Posts tagged : "Religion"

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: Islam is now the world’s second largest religion after Christianity and the fastest-growing faith tradition globally. Spiraling fear of, and antipathy toward Muslims, which some scholars argue is a historical phenomenon with a pedigree stretching back to the 18th and 19th centuries, has been intensified and elevated to new heights in the recent decades, particularly with developments that have brought the Western civilization and the Muslim world into closer contact, including the rising tide of immigration from Muslim countries to Europe and North America in the late 20th century, and the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing project of War on Terror. A 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center found people in...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: On March 15, the International Day to Combat Islamophobia, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres voiced his concern over the spiraling surge of anti-Muslim discrimination and bigotry worldwide, calling on governments and stakeholders to play a more consequential role in containing this byzantine form of racism that has impaired harmony and stability in multicultural settings. As far-right discourses gain traction and ultra-nationalist politics pick up steam internationally, fissures between the Muslim communities and Western societies tend to become deeper and more resistant to healing. Throughout the European Union, aversion to Muslims is cropping up in a panoply of ways and shapes....

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran has long championed the cause of repressed Muslims worldwide, an often vocal stance that has underpinned the Islamic Republic’s self-proclaimed leadership role in the Muslim world. But Iran has willfully ignored the ordeal of more than 1.5 million Uighur Muslims now confined by China in controversial “vocational training” camps, a silence that has spoken volumes about Beijing’s growing influence over Tehran. Iran’s support for persecuted Shiite Muslim groups reaches far and wide, from repressed Shiites in Sunni-governed Bahrain, to the Houthis waging war in Yemen, to the  pro-Iranian Islamic Movement in Nigeria which seeks to establish an Islamic state and whose rebel logo includes a...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: In the midst of a full-blown national economic crisis, the latest polemics of a powerful hardline preacher have served as a distraction for Iranians, with many caught by surprise and others taking to social media to poke fun at the fundamentalist cleric’s rabble-rousing. Ahmad Alamolhoda, the Friday prayer leader of the holy city of Mashhad and the representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Razavi Khorasan province, unveiled his novel prescription for social and family life when he said in recent remarks, “unfortunately, as a result of the impact of the Western culture, the spouses call each other by first names at home.” He went on to theorize that “in the first layer of...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: As the world was mesmerized by the spectacle of the presidential race in the United States, attention was diverted from other headline-making issues, at least fleetingly. In particular, it looks as though the dust has settled on the latest civilizational clash between the West and the Islamic world following the reprinting of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad by the French magazine Charlie Hebdo and the brutal murder of Samuel Paty, a French middle-school teacher who had shown the cartoons in one of his classes. A debate on the appropriateness of republishing the controversial cartoons, the degree to which they caused offense to Muslims worldwide, the sanctity of freedom of speech in a...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: It is disheartening, but the adherents of the world’s first monotheistic religion appear to have been consigned to oblivion in their ancestral homeland, and as their numbers shrink, it is not only a religion that is disappearing, but the building blocks of a civilization. Zoroastrianism is believed to have been founded in ancient Iran 3,500 years ago. It was the dominant religion of the Persian Empire until the Muslim conquest of Persia starting in AD 633 capsized the cultural and religious configuration of the nation and ushered in new values based on Islamic law in a society that initially perceived the arrival of Islam as unwelcome. Iran’s 2011 census found that there were only around 25,000...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Anti-Muslim bigotry is on the rise globally. Let’s call a spade a spade. Islamophobia, even though some people prefer to tiptoe around using the term so that they don’t acknowledge the gravity of this gruesome form of racism, is an undeniable reality in the 21st century, casting a dark shadow over the lives of the nearly 1.8 billion Muslims dotted across the four corners of the globe. From burning down and vandalizing mosques to physical attacks on people appearing to be Muslims walking down the streets, hate crimes against Muslim students on university campuses, verbal abuse and death threats directed against Muslim citizens and the Islamic faith being constantly slandered in the media,...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: To Shia Muslims scattered across the world, the first month of the Islamic calendar, Muharram, is a fateful time. Whether they are young or old, Shiite adherents set in motion the preparations of the mourning ceremonies of Muharram at least a couple of months in advance, drape entire cities in black and gear up for commemorating the martyrdom of the third Shia Imam Hussein, a grandson of Prophet Muhammad, who was killed by the second Umayyad Caliph Yazid in the Battle of Karbala on October 10, 680. The mourning rituals of Muharram are perhaps the most pronounced manifestations of the communal consciousness of Shiites, who currently make up around 15% of the global population of Muslims. Iran,...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: The celebrated anti-colonial nationalist and leader of the independence movement of India Mahatma Gandhi is credited with the famous quote “our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization.” Diversity is cherished as a universal value, and a wealth of academic studies have been carried out substantiating this conviction that proselytizing multiculturalism and inclusion yield astounding results in different political, social, cultural and economic endeavors. United Kingdom is a nation that has historically benefited from its demographic diversity, getting strength from the cultures and races that go to make up the modern Britain. In 2018, around 13.8 percent of...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: Islamophobia in the US has increased ever since the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Discrimination and hate crimes against American Muslims skyrocketed immediately after the deadliest assault on US soil took place. Despite sporadic efforts by former President Barack Obama to bridge the religious and racial divides, anti-Muslim prejudice was further heightened after the election of Donald Trump in 2016, leading to what the Council on American-Islamic Relations described as a “sharp rise” in a campaign against “innocent Muslims, innocent immigrants and mosques.” Robert McKenzie, a senior fellow at New America, a Washington-based think tank, said in 2018 that “political rhetoric from national leaders...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: Multiculturalism is in a troubled state in many democracies worldwide. According to its leaders, however, Australia stands out as an exception. The former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull once referred to Australia as “most successful multicultural country in the world.” Scanlon Foundation’s 2017 Mapping Social Cohesion Report found 85 percent of Australians believe multiculturalism is good for their country. The other striking finding by the foundation was that only 3 percent of Australians strongly disagreed that the mingling of different backgrounds improved life in their neighborhood. Anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric still echoes throughout the national media the same way it holds much ground...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: In 1971, Canada became the first country in the world to officially adopt a multiculturalism policy. The decision was made under the leadership of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, and in 1982, section 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms recognized multiculturalism as a national agenda. Canada is nowadays a nation of immigrants, and has founded its immigration policy upon attracting educated and skilled foreign workers from different countries to enhance its economy and improve its people’s standard of living. The country is facing challenges such as an aging population and declining birth rate, and is turning to immigrants to fill the gaps. Canada is one of the top four Western nations when it...