Was there ever a street rule forcing people to say salām (سلام)?

To find out whether this rumor had any real base, I looked into early Islamic legal and historical sources that actually governed relations between Muslims and non-Muslims. I couldn’t find anything suggesting that non-Muslim Iranians were ever required to greet Muslims with salām to show surrender.

In fact, one of the earliest and most-quoted documents about the rights and duties of non-Muslim communities — the so-called Pact of ʿUmar — actually says the opposite. It discourages non-Muslims from imitating Muslims in their clothing or even their way of speaking. (“We shall not speak as they do.” You can see another translation here.) That’s hard to reconcile with a rule that supposedly required dhimmis to copy the Muslim greeting.

Meanwhile, an often-cited hadith (pronounced حدیث /hadis/ in Iranian Persian) says that Muslims themselves should not initiate the greeting of salām with Jews or Christians — though later scholars debated what to do if greeted first. (You can read it in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2167a and a short modern explanation here.)

Putting these together: the rumor that Iranians once had to say salām as proof of submission doesn’t appear anywhere in early sources — and, interestingly, the sources actually lean in the opposite direction.

If at this point you’re thinking, “Okay but… why were Muslims told not to start salām? Was it superiority? Or protection? 🤔” — scroll down to the section called ★ For Curious Bodies Like Mine ★. I asked the same thing. Haha!

So what “went wrong” with Zoroastrianism?

This was one of the questions I kept asking myself while researching this topic. Not in a judgmental way — but out of genuine curiosity. If Zoroastrianism was such a deep, ancient, and meaningful tradition, why did so many Iranians eventually adopt Islam?

The short answer is: nothing was “wrong” with Zoroastrianism as a belief system. What changed was the world around it.

By the late Sasanian period, Zoroastrianism had become tightly intertwined with the state. Religious authority and political power were closely linked, and much of religious life was mediated by a powerful priestly class. Rituals had grown complex, access to scripture was limited, and everyday religious practice often depended on clerical authority. When the Sasanian Empire collapsed, the institutional support system that upheld Zoroastrianism collapsed with it. (For historical context, see Encyclopaedia Iranica on the Sasanian dynasty.)

Islam entered Iran during a period of political exhaustion, economic pressure, and social instability. Decades of war with Byzantium, internal conflict, heavy taxation, and even plague had weakened the empire long before the Arab conquest. In moments like this, people don’t only change beliefs — they adapt to new structures of life. (On this broader context, see Encyclopaedia Iranica on the conversion of Iranians to Islam.)

Islam also offered something that felt radically different at the time: a more direct relationship with God, prayer without priestly mediation, scripture accessible to ordinary believers, and a religious identity that traveled easily across regions and social classes. For many people, this simplicity felt empowering rather than restrictive.

Social and economic realities mattered too. Non-Muslims under Muslim rule paid the jizya tax, while converts did not. Over generations, conversion often meant lower taxes, greater mobility, and easier integration into the new political order. These were practical decisions as much as spiritual ones. (See Iranica on jizya.)

What’s especially important is that Islam in Iran did not remain foreign. Iranians reshaped it — philosophically, mystically, poetically. Persian culture deeply influenced Islamic theology, Sufism, Shiʿism, literature, administration, and aesthetics. Figures like Rumi, Hafez, and Saʿdi reflect this fusion. Many historians describe this process with a simple idea: Iranians became Muslim, but Islam became Persian.

Zoroastrianism itself did not disappear. It survived in communities within Iran and beyond — especially among the Parsis in India — but it lacked a missionary structure and remained closely tied to inherited community identity. (For continuity and survival, see Iranica on Zoroastrianism in the modern period.)

So the shift from Zoroastrianism to Islam wasn’t about one religion being “better” than another. It was about empire, collapse, adaptation, opportunity, and the very human tendency to move with history.