The Persian flu is a persistent bugger...

Recently in a Jihad Watch comments field, a JW reader named "Bunty Hoven" replied to a comment from Sassan Darian (unsurprisingly, from his name, defending the "Persian People"):

I'm not going to comment on whether the killing was an honor killing or not, but it was interesting that you said "Iranians are not religious (the people, not the regime)". I'm not sure exactly why but I always suspected as much. It makes it extra tragic that they live under religious tyranny. I hope and pray for the day when Iranians are free.

Also recently, I noted in the comments field of the new blog of a Muslim "closet apostate" who calls herself "Liberated One", a reader wrote, in response to my persistent doubts about Muslims in general:

Just look at iran, the majority of the people is sick of islam but they live subjugated by a ruling minority of religious tyrants.

I responded:

There's no solid indication that a majority of Iranian Muslims have grown sick of Islam. They are only sick of the current regime. They still don't realize what their real addiction is that they need to kick: Islam itself. Diana West amply showed reasons why we should be skeptical of the stubbornly popular notion within the anti-Jihad movement that Iranian Muslims are somehow different from all other Muslims:

Take a Breath on Iran

Iran's Protests "Not Meant to Be Anti-Islamic"

"Their Jail is Islam, and Changing the Thug from One Warden to Another Won't Set Them Free"
Blushing for Bret

And she wrote and documented much, much more.  More recently, she reported that a recent Pew poll has found that a whopping 83% of the Iranian People support Sharia law (hat tip to Andrew Bostom).

Debbie Schlussel also wrote on this:

Not Easy Being "Green"

I summarized some of the issue in my essay The Persian Flu.

More generally, during this long "Arab Spring" this past year, I've noticed quite a few people within the ragged edges of the anti-Islam movement who, although remaining appropriately skeptical of "The People" (i.e., Muslims) in Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, etc., suddenly develop a case of amnesia about The Persian People (i.e., Muslims), and point to Iranian demonstrations as a great sign of hope that the Iranian regime -- and its Islam -- will soon be toppled.

Robert Spencer, for example, had the appropriate reflex response to the Libyan demonstrators shouting Allahu Akbar! in their recent "democratic" overthrow of Kaddafi's regime -- and yet, when Persians did it (during the demonstrations of 2009), he gyrated gymnastically to find ways to excuse such Islamically supremacist ejaculations and find them hopeful.  (And more recently, Spencer has repeatedly retailed the notion that the millions of protestors of President Morsi in Egypt are "pro-democracy" "secularists".)

What these various Persian flu victims need is to get to their Hesperado Pharmacy ASAP, get their shots, bulk up on medications, take a few days off work, go home, have a few cups of hot chamomile tea under a blanket, and try to sleep off this ridiculously naive and ungrounded optimism they maintain about the Persian People.

Finally, in this general context, a long-time reader of my blog (and long-time commenter on Jihad Watch) named "Nobody" has noted a crucially pertinent historical fact (though it still requires a citation for verification). During approximately the 13th to the 14th centuries, after Persia had long been Islamized for a good 500 years, Persia experienced an interesting opportunity, a window of time lasting some 8 generations, during which non-Muslim Mongols invaded and conquered Persia, and offered the Persian people unprecedented religious freedom:

When Persia was conquered by the non-Muslim Mongols and the center of the Ilkhanate empire of Hulegu Khan, the local Infidels -- Zoroastrians and Christians -- had full religious freedom that they didn't have under the intial Arab rule or subsequent Safavid rule. The Persians -- who were by then overwhelmingly Islamized -- did not revert, even though they had no Islamically driven incentives not to. For the first 8 generations of the Ilkhanate, Persia was a non-Islamic state, but the people chose to remain Muslims. It was only after the 9th Ilkhanate ruler married a Muslimah princess and embraced Islam that the Ilkhanate too Islamized, destroying that opportunity. Luckily, that disease did not spread as far as Mongolia.