aitor throup reminded me of two things i read quoted in Kinzer's All the Shah's Men

first, tenth-century Persian poet Ferdowsi in the Shahnameh (4x as long as the Iliad) recounting Arab conquerors looting Ctesiphon in 638:

Curse this world, curse this fate
That uncivilized Arabs have come to force me to be Muslim....

O Iran! Where are all those kings, who adorned you
With justice, equity and munificence, who decorated
You with pomp and splendor, gone?
From that date when the barbarian, saveage, coarse
Bedouin Arabs sold your king's daughter in the street
And cattle market, you have not seen a bright day, and
Have lain hidden in darkness

second, thirteenth-century mystic Jelaluddin Rumi rejecting orthodoxy:

I hold to no religion or creed,
am neither Eastern nor Western,
Muslim or infidel,
Zoroastrian, Christian, Jew or Gentile.
I come from neither land nor sea,
am not related to those above or below,
was not born nearby or far away,
do not live either in Paradise or on this Earth,
claim descent not from Adam and Eve or the Angels above.
I transcend body and soul.
My home is beyond place and name.
It is with the beloved, in space and beyond space.
I embrace all and am part of all.

Kinzer, Stephen. All The Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle Eastern Terror. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2003) pp. 21, 26.