“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Over the centuries, in our terms, there have been numerous religious and secular (or worldly or nonreligious) consciousnesses at work and play in the Middle East. In Note 2 for Session 899, in Chapter 5 for Volume 1, I wrote that I could “only hint at the enormously complicated situation involving the whole Middle East these days.” I mentioned the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, on Iran’s eastern border, and how the coldly secular Russian philosophy clashed with the Iranians’ fanatical Moslemic orientation. I also referred to our own country’s entanglements in that section of the world. One of the complications I didn’t mention is Iran’s deepening confrontation with Iraq, another Moslem nation on Iran’s western border. Currently the two are arguing over territorial rights concerning a waterway between them that flows into the Persian Gulf; Iran and Iraq have exchanged border clashes for several months now, and each country has threatened heavier military action against the other.

Historically, the animosity between Iran (which until 1935 was called Persia) and Iraq goes back to at least the seventh century, when Arabic conquests brought Islam to the area. A major difference between the two countries is that Iran is Indo-European, and Iraq is Arab. Mohammed, the founder of the Moslem religion, died in 632; conflicts over his successor led to an overall division of the religion into the Shiite and Sunni branches (although this is a simplification). But this great split is also a factor in the current challenges being explored by the two nations: Iran is ruled by Shiite Moslems, Iraq by the Sunni.

In a passionate, bloody series of events later in the seventh century, a split occurred in which the Moslem religion was divided into two main branches, the Shiite and the Sunni. [...] The Moslem world, then, is hardly a monolithic entity; as within Iran itself, the myriad consciousnesses making up that whole framework are much too varied for that to be true.

[...] Yet, such egocentric characteristics often are sublimated into the seemingly contradictory practice of martyrdom—the two are united within the Iranian interpretation of Moslem theology. [...] There is no area in which Moslemic precepts do not apply.

[...] They proclaimed that the war had really begun over 1,300 years ago, at the battle of Qaddisiya in A.D. 637, when Moslem Arabs drove the Persians, who are Indo-European, from Iraq. [...]

[...] The generally explosive predicament in Iran, for example, has been considerably aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan over the recent Christmas season: Now the unbending revolutionary government of Iran, following its own fanatical interpretation of the Moslem religion, must contend with at least an implied threat on its eastern border as the godless Russians occupy Afghanistan. [...]

[...] The Moslem militants released 13 of our citizens—5 white women and 8 black men—who returned home by Thanksgiving Day, but this time they kept in bondage the remaining 53 Americans. [...]

(The Crusades consisted of a series of military expeditions sent out by the Christian powers in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, to recover the Holy Land from the Moslems. [...]

(From page 914 of the dictionary: Mohammed I. 570—632 AD; Arabian prophet, founder of the Moslem religion. [...]

It’s quite clear, of course, that the nations of the West, including that “Great Satan,” the United States, are, with Japan, keeping the fanatical Iranian mullahs (Moslem religious teachers) in power, so that their country will not be taken over by the Tudeh, Iran’s Communist Party; that most unwelcome development could place Iran under Russian domination. [...]

4. The Crusades took place mainly during the 12th and 13th centuries, and consisted of a number of military expeditions organized by Christians to recover the Holy Land from the Moslems.

[...] The Moslem Kurds of Iran and Iraq, minority peoples with strong roots in eastern Turkey, are rebelling against the military forces of their respective countries; and Pakistan has become a place of shelter for refugees from Afghanistan. [...]