for Commerce I mean capitalism is the opposite of literally Everything Jesus ever said about the topic of money or profit or anything and yet capitalism is almost a religion uh in Christian countries whereas you know Islam and Judaism both uh forbid the charging of interest and Usery and yet
both of them have been used very very easily in order to promote uh business and and in some cases certainly when you're talking about the UAE uh you know have have created the wealthiest Societies in the world that's one thing the second thing is I think there's a mistake in trying to see uh like a moral code or a moral Foundation to uh a political philosophy like democracy
right the political philosophy of democracy is that the majority vote gets to basically make the decisions and if the majority of the people are Muslims then obviously the Democracy itself and the laws that they pass and and you know the the the principles that they espouse are going to be tinged with you know the the sort of majority morality if you will of uh the the population itself and
so there are countless examples I mean you talk about turkey yeah okay so turkey is having difficulty with authoritarianism I will take turkey today to America under Trump any day of the week I mean at at the one I mean at least the the Reb T erdogan has autocratic Tendencies just like Trump did uh but wasn't a megalomaniac possibly narcissistic sociopath um yes Indonesia is having
difficulty Indonesia has a billion people uh it's one of the most diverse Nation it's what 250 million right yeah I'm sorry I'm I'm exaggerating but what I'm trying to say is um or okay we could talk about India okay so then I guess Hinduism isn't conducive to democracy because India has you know a billion people 900 million of them Hindus and their Democratic situation even right
now is completely unstable under the uh the uh leadership of the BJP I I again I think we can look at political stability or instability around the world including here in the United States where almost half of us now according to most polls seem to be no longer all that much in favor of democracy and to then tie that instantly to whatever the majority religion
happens to be I think is a is a false connection but let's go to early 20th century Iran which is covered in your book an American martyr in Persia there's a constitutional revolution in Iran 1906 to 1911 what was that motivated by this was an ERA the early 20th century in which all around the world there were these protests and uprisings uh by people demanding um what everyone was kind of
referring to as constitutionalism right and they had different ideas of what that actually meant um you know for some people it meant um lower prices for some people it meant popular sovereignty for some people it meant you know the freedom to do or say whatever you wanted to but constitutionalism as a movement was a flame in Russia in turkey and Mexico and China but but at in
1906 the sort of where it kind of really began was in Iran in the sort of what's now referred to to is the the Constitutional revolution of 1906 and this involved a band of young zealous revolutionaries who together with the business and Merchant class and the the uh the clerical class the clergy especially sort of the low-level mid-level clergy um began to clamor for
the creation of a constitution that would outline the rights and privileges of all the citizens and just as importantly the creation of a parliament uh with an elected body A legislature that would have the ability to curtail the absolute Authority was the influence British or else from elsewhere what what fed into this it was French and British but what's really fascinating is the way
in which it's so seamlessly integrated traditional Persian political thought and Islamic ideas um into the the kind of Western conception of constitutionalism but it was heavily influenced by the British model because what they what they they were actually asking for was a constitutional monarchy they weren't saying we want to get rid of the shaw we want to get rid of the
throne altogether there were some some more sort of radical elements social Democrats who were actually asking that but in general what the call was was to have something akin to what the UK is a uh a monarchy that is limited uh by a constitution and an elected body that can curtail uh the sort of absolute power of the throne and the current Iranian protests how aware are they of
this Heritage is there a direct link or it's something from the distant past like talking to Americans about you know an 18th century Shaye Rebellion or something well you know Iran has had three major Revolutions of the 20th century the Constitutional revolution of 1906 the Nationalist revolution in 1953 and of course the the revolution of 19 79 and those three you know moments are
sort of part of the the history of the country you know it's what you learn in school it's you know now of course depending on the time what you learn about it sometimes changes the heroes change you know um for instance there was a time in which Howard Baskerville who fought in the Constitutional Revolution was taught in schools there were schools named after Howard baskball
streets named after Howard basille you know he was part of the traditional teaching of 20th century history for most Iranian school children myself included when I was there but not anymore uh you know really since 1979 uh that part of uh 20th century history has kind of diminished to the point where it's really hard to find anyone under the age of 50 in Iran who could tell you who Howard Baskerville
was anymore even the constitutional Revolution itself hasn't been taught with the same rigor um since the 79 Revolution as it used to be um primarily I mean it for a while it was because these are people fighting against the Sha right and so I think post 79 there was this idea that hey look you know in the same way that you know our ancestors fought against the Sha we're fighting
against the shaw too but over the years uh the teaching of it has actually become a little bit less robust primarily because it's hard to argue that you're following in the footsteps of a revolution the purpose of which was to bring equal rights to each citizen when you live in the current Islamic Republic and why did the Constitutional Revolution fail well it didn't fail it actually ended up
succeeding uh and in 1909 um the revolutionaries were able to remove the Sha uh into exile the sha who was fighting against the Constitution put his son on the throne instead the Constitution became part of law a an elected Parliament began making uh you know laws and for a very brief while Iran was a constitutional monarchy but that failed right why why did that end
it was a a a couple of factors first of all was the first world war the first world war broke out very soon afterwards um and Iran became the principal staging ground uh for Russian and British troops so Russia occupied the entirety of the north uh and uh the Britain occupied the entirety of the South the war was a Devastation for you know Humanity across
the board but in Iran it led to famine and Devastation the Spanish flu killed nearly 20% of the population the economy collapsed so by the time you get to 1921 you have a constitutional monarchy but an absolutely unstable one and in 1921 a uh military commander by the name of rakan uh was uh with the backing of the British Empire uh declared a military coup uh he tore up the Constitution uh
got rid of Parliament and then really surprising everyone declared himself the next Shaw created what we now know as the pavi dynasty he became reses shha and Iran went right back to absolute monarchy uh after you know a decade of a somewhat you know successful but definitely unstable constitutional monarchy and then of course the pav regime that that reses sha created um
ultimately he gets thrown out uh at the runup to the second world war because he made some friendly overtures to Nazi Germany and so the Allies removed him and put his son on the throne and that son Muhammad razah Pahlavi is the man who was overthrown in the 1979 Revolution and many Outsiders have the impression that Iran is very long human capital very long cultural Excellence
but never has done so well in terms of political outcomes or not for a long time and that's a puzzle to them I how how do you resolve that puzzle in your mind you know it's a tragedy to I mean sure but why well I'd say there's there's uh two factors and and we've kind of touched upon them the first factor is external interference the Russian Empire uh brutally uh fought against the
Constitutional Revolution and despite the fact that the Constitutional Revolution did end up succeeding the Russians nevertheless uh made sure that in the until the runup to the to the the Bolshevik Revolution uh in 1917 that that the the uh the government the constitutional government uh would fail and I I outlined this in the book there's all you know that the the the
the occupation of of Northern parts of Iran the the demand for concessions and and etc etc then in 1953 the Iranians rose up again and created a a democratic uh uh country very briefly in the Nationalist Revolution with the Prime Minister Muhammad Moses deck and kicked the British I'm sorry kicked the um the Sha out of the country um and I'm sure you remember what happened then the CIA
showed up and put the shaw back on the throne um so but the CIA has limited power right we we can't rule Afghanistan that was a disaster it's not that you know five people from Langley can parachute into tyon and take control of the whole country your listeners your listeners if they are interested in this please uh Google Operation Ajax because it literally was five people from
Langley literally led by Kermit Ros everyone just went along with this they showed up with I mean Ukraine didn't go along with Russia coming in right now this was first of all 1953 um and the Kermit Roosevelt and four others showed up in Tron with a suitcase full of cash and in a very very brief amount of time uh with with the the help of you know the the sort of allies that they had in Iran who wanted
the Sha back um created a fake counterrevolution that brought Muhammad mosad back off down and and brought the Sha back in in power it was the most extraordinary success it actually gave birth to the CIA As We Know It uh Operation Ajax if anybody is interested in that it's a crazy story um and then of course you know in 79 you had a post-revolutionary chaos that was
essentially hijacked by the the clerics and itself so it's a combination of things it's a combination of the internal structure and the conflicts in Iranian Society the inability to sort of come together um and unify under a common cause um and frankly the interference of external forces those two things I think for the last hundred years have spelled a situation in which
here we are women and children and Men on the streets in Iran right now clamoring for the exact same rights that they were clamoring for in 1906 it's like wow here we are 116 years later and Iranians are asking for the same thing and they still don't have it it's it's as an Iranian it's it's absolutely heartbreaking what's your favorite Iranian movie ooh uh there's so
much um okay uh it I would say a separation but I'm curious okay of course a separation is good I was going back a little bit more I was thinking like Taste of cherry or the color of paradise um or those are very good yeah um uh the white balloon I love that one yeah those are some of the some of my my favorite classic ones but oh yeah separation is is phenomenal that's
that's where's the best Iranian food in Westwood Los Angeles okay I love this question because my answer is it depends on what you want like that's what I want so if you want fezen Jon then you probably go to Sham Shiri you know or or chol um if you want like really great lamb I would say maybe Javon if you want great tadig maybe Daria so this is the thing is when you're talking about uh ter
Angelus there are dozens of restaurants to choose from you get to decide which one depending on kind of what you're in the mood for how much do you think one can still feel the influence Zoroastrianism in contemporary Iran or is that just done and gone no I love that question and while it is true that Zoroastrianism as a religion is dying and there's every reason to think that maybe
a century from now there probably won't be any zoroastrians left I think currently right now if you're talking about the entire Globe there's probably about 250,000 200,000 zoroastrians left in the world um which is horrifying F cuz this is one of the Primal religions right there would be no Christianity if it wasn't for Zoroastrianism but Zoroastrianism is so deeply embedded in Persian culture that
the vast majority of Iranians probably don't even know that the things they're doing are zoroastrian it's kind of like Americans and you know when you celebrate Christmas and you don't realize that it's that you're doing these sort of pagan Germanic you know rituals it's the same thing but our New Year's ceremonies um you know the the uh you know the the various holidays that we
have uh in in Iran um and and then just sort of like the way the the Iranian sort of Consciousness you know is still deeply affected almost at the gene level by Zoroastrianism how did Iranian Judaism turn out special and different well uh people might be surprised to learn that even today right now the second largest Jewish community in the Middle East is in Iran it's not
gigantic it's probably about 25,000 Jews um but they have been there for centuries um uh I think there are some historians that say that you know you can it can go all the way back to uh the Babylonian exile and this now we have to go back into ancient history but for people who remember at a certain point uh the Babylonians destroyed Israel um and Scattered the the Jews across the
the near East and then in the 6th Century um Cyrus the Great the first sort of King of the Persian Empire destroyed Babylon and sent the Jews back to their Homeland uh with treasure in order to rebuild their Temple and so J Judaism has always seen Cyrus in fact Cyrus is the only non-jew in the who is called Messiah um has always seen Cyrus this sort of elevated light and many
many Jews stayed in the Persian Empire so the Jews in Iran will tell you whether this is factually correct or not that their presence in the land predates Islam that they were there before you know there was any such thing as Islam and so they have they're deeply rooted in the culture and tradition um there though as I say it is a a small community now and definitely a a
diminishing Community are you optimistic about Modern Day Iran I'm optimistic about the current uh well I I would only call it a revolution that's happening right now this is It's you can't really call it an uprising anymore or demonstrations anymore what we're seeing right now is a revolution and I'm and I'm optimistic on for a couple of reasons one because of who is leading it
um because it's women Le and it's youth LED and it's gen Z and this is a generation that unlike the millennial generation in Iran um just has no no tolerance for the usual answers go back home you can wear jeans everything will be fine which is what you know the the regime would say every time the youth rose up and this generation has had it but what I think is remarkable is the way in which these
protests have managed to bring in all these other sectors of Iranian Society so you're seeing old people and young people conservatives and progressives you're seeing women dressed head to toe in chadors the sort of traditional uh conservative Islamic dress chanting slogans against the government standing next to young women in jeans and t-shirts and who are unveiled and now
we're seeing strikes uh being called the oil industry is is going under strike the bizarre Merchants are going under strike this morning we saw protests break out in the city of K which is the the Vatican of of Iran right the the religious city of Iran and there were thousands of people on the streets um calling for an end to the regime so I don't think we've seen anything quite
like this since the revolution that I fled and where it'll go it's it's hard to say but I I it's hard to imagine that this isn't going to lead to some kind of profound and perhaps fundamental change in Iran but most popular revolutions on their own fail right you need a Subs segment of the elite to truly flip and take over and perform the final step do you see that is in the cards for Iran
the elite that you're talking about the governing Elite yeah is different that the elite there is the what I would refer to as kind of the midlevel clerics the Seminary students Etc Iran is a country in which the it's it's under clerical rule so the clerics are the political leaders but that is a very new and frankly heretical idea in Shia Islam there's no history in 1400 years of of
Islamic uh and Shia thought about direct clerical rule that just doesn't exist this was something thaty thought up out of whole cloth it's just a completely new innovation and what people I think don't understand is that it's not a very popular theology in shiism and so for the most part the sort of upper echelon you know of the clerical regime those in power those enjoying the the
the sort of the benefits of power they're entrenched in that ideology but the younger clerics the Seminary students the mid-level clerics the Sook preachers the sort of you know uh the imams at your mosque there is an enormous amount of frustration and I would even say rejection of the theology behind clerical Rule and the generals and when and the generals are like generals
everywhere in the world utterly pragmatic they you know they will pretend to be Pious if that's what is needed they will give up on piety if that's what is needed I'm really glad that you said that because I think most Iran Watchers will tell you that the real power in Iran isn't the Ayatollah it seems that way from the outside but that's not where the real power is the real power is the irgc the
Revolutionary guards uh who prop up that regime and for better or worse they can ba be the biggest influence in what happens next it's not impossible to think that the Revolutionary guard which craves stability above all else would say at a certain point we agree with the protesters the it's time for the clerics to go back to their mosques and in the name of stability we're going to declare
martial law and we'll be in charge for a little while and suddenly Iran looks like Pakistan in the 80s it looks a little bit like Egypt for a while and you go from you know religious rule to military rule that that could happen uh I'm not saying that's a good thing I'm just saying it is not an unlikely scenario in Iran to wrap up the very last question your new
book is just out an American martyr in Persia what will you do next I am uh moving on towards fiction now uh what kind of Novel or for other form of fiction well okay well I'll tell you so there is a um a thousand year old Persian epic called the shaame or the book of kings and it's essentially the Central Asian Iliad uh Odyssey you know it's a 100,000 rhyming couplets written by a
poet named fer DOI uh more than a thousand years ago and I would like to tackle that in some way perhaps mean write a Pros version right an updated version in English yes yes I'm not I'm not I'm still dealing with it but yes possibly like a a novelization of it is what I what I'm kind of dancing around right now Raza osen thank you very much it was my pleasure thanks for having me Tyler