Posts tagged : "Islam"

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: France is home to a sizeable Muslim population that is rapidly growing in number. The state does not collect religious or ethnic census data in accordance with an 1872 legislation, so it’s difficult to ascertain how many Muslims of different nationalities and racial backgrounds live in France. However, it’s estimated that there are 6 million Muslims in France, half of whom are born or naturalized French citizens. Muslims of Algerian descent make up the largest subgroup. With the global refugee crisis looming large, the number of France’s Muslims is expected to rise. In 2012, the Interior Ministry estimated that there are around 2,500 mosques in France. Notwithstanding, a 2016 report by the Senate put the...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: Uighurs are a Turkic people native to Central and East Asia and one of the 55 ethnic minorities officially recognized by the government of China. Over 11 million Uighurs live in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in the northwest of China, making up around 45% of the local population. The majority of Uighurs practice Sunni Islam. Xinjiang is a historically restive region, and after the 9/11 attacks, Chinese state media started to single out Uighurs as terrorists, separatists and extremists, branding them as China’s number one enemy within. According to the Hong Kong-based group the Uyghur Human Rights Project, Uighurs lead “predominantly secular lives,” which contradicts the Chinese...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: Bordered by China to the north and India to the west, Southeast Asia is home to some of the world’s most promising economies, some of the biggest shipping trade routes and a young, digitally-connected population. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries are said to represent the greatest opportunity for fintech development. The region is urbanizing at a remarkable pace, with cities growing five times faster than in other parts of the world. Geopolitically and economically, Southeast Asia is of high importance to the European Union and the United States as an investment hotbed and trading partner that cannot be ignored. A recent report by the Global Impact Investing Network found...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: Whether it takes the form of vandalizing mosques, assaulting women wearing hijab walking down the streets, painting graffiti with hateful messages on the walls of a Muslim teacher's house or bullying the Syrian child at school, Islamophobia is raising its ugly head across the world and seems to be more powerful than ever. The coming to power of Donald Trump in the United States, Brexit in the United Kingdom and the inability of the international community to address the global refugee crisis have only exacerbated anti-Muslim prejudice and paved the way for more hate crimes to happen here and there. More than before, the world is in need of inter-faith dialogue and people need education to be able to...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: The humanitarian catastrophe in Myanmar’s Rakhine State has been described as the world’s most urgent refugee crisis. The roots of the ethnic conflict can be traced back to British colonial policy in what was then Burma, but it was the decision to strip the Muslim Rohingya minority of citizenship rights on the basis of their religion that laid the foundation for most recent abuses. While 135 national ethnic groups were recognized and granted certain rights, the Rohingya were effectively rendered stateless under the 1982 Citizenship Act, creating the world’s largest stateless minority. Decades of privation and humiliating restrictions culminated in violent clashes between the Arakan Rohingya...

Kourosh Ziabari - International Policy Digest: The interrelationship between Islam and the West and the struggles that make integration in American and European societies difficult for the Muslims is a major debate these days. An American philosopher and author says Islamophobia is not a new invention and the difficulties faced by Muslims in describing and spreading their faith and the difficulties imposed on them by governments have together created the misunderstandings that have made the interfaith dialogue an arduous task. Dr. Daniel Tutt (@DanielTutt) is an interfaith activist and philosopher. As a scholar activist, his work addresses Islamophobia and inter-religious dialogue. His writing and work has been published in...

Kourosh Ziabari - CFJ: Steve Adler is the Mayor of Austin, Texas. He is Jewish but his advocacy for the rights of Muslims and immigrants and his vocal resistance against the exclusion of minorities from important social and political decision-makings have made him a popular politician and lawyer nationally and internationally. He has been a practicing attorney in Austin in the areas of eminent domain and civil rights for some 35 years. A noted member of Democratic Party, Mayor Adler was named by the Foreign Policy magazine as one of the top 100 global thinkers in 2017. I did a brief interview with Steve Adler to ask him questions about President Donald Trump's Muslim ban and how immigrants and minorities are doing these days in...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: On 27 January 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump issued the executive order 13769, blocking the entry of the nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries into the United States on security grounds. The executive order, popularly referred to as the Muslim ban was challenged by several courts. Many lawyers, legal experts and Congressmen voiced their protest against it. However, the third version of the ban signed by President Trump on 24th September 2017 still prevents the citizens of the seven countries from traveling to America unless in exceptional circumstances. Its immediate effect was that 700 travellers were detained and up to 60,000 visas were provisionally revoked. Findings by Haas Institute reveal...

Kourosh Ziabari - The Huffington Post: Casting blame on those responsible for the rise of the Islamic State in various parts of the Middle East and its disconcerting extension into other parts of the world is a futile exercise. The fact that the Islamic State has developed a global sphere of influence and is able to spread instability unimpeded necessitates detailed investigation, but it is important to note that the current state of affairs is the result of the faults, shortcomings, and negligent decision-making of many actors. What matters now is that the Islamic State is making advances on multiple fronts and the international community is barely committed and insufficiently united to be able to tackle its unchecked...

Kourosh Ziabari - International Policy Digest: The last thing a tourist would anticipate to unearth in Cartagena de Indias in northern Colombia is a mosque in the middle of an unthinkably impoverished, underprivileged slum on the outskirts of the city close to the beach bordering the Caribbean Sea in La Boquilla. To understand the notion of being an absolute minority, one can compare the population of Colombia of about 49.8 million to the country’s Muslim citizens: minimally no more than 15,000! So, for a city like Cartagena with about 1.2 million residents, you might need a magnifying glass to detect the Muslims. Joaquin Sarmiento/FNPI The only mosque in Cartagena is situated somewhere that even many locals residing here for...

Kourosh Ziabari - Truth NGO: The incendiary statement made by the Republican U.S. presidential contender Donald Trump in December 2015, who called for the “complete shutdown” of all Muslims from entering the United States, provoked outrage and dismay across the world and underlined the rise of an Islamophobic trend in the campaign season rhetoric in America. Many American Muslims reacted to Trump’s comments by saying that his prejudiced conviction was unconstitutional and un-American and ran counter to the principle of freedom of religion sustained in the First Amendment. Prior to that, Donald Trump had called for the profiling of American Muslims in special databases and demanded that they should carry identification cards...

Kourosh Ziabari - Huffington Post: Imagine you're traveling from Sacramento, CA to Richmond, VA on a flight you've been anticipating for a couple of weeks so as to reunite with the family members you were missing for quite a while. At the airport, you've gone through all the security inspections and passport check, handed over your laptop and iPad devices for "additional screening", taken off your shoes at the request of the guards talking to you grimly, emptied your pockets - having no option but to allow the security officer unzip your wallet and find how much money you're carrying while he is actually looking for something suspicious, and finally boarded the plane, fastened your seatbelt, adjusted your pillow and just given a call...