Are Iranians... Arab? White? Asian? Caucasian? Persian? Confused about ethnic identities in the Middle East? Its complicated -- this article from Ajam Media Collective can help! Persians- here defined as those whose mother tongue is Persian and identify themselves as such- make up about 49% of Iran’s population, the rest being composed of Azeris, Arabs, Balochis, Kurds, Gilanis, Mazanderanis, Loris, Qashqais, Bakhtiaris, Armenians and a whole host of other ethnic groups who collectively identify as Iranians and speak the Persian language but but whose ethnic identity is other than Persian. In addition to these ethnic and linguistic minorities, there exists a host of religious minorities- Sunni Muslims, Christians, Jews, Bahais, Zoroastrians, etc- who also fit across the ethnic mosaic described above, some identifying as Persians and others not. Read more in the Ajam Media Collective article: A Persian Iran?: Challenging the Aryan Myth and Persian Ethnocentrism ajammc/2012/05/18/a-persian-iran-challenging-the-aryan-myth-and-persian-ethnocentrism/
Posted on: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 22:54:08 +0000
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