Monthly archive : "March, 2013"

  Kourosh Ziabari - Dr. Trond Ali Linstad is a prominent Norwegian physician and a renowned member of the Muslim community in the capital, Oslo. He worked for several years as a volunteer physician in the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon. From 1977 to 1986, he was the chairman of the Palestine Committee of Norway, and independent and non-partisan organization that works to promote the Palestinian values and support their struggle and resistance against the Israeli occupation. The organization is part of the umbrella Joint Committee on Palestine, based in Oslo. After making an acquaintance of Islam and Iran’s Islamic Revolution, he embraced Islam and become a Shiite Muslim. Dr. Linstad is the founder of the first...

Kourosh Ziabari - Ernst Zundel is a German author and historian who has spent seven years of his life behind bars as a result of expressing his controversial viewpoints and opinions. He is a revisionist who has denied the Holocaust as described by most historians. He has been one of the most prominent political prisoners in Europe and has been jailed in three countries on two continents. After his arrest in the U.S. in 2003, he was deported to Canada, where he was kept in prison as “a threat to the national security” for two years. After deportation to Germany in March 2005, he was convicted and sentenced in 2007 to five additional years of imprisonment on charges of holocaust denial.  He was finally released on March 1,...

Kourosh Ziabari - Some people say that it’s the 5774th time that Iranians across the world are celebrating the ancient Persian New Year festival, Nowruz. However, some history experts believe that Nowruz has been enshrined and observed for more than 15,000 years, even before the official establishment of the Persian Empire. Like Christmas, Nowruz is a pleasurable, elaborate and delicate festival which brings millions of people together, but it seems that there are certain elements in Nowruz which make it a distinctive, matchless and everlasting tradition, and one of these important elements is its historicity. Cyrus the Great, the first king of the Persian Empire, came to throne in 550 BC, but since almost 2000 years before him when...

  Kourosh Ziabari - The Persian New Year has just started and Iranians across the world as well as people from such countries as Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Armenia and Iraq will be celebrating the festivities marking the commencement of the New Year and arrival of the vernal equinox. Nowruz (meaning “new day” in Persian) is a set of rituals and customs that inaugurate the Persian New Year. There are diverse viewpoints regarding the origins and roots of Nowruz. Some scholars believe that Nowruz first emerged 7,000 years ago, and some others put the number at 15,000. However, what is clear is that Nowruz is an ancient festival with delicate and subtle cultural ramifications and is...

  Kourosh Ziabari - For more than 35 years, the United States has been imposing harsh economic sanctions on Iran based on unfounded and unsubstantiated charges for which it has never presented any reliable evidence or convincing reasons. Regrettably, the United States has never felt responsible for presenting a logical justification for its confrontational and hostile attitude toward the Iranian people; an attitude which has been stiffened and hardened over the past decade as Iran’s nuclear program was irrationally turned into the scene of an erosive conflict between Iran and the West. Aside from the sanctions the UN Security Council has imposed on Iran, the U.S. has prodded its allies in Asia, Africa and Europe to impose...

  Kourosh Ziabari - The United States, bearing the accolade of the world’s number one superpower, is facing numerous political, economic and social challenges both in the domestic and international level. A large and influential group of progressive, anti-war activists, journalists, university professors and thinkers have begun to question and defy the unwavering military adventures of the United States across the world and its expansionistic policies. The U.S. support for Israel which constitutes one of the hallmarks of Washington’s foreign policy has also irritated many people across the world, contributing to the growth of anti-American sentiments. Moreover, the governments which were used to blindly take orders from...

  Kourosh Ziabari - Muhammad Abdul Latif is the imam of Lighthouse Mosque in Oakland, California, and an instructor at ILM Tree, a home-schooling cooperative in Lafayette, California. He also teaches at Zaytuna College's annual Summer Arabic Intensive program in Berkeley, California. Abdul Latif converted to Islam in 1995 in Atlanta, Georgia, when he was 20 years old. He subsequently traveled throughout the Muslim world and, in 2002, relocated with his family to the San Francisco Bay Area to take advantage of the resources of knowledge and the community that had formed around Zaytuna Institute. Mr. Abdul Latif joined me in an interview to discuss the cancelled plan of Dove World Outreach Center to burn copies of the Holy...

  Kourosh Ziabari - Abolghasem Bayyenat is an independent political analyst writing mainly on Iran’s foreign policy developments. Over the past decade, his political commentaries and articles have appeared in numerous popular media and online journals, including Foreign Policy Journal, Foreign Policy In Focus, Monthly Review, Eurasia Review, AntiWar.com, Tehran Times, Middle East Online, San Francisco Chronicle, Online Opinion, American Chronicle, and a number of other national newspapers and online journals across the world. He has also published a number of book chapters and articles in academic journals. Besides academic studies in political science and international relations, he has also practical experience in international...

Kourosh Ziabari - Prof. John E. Hare is the Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology at the Yale University’s Divinity School. A British classicist, philosopher and ethicist, he is the author of several well-known and best-selling books in religion and morality including “God and Morality: A Philosophical History”, “The Moral Gap”, “Ethics and International Affairs”, “Why Bother Being Good” and “Plato’s Euthyphro”. John Hare has in his background the experience of teaching philosophy at the University of Lehigh from 1975 to 1989. In his “God’s Call” book, Hare discusses the divine command theory of morality, analyzing texts in Duns Scotus, Kant and contemporary moral theory. John joined me in an...

Kourosh Ziabari - Craig L. Blomberg is the Distinguished Professor of the New Testament, and has been a New Testament scholar since 1986 at the Denver Seminary in Colorado. Denver Seminary where Prof. Blomberg teaches is an evangelical graduate-level institution that was founded in 1950. Blomberg delivers speeches and writes on a number of Christianity, religion-related issues regularly. He has published several books on the New Testament of which we can name “From Pentecost to Patmos: An Introduction to Acts Through Revelation” and “The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel: Issues and Commentary”. He specializes in the parables and the writings of Luke-Acts. Prof. Blomberg joined me in an interview to answer my questions...

Kourosh Ziabari - Many independent and conscientious thinkers and scholars in the world agree with this assumption that the sanctions which the United States and the European Union have imposed on Iran over its nuclear program are inhumane, unjust, contrary to the principles of human rights and constitute an act of war and collective punishment. The United States says that the sanctions are put in effect in order to prevent Iran from producing a nuclear bomb but ironically, the United States is the largest possessor of nuclear weapons in the world itself. Even the intelligence agencies of the United States have published official reports which indicate that Iran does not have the intention to build nuclear weapons. In order to...