Strange Birds from Zoroaster's Nest
Laina Farhat-Holzman
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2003 Nonetheless Press
ISBN: 1932053123

An Overview of Revealed Religions. & their influences today.

If, like me, you have pondered all your life about the sources of “revealed” religions; about how world religions are related, how they have changed over time, & what would someone from Mars think about them today, then Strange Birds from Zoroaster's Nest will tickle your toes!

In under 300 pages Laina Farhat-Holzman (take a look at this author's name because therein reposes her extra-ordinary world vision!) has set out to explain our religious expressions.

In just 10 chapters Strange Birds from Zoroaster's Nest takes on:
The Mystery of Human Religion
The Common Stream of Human Religion
Beyond Priests and Human Sacrifice: Human Responsibility
Good and Evil: No Shades of Gray
Unforeseen Consequences: The Transformed Message
State Religion: The Kiss of Death
The Role of Zoroastrian Heresies in Shaping Later Monotheistic Religions
Zoroastrian Concepts in World Religions
Zoroaster's Mark on the Secular World
The Modern Dilemma: A World Religion?

I was thrilled upon reading these statements:
1.  “Religion is a human institution with more similarities than differences in its variety of expressions. The need to find meaning in human experience and to explain the frightening events in our lives underlies all of the world's religions.” (Page 13)

2.  “With monotheistic religious values now in the mainstream of global thoughts ... much of the world [is] increasingly superstitious, emotional, desperate for rescue from misery, and ready for violence ... Governments around the world resemble each other more than they resemble the people they govern.” (Page 16)

As you know, I am an eager beaver when it comes to discovering Big Thoughts. I had heard of the fabled Zoroaster or Zarathustra, an entity lost in the reaches of time, arising in Persia, now known as Iran. As I understand it, Zoroastrian followers are still convening although, because of the ban against conversion, their numbers are dwindling, much as the Shakers did a century ago. Pre-dating the Abrahamic concept of monotheism, Zarathustra flourished in the Parsee civilization, from which his tenets traveled along the trade routes, being absorbed into local religions. & then how they pop out sideways in our modern quest for that original, childlike awe when first coming upon the magnificence of deity.

Strange Birds from Zoroaster's Nest is a fascinating quilt of glimpses & insights, histories & aphorisms -- delicacies to be savored & chewed upon, ever so slowly. Yes, Laina Farhat-Holzman does have an agenda. Yes, some religions do get short shrift & are discussed almost in cliches, however ... if pondering on the sources of our expressions of awe & faith delights you, then this volume will be a treasure!

Laina Farhat-Holzman is an historian, writer, & lecturer who has taught courses in World History & Islamic Civilization. She lived twice in Iran, where she encountered Zorastrians, Bahai'is, & Shiite Muslims, & witnessed first hand the rise of Militant Islam & its overthrow of a modernizing government.

More from Laina Farhat-Holzman:
God's Law or Man's Law: The Fundamentalist Challenge to Secular Rule.
(04/11/04)

Rebecca