![\"Shah-i](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2025\/04\/Mausolees_du_groupe_central_Shah-i-Zinda_Samarcande_6009956484.jpeg\")
<\/a>Wow. \u00a0I flew over Bandar Abbas on the night that this happened: \u00a0\u201cMassive explosion at Iranian port kills 14 and injures hundreds\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n The topic of fluctuations in religious faith and commitment continues to interest me:<\/p>\n I cannot imagine anybody who would deserve this award more than my longtime friend Joseph Grenny<\/a>\u00a0does: 2025 Utah Community Builder: Joseph Grenny<\/a><\/p>\n The Salt Lake Chamber, in partnership with the Utah Community Builders recognized Joseph Grenny, co-founder and board chairman for The Other Side Academy and The Other Side Village, with the 7th annual Utah Community Builder Award. This award recognizes an inspirational individual who has gone above and beyond the call of duty to address critical community needs. Grenny received the award on April 24, 2025, at the 2025 Giant in our City celebration.<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The projects of The Other Side are absolutely remarkable and are absolutely worthy of support.<\/p>\n In stark contrast to Joseph Grenny, I wrote yesterday about my reluctance to praise the Amir Timur-i Leng, founder of the Timurid Empire and ruler of Samarkand (whose elegant and monumental mausoleum we visited yesterday) as \u201cTimur the Great.\u201d \u00a0In response, I\u2019ve now been implicitly characterized as a cloistered, judgmental, and effete academic with little or no experience with the real world outside of the library. \u00a0And, of course, as very possibly a racist. \u00a0(After all, neither Timur nor Kamehameha I \u2014 the other \u201cgreat\u201dconqueror about whose alleged greatness I\u2019ve recently ventured doubts \u2014 was a white man. \u00a0So, apparently, it\u2019s only uppity people of color who make me uncomfortable. \u00a0(I\u2019ll continue to search the historical record for a white English-speaking conqueror who is comparable to Timur so that, by condemning him [or her], I\u2019ll be able demonstrate my even-handed ethical sense. \u00a0I\u2019m sure that I\u2019ll find that person, but I need to be patient.<\/p>\n I suppose that it must be Timur\u2019s non-Aryan racial background that puts me offcouldn\u2019t possibly be the great and seemingly psychopathic pleasure that Timur appeared to take in torturing and killing people. \u00a0One of his trademark acts after capturing a city was to build large piles or towers of severed heads; one source that I recall reading in graduate school reported that, with the passage of time, the severed heads would decay and, at night, they began to give off an eery greenish glow.<\/p>\n Once, when the Persian city of Isfahan \u2014 an important center of art and literature that I have visited \u2014 revolted against his oppressively high taxes, he ordered its citizens massacred; the death toll is estimated to have been between 100,000 and 200,000. An eye-witness counted more than 28 towers constructed of about 1,500 heads each in the case of Isfahan alone.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a charming story that I also recall reading while I was in grad school: \u00a0A mid-sized city found itself in the path of Timur\u2019s conquests and, hearing about the mass slaughters that had occurred in towns that had resisted him, decided to open its gates and surrender rather than to suffer the same fate. \u00a0In fact, it went even further: \u00a0When the conqueror approached, the residents of the city sent a large number of its young girls out to meet him, dressed in white and strewing flowers before him. \u00a0Evidently, though, he wasn\u2019t in a good mood. \u00a0(Maybe he had a headache. \u00a0Maybe his rheumatism was acting up, or he had a bad hangnail.) \u00a0So he ordered his cavalry to trample the young girls to death. \u00a0(How can I conceivably fail to warm up to such a man?)<\/p>\n One source suggests that, altogether, Timur was responsible for the deaths of approximately twenty million people. \u00a0In the fourteenth century, a death toll of twenty million people would represent roughly five percent of the world\u2019s total population .<\/p>\n Still, if I, as a cloistered and effete modern bookworm who lacks real-world experience, am in no position to form a moral judgment regarding Timur, then I remain confused. \u00a0After all, given such disqualifying gaps in my biography, I don\u2019t seem to be positioned in any way to pronounce him \u201cgreat.\u201d<\/em> \u00a0Which effectively yields the same result that my presumptuous prior post did, when, on putative moral grounds, I expressed my reluctance<\/em> to call him \u201cTimur the Great.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m simply too tired to write anything here about the six-hour closed door session that four Iranian Shi\u2018ite religious scholars (two of whom are actual imams) had this afternoon and into the early evening with four Latter-day Saint scholars. \u00a0(Covfefe, anyone?) \u00a0And, anyway, it was<\/em> behind closed doors. \u00a0But it was really interesting. \u00a0And, later, the larger conference group had a dinner-reception with the deputy governor of the Samarkand region, during which I was able to sit with a husband and wife from St. George who are here as a service couple, teaching English in Tashkent at their own expense as volunteers. \u00a0(There is also a couple from England who also volunteering in Tashkent, but the English couple didn\u2019t come from Tashkent for tonight\u2019s dinner.) \u00a0The Labrums appear to be having a remarkable experience. \u00a0We soon established that he had served in the Switzerland Z\u00fcrich Mission during roughly the same time that I did. \u00a0He arrived there a year after me, and I now recall his name. \u00a0But we never served in the same area.<\/p>\n However, in conclusion \u2014 and just to bring you down from the rush of pleasant emotions that reading about Timur might have caused \u2014 here are some horrific gleanings from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u2122:<\/p>\n Posted from Samarkand, Uzbekistan<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 Wow. \u00a0I flew over Bandar Abbas on the night that this happened: \u00a0\u201cMassive explosion at Iranian port kills 14 and injures hundreds\u201d The topic of fluctuations in religious faith and commitment continues to interest me: \u201cGen Z is finding religion. Why? 3 theories for Gen Z\u2019s return to God and faith.\u201d \u201cThe Plateau Of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":110068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6900,6897,38350,38623,38626,782],"class_list":["post-110065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-joseph-grenny","tag-other-side-academy","tag-other-side-village","tag-samarkand","tag-timur","tag-utah"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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(Wikimedia Commons public domain photo by Marc Everette)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n