By Pedram H. Tabrisy
Yesterday, foreign and national businessmen, foreign ambassadors and members of the Iranian community celebrated Iranian National day, honoring the day when when Iran's military declared itself neutral, at the Shilla Hotel in Seoul. Iran officially became an Islamic Republic on April 1, 1979.
When it is time to talk about the Middle East, there is a lot to cover: the culture, the people, the religion, politics, and of course the history. Something that is presently causing some confusion is the name of the Gulf located in a strategic position in the heart of the Middle East.
As we know, the countries around the Gulf are the ones that have the largest oil supplies, thus having a right name for this body of water would give it even more honor, but the question is should we call it the Arabian Gulf or the Persian Gulf?
Since the 1960s, a decade in which Pan Arabism began to gain popularity, some Arab countries decided to call this gulf the Arabian Gulf and using the original name (Persian Gulf) was forbidden in some of those countries.
One of the main reasons for these countries around the Gulf to change the name was that collectively they own a larger coast than Persia (presently known as Iran) owns.
Iran alone has more coast that each one of the other countries. It might make sense to some, but what about the historical significance of the name? Lest we not forget that millennia ago there were only a few empires: the Empire of Rome, Egypt, Persia and later China. The small countries around the Gulf were not even countries back then, but part of the Great Empire of Persia.
This was back when people began to call the gulf the Persian Gulf. Is it a good reason to change the gulf's name and therefore it's history because since 1935 the Iranian government requested that other countries, which had relationships with Iran, to call this country Iran instead of Persia?
Since the 1960s, some of the Iranian history loyalists have been trying to keep this historical name by having internationally aired commercials and by sending e-mails and letters to use the original name to whoever was using this name incorrectly.
In 1991, the United Nations asked all its publishers to make sure that they use the right name, which is the Persian Gulf, in their books and magazines.
The United Nations also published two different guide texts about this matter, stating it was necessary to call this gulf the Persian Gulf, but these days the U.N.'s requests are not always respected.
In 2004, National Geographic magazine published a new article using the Arabian Gulf name. This name was also used in all their documents, books and maps in 2005 instead of the original more historical name.
In 2006, the Louvre Museum in Paris called this Gulf the Arabian Gulf in its last guide magazine. This was not an expected mistake from a famous museum like the Louvre.
The lack of respect for the U.N.'s guides made the situation a little bit worse even though everyone knew that the United Nations already had announced it once but history lovers couldn't accept it, so they started sending copious amounts of e-mail to the National Geographic and that's how the Persian Gulf Google bomb was born. Try it yourself and see the result. Just type Arabian Gulf into the Google search engine.
Iranian history lovers are not against Arabism as a rule, and even having a university called the Arabian Gulf University is not bothering anyone.
There is nothing wrong with a few Arab countries around the Gulf calling it the Arabian Gulf among themselves, but it is not okay to actively try to make it global.
It was also very disappointing that at the end of the 2006 Doha Asian Games' opening ceremony they refer to two Persian medical scientists Abu Rayhan Biruni and Ibn Sina (Avicenna), as Arabian geniuses. Also, the Islamic Republic of Iran was referred to as the Arabic Republic of Iran, instead of its proper name.
Are they trying to include Iran as an Arab country in the Arabic Union? Is the Iranian government trying to unite with the Arabian Union? Is the real history being forgotten? Do these ideas come from other countries that are trying to have a place in the Middle East as it is an important area in the world and has been for much of its history?
These are the questions, which we will be pondering for a while.
No matter Shiite or Sunni, Catholic or Protestant, Hindu or Buddhist, Westerner or Asian, everyone should respect each other and their histories in a correct way.
Pedram H. Tabrisy is a theology student studying at Seoul Christian University. He has been in Korea for five years. Pedraminkorea@gmail.com