What should be the symbol of stupidity (Kharriat) in Iran!

Khar or Asp (the donkey or the horse)

Yahoo News:

BAMAKO, Mali – The minister of interior security said in a statement that 36 people were killed in a stampede Monday following a religious ceremony.

Sadio Gassame said the stampede occurred at Bamako's Modibo Keita Stadium during an event on Monday marking the Muslim holy period of Maouloud. The accident took place at the end of the ceremony as people were trying to leave and the crowd surged against a metal barrier.

Anguished families gathered outside the capital's Gabriel Toure Hospital, waiting for news as doctors were preparing to post a list of the dead.

The above story by Yahoo News was posted on the internet on Monday February 21, 2011. This is not the first time that “Stampede” occurs in Islamic gatherings.

In Saudi Arabia every year stampede occurs in “Mecca” pilgrimage and number of people get killed. The worst stampede in “Holly Mecca” (Hajj pilgrimage) happened just a few years ago when 76 people were killed and hundreds were injured.

As far as I know, among mammals, stampede happens only when cows are trying to pass through a narrow passage. They are not smart enough to wait for the cow next to them to pass.

I have seen so many western movies. The stampede usually does not happen when horses or donkeys are let go out of narrow coral gate. Cows are the only victims of their own stupidity.

For thousands of years we Iranians, , have chosen the donkey (Khar) as the symbol of stupidity. In my opinion donkeys are smarter than even horses. After you “break the horse” (Raam Kardan), the horse will obey human for the rest of its life. Even a seven years old human can ride on a horse and run it to death, you can’t do that to a donkey  the horse does not have the intelligence to say NO but the donkey says no every time to an abuse.

Khariat na tanha be jow Khordan ast 

  

Even though that the donkeys were domesticated by Iranians about 9,000 years ago (before horses and cows); the owner always has difficulty to put it to work. It is smart enough to say “No” to abuse every time.

Suggestion to all Iranians: 
Remove donkey from the symbol of stupidity (Khariat), also skip horse but chose the COW for that purpose, or even better; (Pilgrims to Mecca) will fit the description better. It is not fair to donkey (the Khar), nor to the horse, or even to the cow.

The origin of the term “Tajik”

According to John Payne written in “The nationalities question in the post-Soviet states” the name Tajik, which is currently used for Persian-speaking population of Central Asia is based on an Arabic tribal name, “Taiy”. This name was widely used by other people to describe the Arabs; for example, the Arabs were known by this name to the Chinese as early as the first century AD. In the Sogdians form Tazik”. It was used as a name for the Arab invaders of Central Asia, and then by extension applied at the end of the tenth or the beginning of the eleventh century to the Islamicised Persian-speaking population.

Note: In Persian language, the word Tazi means foreigner but after the Arab invasion of 7^th century AD, it mostly referred to the Arabs. But in eleventh century AD those Persian-speaking of the Central Asia that did not accept Islam started calling those Iranians that accepted Islam “Tazi-ak” to belittle them. The suffix “ak”, in Persian language, makes any word small or little. Consequently the word “Tazi-ak” means “The little Arab.