Posts tagged : "Islam"

Kourosh Ziabari - Huffington Post: I was in Cartagena de Indias, a modern port city in the Bolivar Department north of Colombia two weeks ago to take part in a cultural journalism fellowship program. The city, boasting a charming colonial architecture, exaggerated graffitis on the abandoned walls of its Getsemani district, an ancient walled town and an alluring beach resort, has been the setting of many of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novels. Part of our job in the fellowship was to file reports on the cultural, historical and touristic magnets of the city. I embarked on an unconventional journey for one of my reports, and ultimately realized that I had made the right decision. I set off a quest to find a mosque in the city of about 1...

Kourosh Ziabari - Huffington Post: When the reports of coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris began to break out in the evening of November 13, a mixed feeling of fright and misery immediately inundated me. I was frightened at the depth of cruelty that had transpired and affected the French people once again. I felt sympathy with the people of France who were undeservedly victimized and terrorized. And at the same time, I felt miserable. As a Muslim, it was my initial impression that the terrorist attacks in Paris would be eventually blamed on Muslims, and it didn't take so long before the media held "Islamic terrorists" accountable for the cataclysm of that horrific night, so my expectation had been realized. I didn't make such a...

Kourosh Ziabari  - Iran Review: I was privileged to be the Iranian delegate of the Senior Journalists Seminar 2015, a generous fellowship granted by the Hawaii-based East-West Center to a select number of American, Asian and Middle Eastern journalists since 2003 every year. The goal of the fellowship program is to bridge the gaps in the U.S. relations with the Muslim world. This year, a group of 17 journalists from Iran, Afghanistan, China, Egypt, India, Iraq, Kuwait, Malaysia, Pakistan, Palestine, the Philippines and the United States were selected to take part in the 21-day professional dialogue, study and travel program. The program had an unimaginably intensive and tight schedule. We had six main destinations: the three U.S....

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: A European Youth Press fellowship took me to the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum 2015 held in the German city of Bonn from June 22 to 24 to cover the world’s largest media gathering for Iran Review. The 3-day event was held in the World Conference Center Bonn, the former home to the German Bundestag (lower house of the Federal Parliament) and several workshops and plenary sessions were arranged with different subject matters revolving around the forum’s main theme “Foreign Policy in the Age of Digital Media.” About 160 speakers and panelists delivered presentations in the workshops and plenary sessions. On the second day of the event, Iran Review conducted an interview with Mr. Gavin Rees,...

Kourosh Ziabari - International Policy Digest: The debate on “Islamic fundamentalism” has turned immensely heated and intense in the West, especially as the terrorist group ISIS continues its relentless campaign of mass killing and executing non-Muslims and threatens to take the fight to the European capitals. ISIS has played a central role in creating skepticism towards Islam in the West that the religion preaches violence. It was about 4 months ago that a deadly shooting spree at the headquarters of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris claimed 12 lives, saddened millions of French people over the dramatic loss and also incited a new wave of Islamophobic attacks across Europe. Several mosques were set on fire...

Kourosh Ziabari: Islamophobia is on the rise in the West, and certain governments have built their foreign policy towards the Islamic nations upon propagating an imaginary fear of Muslims as the perceived culprits behind several problems our world is facing today. A prominent US-based scholar who has investigated and studied Islamophobia in an extensive book believes that it’s the racist nature of the American society that permits Islamophobia to grow and turn into a point of confrontation between the Muslim community and the government. “Islamophobia in the US is very different from Islamophobia in Europe, for example. This is because the United States is built on a racial and class hierarchy. It is fundamentally a racist country...

Kourosh Ziabari - Tehran Times: He is indubitably the greatest name in Islamic rock and pop music. Iranians feverishly call him their fellow citizen, but he has spent only his first 3-4 years of life in Iran. He immigrated to Britain with his parents when he was a child. He prefers to be simply called a Muslim artist, and not be associated with his national roots in order for his message to reach out to as many people across the world as possible instead of simply appealing to a certain nation or group of people. Referred to as “Islam’s biggest rock star” by the Time magazine, Sami Yusuf is a well-known singer, songwriter, composer and multi-instrumentalist who was has received widespread worldwide acclamation for his unique...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: The First International Conference on World Against Violence and Extremism (held on December 9-10, 2014) was an opportunity for hundreds of public figures, including politicians, diplomats, intellectuals, academicians, religious leaders and thinkers of more than 40 world countries to come to Tehran and discuss one of the most pressing and sensitive issue of the 21st century with each other: terrorism and extremism. The debate on violence and extremism has become more heated and controversial with the rise of the terrorist cult ISIS, which has established a self-proclaimed Islamic Caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria, and harbors inauspicious plans for dominating larger parts of the Middle East and even...

Kourosh Ziabari: Prof. Sheila Blair, a prominent Islamic arts scholar, says the sense of hospitality is what makes the Iranian people distinctive in their deportment and demeanor than the other nations of the world. Prof. Sheila Blair, who is a Norma Jean Calderwood University Professor of Islamic and Asian Art at the Fine Arts Department of the Boston College, says that Iranians have always been creative and innovative people and that is why the Iranian arts are so unique, subtle and delicate. “Since Iran was often the bridge from regions further east to Arabia and beyond, Iranians quickly learned of the latest in artistic and technological innovations elsewhere, and people elsewhere learned of those things that had developed in...

  Kourosh Ziabari - The offensive movie “Innocence of Muslims” which has pejoratively insulted Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and portrayed Islam a retrograde, corrupt and repressive religion is still drawing international condemnation, even though it seems that the wave of protests and demonstrations against this blasphemous movie across the Muslim world has calmed down. People with different political viewpoints and religious belongings have expressed their dismay and consternation at the movie and called it an effort to sow the seeds of discord and conflict between the Muslims, Christians and Jews and pitting them against each other. In order to further investigate the motives behind the production of the film and the...

  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 - 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...