Parsiana’s editorial ("Nothing will come of them,” September 7, 2016) makes for grim reading. Starting from Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s (pictured) rave against Zoroastrianism, one readily perceives this as cobbled together by a double-dealing, pro-Islamist politician. His insidious blast against the Kurds of Diyarbakir as "atheists ... they are Zoroastrians” shows his abysmally shallow understanding of our noble pre-Islamic religion with its rich religiocultural philosophy and complex theology. Zoroastrianism contains theism of a very different order to the late rehash of an Abrahamic Sunni system that has acquired none of the refinements of Judaism and early Christianity.
The Kurds are mainly Sunni Muslims; a minor faction lays claim to being Zoroastrian or having had Zoroastrian ancestry. In any case, their simplified version allows several non-standard practices with observable external variations of the kusti and its associated ceremonials.
As for Erdogan, he conveniently lets slip that the modern state of Turkey was founded on a secular constitutional basis by Kemal Ataturk. It may therefore be wondered who is the real traitor. The military aid recently received by Turkey as a member of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) was to fight against the Wahhabi sponsored so-called Islamic State; Erdogan sanctioned its use instead against the Kurds whom he saw as his prime enemies intent on establishing their long hoped for independence as a free Kurdistan. Sizeable Kurdish populations exist in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran: the first three are mainly Sunni.
Not least among his dodges was the suppression of Turkey’s 20th century genocides unleashed against 1,500,000 Armenians and some 250,000 Kurds. Whilst Sasanian Iran could not deny its fifth century bloodshed of the Christian Armenians, Turkey has made every endeavor to obliterate all references to its First World War holocausts. Concerning the former, an Armenian friend pointed out that it was primarily (Iranian) state-sponsored militarism and less to do with priest-incited religious persecution. It is heartening to know that FEZANA (Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America) president Homi Gandhi gave a stiffly diplomatic rebuff addressed to the North American Turkish embassies protesting against their "democratic” state’s wanton defamation of a venerable, pre-Islamic Iranian religion with its minority followers in Iran, India and the Zoroastrian diaspora worldwide.
Profs Jonathan Foltz and Jamsheed Choksy likewise exposed the unprincipled attacks on the religious sentiments of the Kurds, Tajiks and the meagre 30,000 or so Iranian Zoroastrians. Zenobia Ravji’s reporting of Ayatollah Khomeini’s rants against a defenceless minority demonstrates just how low-minded such insults were.
The Sunni-Shia schism has very recently reached a shrill crescendo of hate exercised by no less a Wahhabi fanatic than the 
Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, Saudi Arabia’s highest cleric. In responding to Iran’s top cleric Ali Khamenei’s accusations of murder of 464 Iranian pilgrims during the 2015 haj when 2,426 were crushed to death, the Arab declared that because Iran’s Shiite majority were descendants of Zoroastrians, they were "not Muslims!”
Their war of words continued when Khamenei went on to suggest that Saudi Arabia was not a proper custodian of the holy places — a direct challenge to the legitimacy of the Saudi’s Sunni royal family (some 8,000 "royal princes” at the last count!) whose monarch styled himself "Custodian of the two holy places of Makka and Madina.”
Iran’s foreign minister in turn wrote about "bigoted extremism that Wahhabi top cleric and Saudi terror masters preach” and a reiteration of the long-standing Iranian claim that Riyadh supports the Islamic State terrorist group. (The Arab-Iran tussle was extracted here from the September 6, 2016 World Israel News.)
The tragedy of this circumstance is that the Zoroastrian minorities in their homelands and throughout the diaspora have been caught up in the Sunni-Shia 1,400-year continuous feuding where our Ancient Iranian religion of life has become deliberately ensnared in their death cults. Erdogan, Khomeini, Khamenei and Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh are all culpable — and none of these showed any grasp of what constitutes true Zoroastrianism. Will our religious leaders in the World Zoroastrian Organisation and Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe next take up the challenge to launch their own strong protests and correctives? It would be the least they could do to mitigate such insults! FARROKH VAJIFDAR
London
f.vajifdar@btinternet.com