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Thoughts on a “primitive culture”

Thoughts on a “primitive culture”

Last updated on: June 17, 2026 at 9:26 pm by Dan Peterson

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Thoughts on a “primitive culture” 2026-06-17T21:26:52-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Newly posted today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Reprint: “The Qur’anic View of Abraham,” written by Daniel C. Peterson:

Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in Abraham and His Family in Scripture, History, and Tradition, edited by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, John S. Thompson, Matthew L. Bowen, and David R. Seely. For more information, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/abraham-and-his-family.

“The most important idea to take away from this paper is that Islam—like Judaism and Christianity and unlike, say, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, or classical Greek paganism—is an Abrahamic religion. In Islam, Abraham is a prominent link in the chain of prophets that begins with Adam, continues with Moses, and eventually culminates in Jesus and then (via the line of Ishmael) in Muhammad. He is a pivotal figure in the Islamic Heilsgeschichte, or “history of salvation”; the Qur’an calls him “an imam to the nations” (li-al-nas imaman; Qur’an 2:124)”

Wikimedia Commons public domain image

I spent a couple of hours earlier today recording a podcast interview (we spoke, at his request, about the witnesses of the Book of Mormon) for the UK-based Mormonism with the Murph. I’m told that it will go up in three or four weeks. That’s plenty of time, I think, to prepare vacation or evacuation plans. For the interim, though, there’s still my interview with Nathan Gwilliam, on Why We Believe, to avoid.

As I was setting things up this morning for my interview with Stephen Murphy, by the way, I thought of a brief article that I wrote several years ago, and I had just enough time to skim through it before we started. I thought that I might bring it up during the interview, and I did — although for only a few seconds. I was pleased to see that I, at least, still find the article’s argument persuasive. Do I dare commend it to your attention? Yes, I do. I’m that shameless: “Vast Prairies and Trackless Wilds of Snow: A Good Test of Sincerity,” written by Daniel C. Peterson:

Abstract: Embarking roughly six months after the organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the 1830–1831 “mission to the Lamanites” faced challenges that we pampered moderns can scarcely imagine. Oliver Cowdery, Peter Whitmer Jr., Parley P. Pratt, Ziba Peterson, and, eventually, Frederick G. Williams demonstrated beyond reasonable dispute the depth of their commitment to the Restoration and to the promises extended by the Book of Mormon to the surviving children of Lehi. Given that Cowdery and Whitmer were witnesses of the golden plates, this demonstration of their genuine belief seems significant.

The ruins of ancient Persepolis, in Iran — the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire between about BC 550 and BC 330 — is one of the most impressive archaeological sites I’ve ever visited. And I’ve visited quite a few of them. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

In a very recent comment about Iran, a certain currently-sitting president of the United States said of the Persians that “They have, in one way, a primitive culture, but it’s also a genius primitive culture.” And he made it clear that, by “genius,” he meant only the kind of street smarts deployed by a savvy bazaar merchant: ” They’re very smart people, very good negotiators.” (Which, plainly, given a recent “Memorandum of Understanding,” they are.)

The person in question plainly knows nothing of the “primitive culture” represented by Cyrus the Great, or by the poet Ferdowsi, author of the Shahnameh, or by the poets Sanai and Hafez and Farid al-Din Attar of Nishapur and Sa‘di Shirazi and Nizami, or by the astronomer, mathematician, and poet Omar Khayyam, the author of the Rubaiyat, to say nothing of the philosophers Nasir Khusraw and Avicenna and the illustrious scientist and polymath al-Biruni and the mathematician al-Khwarizmi, who has been called “the father of algebra” and the transmitter to the west of the system of decimal numbers (and whose very name gives us the word algorithm), and the statesman and political theorist Nizam al-Mulk. If he’s aware of the rich tradition of Persian carpets or the splendid five-thousand-year-old tradition of Persian architecture, his statement shows no sign of it.

I don’t really fault the current president in question for knowing little to nothing of one of the oldest and richest of world civilizations. Most Americans and most people in the West are contentedly unaware of such things, and their educational system has done them no favors in this regard. What I hold against him is his willingness to display his ignorance boldly, and publicly, on an international stage, and on my behalf. (Some might be aware that it’s very far from the only thing that I hold against him.)

At the court of Kayumars, in an early-sixteenth-century miniature illustration to a copy of the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi that is currently in the collection of Sadruddin Aga Khan in Geneva.

As I survey the current state of American culture and politics, I think of a favorite passage from The Lord of the Rings:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” (J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring)

The Cyrus Cylinder is a 6th-century BCE clay artifact containing a Babylonian cuneiform inscription that records King Cyrus the Great’s conquest of Babylon (539 BC), his restoration of religious shrines, and the repatriation of deported peoples. Often termed the “first charter of human rights,” it highlights policies of religious tolerance and humanitarian treatment of conquered populations. It’s currently located in the British Museum in London. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

I close, as I often do, with a horrifying specimen that I’ve drawn from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™: “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints delivers semitrucks of food to all 50 states: Boston delivery marks donations to all states in honor of nation’s 250th birthday”

Near it too, though, was this one, which also merited inclusion in the Hitchens File: “This Utah city was ranked atop nation’s largest cities — why one city leader says that is: How unity and trust among Provo residents has led to the city being ranked best-run in the country” Just think of how much higher Provo might have ranked had the city not been afflicted with so many crazy religious fanatics and with the anti-social tendencies and institutions that such fanatics foster!

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