The Cylinder and Little Green Book

Preamble: - When a Persian King wants to chill Jethro Tull makes the brill. He cajoles Anderson to pipe Bouree into his thing and gribble Bach from Wood into a blend of fine cocktail lounge jazz to Budapest the commemoration of Babylon into the folds of his beloved Persia and Aqualung accepts the King’s brief with Rupi's Dance but not before he receives a royal promise that the Cylinder would rule the Gallery of the Minstrel ad infinitum without pause.

2500 years ago Cyrus the Great commanded Greater Persia where everyone was treated with respect, judged by ability rather than station and where diverse creeds were accepted as norm rather than tolerated. In 539 BC the man walked into Babylon and introduced the Cyrus Cylinder, the first charter of human rights, which stands universal to this day. 30 years ago Ayatollah Khomeini commanded Persia and introduced his Little Green Book, his book of gems, which represents to this day the fabric of his Islamic Republic.

Although the death penalty feature distinctively in both Persian courts, it is impossible for the Book to claim moral equivalency with its ancestral Cylinder, just as it is unreasonable to ask a radical Islamist to stand on the same platform with a Zoroastrian.

Diametrical comparisons are that the Cylinder executed traitors by sword while the Book stones infidel women to death. Another gem is that the former mandated adulthood in women while the latter mandates 9 year-old girls adults.

In comparing a vibrant multi-cultural nation such as Malaysia from the Persian perspective, although Cyrus ruled with a distinct brand of ‘Persian’ supremacy, a potpourri of religions and cultures a millennium ahead of Europe were thriving quite nicely there; and despite the prevailing Zoroastrian fervor, the man ran his fiefdom with a Persian fist in the public and wore the cloak of Zoroaster in the private domain. The ancient Persepolis provides an uncanny resemblance to the secular and multi-cultural Muslim-majority nation, but only if the hyperbole of ‘ethnic’ supremacy bandied by a chosen few in the ruling party proves non-theocratic in disguise.

October 29th is designated Cyrus Day - the date the Zoroastrian's Cylinder was birthed. Just as it is unreasonable to ask a radical Islamist to claim moral equivalency with him, it is understandable  the radical would pass the significant date without notice.

Point of the commentary is that borderline nations be reminded that trashing of the Cyrus Cylinder in Persia was inversely proportionate to installation of an unvarnished theocratic dogma that upset the utopia Cyrus envisioned.

Words, Videography – Tommy Peters  (on YouTube)





(The cuboid is made on a Mac and depicts the Cyrus Cylinder on a stamp commissioned by the Shah of Iran in 1971 to commemorate 2500 years of the Persian Monarchy. David Nieman's lecture, The Church and The Jews is in the public domain. Advanced appreciation is rendered for materials used without express permission of copyright owners)