2021-03-30
The persecution of Baha’i villagers became “stranger than fiction” when the Baha’is were ordered to “go to Israel ” and separate their own cows from cows belonging to Muslims in Ivel, a village in Mazandaran Province. This issue of systematic expropriation of the Baha’is in Iran and in Ivel was highlighted during a webinar hosted by Evin Incir, a Member of the European Parliament (MEP), from the Swedish Social Democratic Party on the 4th of February 2021. The panelists included Miloon Kothari (former UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing), MEP Antonio Lopez-Isturiz White, Member of the Swedish Parliament Anders Österberg, and Diane Alai (Representative of the Bahá’í International Community Geneva). […]
2021-03-29
In “The Burden of Baggage”, Roy Oksnevad, a church pastor, writer and missionary conducted surveys among different Iranian churches outside of Iran. He presents an insightful look inside the community of first-generation converts. He shows how Iranian culture carries over into the church and impacts both its strengths and vulnerabilities. Roy Oksnevad (PhD Intercultural Studies) was the director of the Muslim Ministry Program at the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism and started a coalition of ministry to Muslims in North America. His missionary work has been to Muslims, especially among first-generation Iranian Christians. The number of Christians in Iran is “without a doubt in the order of magnitude of several […]
2021-03-29
Mvoices conducted an interview with Mansour Borji, executive director of Article 18, a London-based Christian advocacy organization that helps former Christian prisoners overcome trauma, about how former prisoners survive this psychological torture and the challenges that they face after being released from the Islamic Republic’s torture chambers. White torture is a psychological torture technique, in which inmates are held in solitary confinement for very long periods of time. It is intended to produce complete sensory deprivation and isolation in the victim. It is one of the most brutal torture methods used in Iranian prisons alongside physical torture. Many Iranian prisoners of conscience, including Christians, Bahais, journalists, women and civil rights […]
2021-03-28
The contents of Sufis and Their Opponents in the Persianate World, published in 2020, is based on the conference ‘Sufis and Mullahs: Sufis and Their Opponents in the Persianate World’, organized in 2016 by Leonard Lewison and Reza Tabandeh at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies (IAIS) at the University of Exeter, which brought together scholars on Sufism from around the world. The book contains about 600 pages covering various aspects of “the Sufi/anti-Sufi opposition in a large historical timeframe and vast geographical expanse”. The book’s contents are divided into five main sections including Medieval Persia and early modern central Iran, Anatolia, Mongol, Timurid, and Safavid Persia, Qajar Persia […]
2021-03-15
We are going to invite a variety of people, including equal rights activists, researchers and journalists, to share their experiences and their views on the challenges, achievements and rights of the religious minorities and civil society in Iran at the Mvoices’ “Carte Blanche”. For this number, we have invited Sepideh Nasseri, a civil rights activist, artist, and atheist based in Sweden, to share her experience of being an atheist in Iranian society: Let’s start with the problems atheists face in Iran. According to a recent poll by the GAMAAN Institute in the Netherlands, 9% of Iranians have claimed/claim to be atheists, and only 32% of Iranians consider themselves the followers […]