Nation-state builders erase recent religious identity by inventing a more ancient one.

Evidence

In Iran the Pahlevi monarchy tried to forge a modern secular nation-state by abandoning its recent Islamic heritage in favor of an ideological retreat to the assumed splendor of the pre-Islamic Achaemenid dynasty of 529-330 BCE. The failure of the Pahlevi experiment at the hands of the Islamic revolution in 1979 is so ingrained in our consciousness that it barely needs mentioning. Nevertheless, it should be noted that Islamic Iran also has to contend with a Kurdish minority within its borders. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3479

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the pattern in Turkey (3476/3478) of state identity-construction by selective appeals to ancient/pre-Ottoman heritage; also echoes the nation-state adoption theme in 3480. — connects to: Suppressing messianism produced a secular national theology that erased the land’s non-Jewish history
• SEED: Article angle: ‘ancestral nostalgia as state technology’ — how modern nation-states fabricate deep historical roots to justify current borders and erase recent (religious, imperial, colonial) identities.