Thinking about Iran and the Bomb the other day (what newspaper reader doesn’t?), it struck me as a curious coincidence that, for the second time in some of our lifetimes, Jews are being threatened with mass destruction in the name of the same ancient Indo-European word.
This is because “Iran” and “Aryan” are connected. The first ultimately derives from Old Persian arya or ariya, a term designating the Indo-European-speaking people of Persia, and is identical with Sanskrit arya — that is, the Indo-European-speaking people of northern India.
“Aryan,” on the other hand, is a modern European coinage, strongly tinged by racialist linguistic theories and constructions of history that gained currency in mid-19th-century Europe.
“Aryanism” is a strictly modern, anti-democratic political ideology, as are the politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It’s perhaps not such a coincidence, after all, that both have had it in for the Jews.
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