Academic literature on the topic 'Iranian Arab Minority'

A religious minority of Bulgarian-speaking Muslims, the Pomaks now live dispersed in five Balkan countries: Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece, Albania and Turkey. A living legacy of the complexities of Balkan history, the Pomaks represent a perfect case to study interstate political intricacies around the unsettled identity of small inter-communal groups. An examination of this community should enrich the knowledge about the nature of Balkan Islam that stands on the periphery of the Arab-Iranian-Turkic Islamic heartland, the three peoples who carried the major burden of Islamic history.

Iran is a multi-ethnic society in which approximately 50% of its citizens are of non-Persian origin, yet researchers commonly use the terms Persians and Iranians interchangeably, neglecting the supra-ethnic meaning of the term Iranian for many of the non-Persians in Iran. The largest minority ethnic group in Iran is the Azerbaijanis (comprising approximately a third of the population) and other major groups include the Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis and Turkmen. Iran's ethnic groups are particularly susceptible to external manipulation and considerably subject to influence from events taking place outside its borders, since most of the non-Persians are concentrated in the frontier areas and have ties to co-ethnics in adjoining states, such as Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

The period of the struggle of South (Iraqi) Kurdistan for self-determination, namely such events as its transformation into the center of the Kurdish national movement in the Middle East and the proclamation of the Kurdish Autonomous Region (KAR) in 1974 is considered. The creation of a legal precedent, which has acquired an international character, is commented on. The recognition by the Iraqi government of the right of the Kurds to territorial autonomy is assessed as an undoubted success of the national movement of the Kurdish minority. It is noted that the development of the draft of Interim Constitution was preceded by a long discussion between Shiite Arabs, Sunni Arabs and Kurds on the future administrative structure of the country. It is shown that the Baathist regime was not going to solve the Kurdish problem in the country on a truly democratic basis, but only created the appearance of a solution to the issue in order to remove internal and international tensions. The author dwells on the repressive measures of the government of Saddam Hussein against the Kurds. The mass character of repressive measures during the Iranian-Iraqi war of 1980—1988 is emphasized.

Tajikistan, at the heart of Central Eurasia, had a population of 7,563,687 in 2010, estimated recently to be almost 10,084,935. Named for its majority nationality, Tajikistan has many other nationalities, most with their own language. This article explores what is known about the historical, development and current status of multiple languages in Tajikistan’s linguistic tapestry. We provide a tentative overview of Tajikistan’s evolving language ecology from earliest times when a range of Eastern Iranian languages were dominant, to the reduced use of Eastern Iranian languages following the entry of Arabic and New Persian (a western Iranian language) into the ecology with the Arab conquest, and the subsequent entry of Turkic languages, and more recently the entry of Russian under the late Russian empire and its spread under the Soviet Union. Following independence in 1991, a shift in balance among domains of use of Tajik and Russian has been ongoing at the same time as international languages, especially English, have entered Tajikistan’s language ecology. We review the current state of knowledge about contemporary sociolinguistic dynamics, monolingualism and plurilingualism in society, where the titular language, Tajik/Persian, is in interaction with local, regional and global languages. Against the background of changing post-independence language and language-in-education policies, we discuss the prospects for monolingual, multilingual and plurilingual education in Tajikistan among efforts to promote the official language, Tajik, and to provide minority language education, while also developing proficiency in foreign languages in Tajikistan, through initiatives such as English-medium instruction.

Abstract Objective Association between a genetic polymorphism and disease, either positively or negatively, within a population may not necessarily predict association in other race-ethnic populations. The aim of this study was to genotype well recognized thrombophilia associated polymorphisms as common risk factors for miscarriage and investigate their benefit to use as risk factors in southwest region of Iran females (Khuzestan) in the Arabs ethnic minority group with spontaneous miscarriage. We developed a Reverse Dot Blot Assay for the genotyping of four polymorphisms. Results There were significant differences in the genotype distribution and allelic frequencies of the MTHFR 1298 A > C, MTHFR 677 C > T, Factor V Leiden 1691 G > A, PAI-1-844G > A polymorphisms between the case and control groups. The MTHFR 1298 A > C, MTHFR 677 C > T and Factor V Leiden 1691 G > A polymorphisms were significantly associated with spontaneous miscarriage risk. Unlike some other race-ethnic populations, PAI-1-844G > A polymorphism was associated with risk of developing unplanned miscarriage in Iranian Arabs ethnic minority group females.

This study linked background TV and socioeconomic status (SES) to minority children’s Persian vocabulary development. To this end, 80 Iranian preschool children (aged 5–6 years old) from two minority groups of Arabs and Turks were selected using stratified random sampling. They were simultaneous bilinguals, i.e., their mother tongue was either Arabic or Azari and their first language was Persian. Language sample analysis (LSA) was used to measure vocabulary development through a 15-min interview by language experts (PhD in applied linguistics). The LSA measures included total number of utterances (TNU), total number of words (TNW), total number of new words (NDW), and mean length of utterance (MLU). A series of independent-samples t test, paired-samples t test, and repeated measures MANOVA tests were ran to examine data. Results showed significant improvements in children’s vocabulary scores from pretest to posttest for all children. In addition, high-SES children scored higher on the vocabulary measures in pretest and posttest. Moreover, background TV was associated with higher means in the TNW and the NDW in groups. The researchers concluded that background TV may be related to higher vocabulary scores in low-SES families as it may compensate for some linguistics gaps in these families including lower amount of child-parent interaction, play, and parents’ level of literacy.

In the history of modern Iran, the situation of various minority elements living in this country in the process of nation-state building has been a common subject of discussion and research. Until the beginning of the 20th century, in the Iranian geography, where various communities such as Kurds, Baluç and Lor, especially Turks and Arabs, lived, an administrative system, which was expressed as "Memaliki Mahruse" and had a kind of state system, was dominant. Within this system, each community was protecting and maintaining its own cultural existence. Nation building, whose intellectual foundation started to be laid with the period of Reza Shah, especially with the post-constitutional period, was put into the implementation process from the design process. Although the intellectual background was started to be discarded in previous periods, the definition of the "other" in the face of the exemplary identity designed in this period, which can be characterized as a sharp transition period, brought along many discussions and problems. In this article, which we have translated, the situation of the Turks, who have been pushed to the "other" position in Iranian nationalist thought, is examined within the framework of the articles written by some of the important intellectual leaders of Iranian nationalism, who came to the fore in the nation-building process. In this period, the Iranian national identity, which was desired to be built on the axis of "Aryan Nationalism" and "Persian Language", embraced the pre-Islamic Iranian history as its content, while the Islamic period was questioned from various perspectives. In this context, the Turks, who were in a dominant position administratively and militarily, especially during the last millennium of Iran's history, were brought forward as the cause of the country's backwardness. This issue, which was handled by Iranian nationalists with ideological concerns and a reductionist understanding, was considered as an existential problem, especially as a result of the First World War and various developments in the region. In this respect, events such as the activities of the Union and Progress in the region in the last period of the Ottoman Empire and the independence of the Republic of Azerbaijan from Russia worried Iranian nationalists and prompted them to produce new arguments with the concern of preserving the integrity of Iran against these two political structures. In this context, it was based on an understanding of Iranian nationalists to ignore and assimilate approaches to the issue. According to them, the Turks in Iran had no ties with the Turks of Turkey and the Republic of Azerbaijan. The Turkish language, on the other hand, was imposed on Iran later by looters. Everything had to be returned to the original, and the Persian language and Aryan civilization had to be popularized in these lands again. These and similar ideas were among the topics that were constantly covered by Iranian nationalists in magazines such as "Ayendeh", "Iranshahr", "Kaveh" and "Name-i Ferengistan". This study, which was written by the faculty members of Tabriz University under the responsible authorship of Nasır Sıdkî, deals with the approaches of Iranian nationalist intellectuals to issues such as Turks, Turkishness and the Turkish language in Azerbaijan, and also reveals the reasons for their approach. Accordingly, the activities of the Ottomans in the region and the establishment of the Azerbaijan Republic led Iranian nationalists to have a sensitive approach towards Iranian Azerbaijan.

The Bundahišn, meaning primal or foundational creation, is the central Zoroastrian account of creation, cosmology, and eschatology and one of the most important of the surviving testaments to Zoroastrian literature and pre-Islamic Iranian culture. Touching on geography, cosmogony, anthropology, zoology, astronomy, medicine, legend, and myth, the Bundahišn can be considered a concise compendium of Zoroastrian knowledge. The Bundahišn is well known in the field as an essential primary source for the study of ancient Iranian history, religions, literature, and languages. It is one of the most important texts composed in Zoroastrian Middle Persian, also known as Zoroastrian Book Pahlavi, in the centuries after the fall of the Sasanian Empire to the invading Arab and Islamic forces in the mid seventh century. The Bundahišn provides scholars with a particularly profitable window on Zoroastrianism’s intellectual and religious history at a crucial transitional moment: centuries after the composition of the Avesta, the Zoroastrian sacred scriptures, and before the transformation of Zoroastrianism into a minority religion within Iran and adherents’ dispersion throughout Central and South Asia. However, the Bundahišn is not only a scholarly tract. It is also a great work of literature in its own right and ranks alongside the creation myths of other ancient traditions: Genesis, the Babylonian Emunah Elish, Hesiod’s Theogony, and others. Informed by the latest research in Iranian Studies, this translation aims to bring to the fore the aesthetic quality, literary style, and complexity of this important work.

Khomeini’s exhortations to the Shia majority in Iraq to revolt against the regime of President Saddam Hussein, the Sunni head of the secular Arab Baath Socialist Party, incensed not only the Iraqi leader but also the Saudi and Kuwaiti monarchs. Encouraged by reports of low morale in the depleted Iranian military, and by the Saudi and Kuwaiti rulers, Hussein invaded Iran in September 1980. His scenario visualized the ethnic Arab minority in Iran’s oil-rich Khuzistan province welcoming Iraqi soldiers as liberators, and starting a chain reaction that would culminate in the collapse of Khomeini’s regime within a few months. Iran fought the war using its limited resources. By contrast, Iraq received massive financial aid from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, which shipped their oil on its behalf, and loans from Western nations and Japan. Nominally neutral America helped it by passing on satellite and high resolution reconnaissance images of Iranian troops to Riyadh, which transmitted these to Baghdad. After ninety-five months of warfare, neither Iran nor Iraq lost much territory. And there was no a regime change in either country. The unintended consequence of the longest war of the twentieth century was to enable Khomeini to consolidate the Islamic revolution.

This chapter examines the overlooked role of demographics in sectarian identity formation and sectarian relations in the modern Arab world up to 2003. It will be argued that the demographic imbalance has created minoritarian and majoritarian outlooks. These can sometimes operate in contradictory ways between the various dimensions of sectarian identity – a national minority that is nevertheless part of a transnational majority for example. Demographics have helped shape power relations between sect-centric actors particularly at the transnational and doctrinal dimensions where mainstream conceptions of global Islam tend to be Sunni-inflected. The chapter will demonstrate the profound implications this has had for how sectarian identities are imagined and instrumentalized. In doing so, this chapter will concentrate on the extremes of sectarian polemics and sectarian ecumenism (as opposed to the more common norm of mundane coexistence and sectarian irrelevance). Finally, the role of demographics in state–sect relations and the role that the nation-state has played in minoritization, majoritization and securitization of sectarian identities will be examined. Specifically, it will look at the normativity of Sunni Islam; the often-counterproductive side-effects of state-sanctioned sect-blindness; the securitization of sectarian plurality and of sectarian outgroups; and the intersection of Arab-Iranian rivalry with state-sect relations.