Nora Elisabeth Mary Boyce (2 August 1920 – 4 April 2006) was a British scholar of Iranian languages and an authority on Zoroastrianism. Boyce was anything but a fanatic or ‘Islamist’ who wanted to bad name Zoroastrianism and Pre-Islamic Persia. A quote from Wikipedia shows that if anything she did her utmost to clarify many misconceptions about Zoroastrianism:
In 1963–64, Boyce spent a research year among orthodox Zoroastrians of the 24 villages of Yazd, Iran. The results of her research there were formative to her understanding of Zoroastrianism and she discovered that much of the previously established scholarship on the ancient faith was terribly misguided. In 1975, Boyce presented the results of her research at her Ratanbai Katrak lecture series at Oxford University. In the same year she published the first volume of her magnum opus, The History of Zoroastrianism, which appeared in the monograph series Handbuch der Orientalistik (Leiden:Brill). Her Ratanbai Katrak lecture series were published in 1977 as A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism.
However, even Boyce could not deny the disturbing reality of Zoroastrian (Majoosi) next-of-kin marriages in Pre-Islamic Iran.
Al-Hamdulillah for Umar ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him) and his pious army of Sahabah who obliterated their incestuous Majoosi empire. Persian should be grateful to Umar ibn al-Khattab who freed them of the degeneracy of Zoro-Majoosim and brought them Tawhid.
In Sunni regions of Iran, people indeed acknowledge this favour. For instance, in Iranian Baluchistan, a Sunni stronghold where neither Iranian-Persian nationalism nor semi-Majoosi Shi’ism has any foothold, it is common for people to name their children Umar. They express their gratitude solely to Allah for sending Umar and his army to liberate them from the kufr and oppression of the Sassanian Zoroastrians.
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