There is no doubt that the Safavids forced Shi’ism upon most Iranian, what about the early Muslims who conquered Persia in during the Caliphate of ‘Omar Ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him)?
It is widely believed amongst Iranians (including religious Shi’ites) that Arabs somehow enforced Islam upon one of the strongest empires in that the world has ever seen. They seem to have forgotten that prior to the Islamic conquest of Persia, it was the Persian empire that conquered and occupied vast amount lands, including the lands of non-Iranian people, from Egypt right into the cradle of the Arabs, the Yemen. Arab land. As a matter of fact, the Persian Sassanid Empire occupied the entire eastern lands of Arabia, parts of Hijaz, Oman and Yemen.
Conquering lands was the norm of the time back then, and in the case of the Muslims, the students, disciples (Sahabah) of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon them), then there are various reports that caliph ‘Omar (may Allah be pleased with him) himself wasn’t keen on getting into any confrontation with the Sassanian empire. It was the Sassanian empire (like the Roman one) that couldn’t tolerate a united Arabia and started mobolising its armies in Iraq. The Muslims had no choice but to face an approaching enemy first, fearlessly:
Rabi’a ibn ‘Amir(radiyallahu ‘anhu) went to the leader of the Persians. The leader asked him, “Why are you coming to our lands? If you are coming for money then we will pay everyone of you a salary so leave us alone.” But Rabi’a said, “That is not why we are here. We are sent to free the creation from being slaves of one another to being slaves of Allah the Creator of the creation and from the oppression of religion to the justice of Islam and we want to deliver people from the narrowness of this world to the vastness of this world and the Afterlife.
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