Posts tagged : "Religion"

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 - 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 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 - 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: The former Archbishop of Washington Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick says that none of the divine religions permits and discounts the humiliation of the followers and sacraments of other religions and scoffing at what millions of people hold to be sacred and holy is not allowed or commended by any religion. “There has to be respect for what other people believe. It is almost like you slap somebody on face if you attack what they hold to be sacred, and it is really an attack on the respect that other people deserve. If we believe that we are all brothers and sisters in God’s family, then we must love all brothers and sisters and not treat them as fools, and not attack what they hold to be holy and sacred,” said...

  Kourosh Ziabari, Iran Review: Even if you don’t know his name, you’ve most probably heard of the Christian Pastor who set several copies of Quran, the holy book of Muslims, on fire in 2010 on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The eccentric pastor believes, or pretends to believe that Muslims were responsible for the killing of American citizens as the American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the World Trade Center North and South Towers respectively on September 11, 2001 and killed around 3,000 people. Terry Jones is the name who sparked an international controversy in 2010 and 2011 when announced his plans for burning the copies of Holy Quran under the pretext that Islam is a religion of...

  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...