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Distinction and Survival: Zoroastrians, Religious Nationalism, and Cultural Ownership in Shiʿi Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2022

Navid Fozi Open the ORCID record for Navid Fozi [Opens in a new window]
Navid Fozi*
Affiliation:
Anthropology Department, Bridgewater State University, MA, USA Email: nfoziabivard@bridgew.edu
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Abstract

This article argues that the notion of Iranian culture employed in the public discourse of Zoroastrians allows them to tackle the dilemma of Shiʿi-dominated Iranianness without provoking Shiʿi authorities. The piece offers an analysis of ethnographic data, including detailed speech acts documented in Zoroastrians’ ritual spaces and cultural exhibitions. It explores the Zoroastrian configuration of an Iranian culture that summons and encodes pre-Islamic tropes and modern nationalist sentiments by constantly maneuvering around national, religious, and ethnic categories. This configuration's underpinning assumptions, narratives, and texts have powerful platforms in Iranian nationalist imagination. I propose that this arrangement attempts to carve out a space for Zoroastrians’ distinct identity by connecting the history of the Muslim Arab invasion of Persia to the Shiʿi hegemonic norms of Iranian culture today. It further invokes Zoroaster's indigeneity and teachings as the foundation of authentic Iranianness to establish Zoroastrians’ survival as a cultural system.

Keywords

Iranian cultureIranian Zoroastriansreligious nationalismritualsZoroaster
Type
Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 56 , Special Issue 1: Parsis and Iranians in the Modern Period , January 2023 , pp. 85 - 100
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Iranian Studies

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