what were the religious contributions of the Hebrews and the Persians?

Answer 1

Some people say the Persians invented the idea of God and a Devil. The Zoroastrians had a benevolent God called Ahru Mazda and he had an evil twin brother named Ahriman.

There are still Zoroastrians, but most of them live in India today and they are called Parsees. There aren't very many of them compared to other groups.

Two important movements in Islam came from Persia (Iran): Sufi or Sufism, which is a mystical movement full of meditation and poetry which has a lot of deep meanings. My yahoo name "Majnun" comes from Sufi poetry and it means "crazy"--in a sense that somebody is "crazy" in love, especially with God. The Eric Clapton song "Layla" is based on poetry about Majnun and his beloved, Layla. Omar Khayyam is a well known Sufi poet, and English translations of his work are not hard to find. One of my favorite Sufi books is called "The Conference of the Birds" by Farid ud-Din, Attar, another imporant Sufi book is the Masnavi by Rumi. Sometimes other Muslims find fault with Sufis because they sometimes don't take certain rules seriously, like sometimes they might drink wine when most Muslims don't touch alcohol.

Shi'ah Islam (they call it "Shi-ite" in the news) began in either Persia or Iraq. It started out of a belief that the leaders of Islam or Imams had to be from the family of the Prophet Mohammed. The majority of Muslims are Sunnis, and they believe the leader of Islam or Kaliph should be elected by majority vote.

I am American but I belong to the Baha'i Faith which is a religion that also came from Persia (founded in 1844). You can find all kinds of information about it on the Internet if you want to. I converted to it when I was about 27 years old. We believe in unity of mankind, equality of men and women, agreement between religion and science, and oneness of religion.