Quote from Hellenic: "The Persians were once a highly civilized people with a high sense of justice, art and morality. With the conquest, the great Persian Empire sank, but not its culture, which was destroyed only by the advent of Islam, which banned all science, oppressed women, and gave power to corrupt caliphs. Persia quickly became very backward and only a vassal of Arabia". http://www.klett-cotta.de/sachbuch_b...eite=read sample We are no less one-sided in our assessment of Islamic Iran, even its much-vaunted classical epoch. While we show respect for the artistic mosques, and at least unbiased Europeans are not afraid to equate some of these buildings with our cathedrals in terms of rank; we are also familiar, at least by name, with a number of Muslim intellectual greats, such as Avicenna, Omar Chaijam, Firdusi, Saadi and Hafis, but who among us would want to grant such an epoch a central position in the intellectual history of mankind? Islam and culture... In any case, we still find it difficult to assess without bias the achievements of Muslim peoples, from Iranians to Arabs to Turks. We are burdened by the memory of "holy wars" which were waged in the name of Allah against the Christian Occident, we first think of fanatical religious warriors and cruel conquerors before we think of meaningful things about Muslim scientists, philosophers, poets and artists. What we encounter today in the narrow-mindedness of some fanatics confirms to many of us the idea of the Muslim as he supposedly has always been. But: Around the year 1000 of our calendar most European states had to regard themselves as "developing countries", not the Orient. At that time Islamic peoples represented the leading powers within world civilization - and Iran or Persia was for centuries regarded as the spiritual center of this extremely creative, cosmopolitan culture... Unfortunately I can't insert the rest of the text. The capacity of a post on Instagram is reached. In the link below you can find the complete text (in German). #persia #persian #culture #history #orient #oxident #knowledge #together #love #culture #respect ❤ https://www.instagram.com/p/BzVm2RDIMKT/?igshid=5hkbuhptv4po