Zoroastrians : Ancient, Tolerant Faith Flourishing in Southland

“Preservation of the Zoroastrian Identity Through Adaptation to Changing Environments” is the theme of the fifth North American Zoroastrian Congress, to be held next weekend in Hollywood. The conference title is a capsule description of how this religion, cradled in the Middle East, has survived through nearly three millennia.

Although its worldwide membership is shrinking, the tiny trickle of Zoroastrian immigrants to the United States is growing, and nearly 1,500 now live in Southern California.

The major influx of Zoroastrians to North America started about 15 years ago as a search for higher education and professional jobs, as well as an escape from the fear of once again losing religious freedom under the revolutionary fervor and religious fanaticism of Islamic orthodoxy in Muslim countries.

Once Dominant Faith

This gentle, tolerant religion once was the dominant faith of the civilized world for more than 1,000 years during the time of the ancient Iranian empire. The last of the original Persians are struggling for survival.

There are no more than 125,000 Zoroastrians worldwide--a mere 30,000 in their Iranian homeland and in Pakistan, perhaps 80,000, known as Parsis, in India, and about 6,000 in North America. And the immigration to Southern California has been greater than it has anywhere else in this country.

“It (the influx) has started rolling,” said Farangis Shahrokh, 69, president of the 5-year-old Zoroastrian Center of California in Anaheim. “But we have no highly active campaign to gain converts. Ours is a religion of wisdom and free choice.”

Though scholars differ over the date Zoroastrianism was established, it is known that the founding Persian prophet and teacher, Zarathustra Spitama, was born at least hundreds of years before Jesus and perhaps as early as 1700 BC. By the 6th Century BC, Zoroastrianism, one of the world’s earliest monotheistic religions, had spread throughout the mighty Persian Empire and was the faith of the great Persian kings Cyrus and Darius and their successors.

Espousing a simple ethic of “good thoughts, good words, good deeds,” a reverence for nature and a passion for ecology, Zoroastrianism has exerted a major influence on Western thought and other world religions, particularly Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

“Zoroastrians are worshipers of Ahura Mazda , the one omniscient, omnipotent God,” said Ali A. Jafarey, 65, of Anaheim, a Zoroastrian scholar and teacher at the local center. Religious beliefs in heaven and hell, a devil, final judgment, salvation, resurrection and the Messiah were all developed under the influence of Zoroastrian thought, Jafarey added.

In Christian tradition, the “wise men” who came to Bethlehem to pay homage to the infant Jesus were thought to be Zoroastrian priests, or magi.

Second-Class Citizens

The Zoroastrians, whose symbol of faith is fire, representing ultimate light and truth in the struggle between the forces of good and evil, have survived invasion, massacre, persecution, conversion by the sword and exile for 2,500 years. They even endured occupation by Alexander the Great in 330 BC. But when the advancing Arab armies overran Iran in AD 652, Islam was imposed and Zoroastrians were put to death or forced into pockets of exile, mostly in the area that is now India and Pakistan.

In Iran today, Shahrokh said, who came to Anaheim from eastern Tehran nine years ago, there is no overt persecution, “but you are a second-class citizen. . . . There is a lot of suppression in education, jobs, our way of life. . . . There is subjection in everything to Islam.”

The Zoroastrians hope their age-old attitude of accepting at least most of the laws and customs of the lands in which they live will again enable them to endure and prosper.

In Iran, for instance, the Towers of Silence, where the Zoroastrian dead were traditionally placed, are no longer used. Bodies were laid out on the roofs of the round, fortress-like structures for the vultures and other birds to devour. Zoroastrian belief is that dead human bodies defile the sacred elements of earth, fire and water, so they must not be buried, cremated or placed in the sea.

But, out of deference to practicality in the modern world, there is now a Zoroastrian cemetery with rows of neatly tended graves at the foot of the towers in Yazd, Iran.

And, in the Zoroastrian (Parsi) community in Bombay, India, where the majority of Zoroaster’s followers live, a generation gap is growing between traditionally minded parents and educated youth seeking their own freedom and frequently marrying across ethnic boundaries. Meanwhile, the strict, traditional Zoroastrian purification taboos for pregnant women and elaborate prayer rituals for the priests are quietly and slowly dying out, leaders say.

In North America, where Zoroastrians enjoy virtual unrestricted religious freedom, about 15 religious and cultural centers have been opened in major cities. The center in Anaheim is now temporarily headquartered in a small, rented house on Bayless Street off Katella Boulevard. But an $800,000 meeting hall, worship center, library and classroom facility is under construction on Hazard Street in Westminster.

‘Live as Americans’

The spacious structure, with its Zoroastrian fravahar , the winged figure of divine glory, emblazoned on the front and the traditional four pillars with bulls’ heads supporting the roof, is patterned after a temple built by King Darius in Persia. Completion of the 10,000-square-foot building is expected in time for a fall festival.

Most Zoroastrians in this country are highly educated, and although the ancient customs, including prayers five times a day, seasonal festivals, meatless days and close family ties, are still emphasized, Zoroastrians participate in contemporary secular life as well.

“Here, as Americans, we are going to live as Americans,” Shahrokh said. “The keynote is progress.”

“Like every religious group, we have liberals and conservatives,” Jafarey added. “We (in Southern California) are the liberals. . . . We make accommodations to the times and follow less old-time ritual.”

Special events planned for the youth attending the Zoroastrian congress at the Universal Sheraton Hotel next weekend include a night of disco dancing, a day at Disneyland and a beach barbecue.

“The youth know that Zoroastrianism has no conflict with modernism--except for the evils of it,” Jafarey said. “We show them what is good, and there is great freedom of choice.”

Still, there is a clear concern that a minute minority religion that perpetuates itself almost entirely through family descendants may face extinction. Late marriage, declining birth rates and intermarriage are particular threats.

“The future is with the youth,” Jafarey said. “Whether Zoroastrianism will survive is up to them.”