Posts tagged : "Islamophobia"

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...

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: The terrorist group ISIL is moving ahead with its cruel campaign of killing the innocent civilians en masse, while its atrocities are being depicted by the corporate media as the actions of an Islamic organization. The criminal modus operandi of the ISIL is playing into the hands of those who desire to portray Islam as the source of all the evil emerging across the world and a cause of instability and conflict in the Middle East. A prominent human rights activist and Muslim author who has researched the global Islamophobic propaganda says that “tens of millions of dollars” are being poured into the “anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim industry.” “There’s ample research demonstrating the tens of millions of...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: On the final day of the Global Media Forum 2015 and while I had only a couple of hours to pack my luggage and depart from Bonn to Frankfurt and catch my return flight to Tehran, I got the chance to talk to a leading British peace-worker and women rights activist for a 15-minute interview for Iran Review. Scilla Elworthy is the founder of the Oxford Research Group, an advisor of The Elders and a member of several international peace organizations. She has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times in recognition of her work on nuclear non-proliferation and the facilitation of dialog between weapons policy-makers and their critics. A member and councilor of the World Future Council, Ms....

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 - Iran Review: The horrific actions being committed under the banner of religion, as manifested in the atrocities of the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), have made people across the world, especially youths, doubtful about the peaceful nature of divine religions and raised many questions on the relationship between Islam and terror, and the growth of what some have come to call Islamic fundamentalism. There are hardline commentators and pundits who capitalize on the mass killings and executions of civilians by the ISIS to propagate this belief that Islam is a religion of violence that preaches the killing of innocent people, and that Islam and peace are irreconcilable. They ignore the calls by...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: The terrorist attacks in France earlier this month, which resulted in the death of 17 people, has prompted a heated debate over free speech and religious intolerance. Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine that was targeted in Paris on January 7, has a long history of publishing controversial cartoons, especially those of Prophet Muhammad. The attack on the magazine’s office attracted global sympathy. World leaders from over 40 countries gathered in Paris and marched to show solidarity and express their strong support for freedom of speech. Leaders of Muslim-majority countries condemned the terrorist attacks and made it clear that such acts have no place in Islam. However, the circumstances...

Kourosh Ziabari - Tehran Times: The President of the 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly said in an exclusive interview with Tehran Times that any nuclear agreement between Iran and the six world powers that can address the concerns of the international community should be welcomed by everyone. According to John W. Ashe, the economic sanctions imposed on Iran by the United States and its allies are destructive and cannot be considered helpful as long as they complicate the livelihoods of the innocent people. On the humanitarian situation of Syria, Mr. Ashe believes that the UN is facing a problem which is the lack of access to humanitarian relief. He however hopes that those who have caused such problems and...