On 1st April 1979, Iran voted by national referendum to become an Islamic Republic, and to approve a new theocratic constitution, whereby Khomeini became Supreme Leader of the country in December 1979. The great Persian civilization has suspended. Hundred thousands of secular, liberal, and socialist Iranian families have fled westwards in the aftermath of theocratization of Iran.  This small family is one of them.

Socialist Persian Mother, socialist Azeri father, and liberal prodigal son. The mother and son, pictured above, speak openly with Mideast Youth about their own efforts to outreach their fellow Iranians within the borders, and outside it. In addition to glimpses from the past, and thoughts about the future.

Two generations who share the dreams, aspirations and homesickness, however use two different languages, literally and figuratively.

Shahla, the mother, a digital and native refugee, is active offline. Meanwhile Dennis, the son, perfectly extends his mother’s activism and takes it to the online world throughout using the modern technology in order to spread the word about his country. Dennis, who puts the Iranian flag on his Facebook profile picture, works as a human connector between the strangled social media hubs in his home country from one side, and the world’s renowned media outlets from the other. Despite the generation gap, they both share an implied opinion; “Iran is under theocratic dictatorship, and if we don’t participate in altering this reality, who will do it?!”

Mother’s dream: A socialist revolution. She’s very blunt about it. Even democracy isn’t on her A-list, maybe because Ahmadinejad claims that he’s democratically elected, but socialism is!

Son’s dream: To trace his blood routes, visit his family and friends, and wander in the streets of free Tehran. He definitely knows the whereabouts of the digital #Tehran well, but he wants to touch its walls, plays football, his favourite sport, on its grounds, and talks in his mother tongue with relatives who he has never been able to meet in the coldness of the Nordic Sweden. The Islamic Republic is older than Dennis with 13 years, but he’s quite sure that he’ll live longer than it.

Shahla Nouri, a prominent member of Organisation for Women’s Liberation (OWL) – Iran, speaks in this interview, through her son who finds himself a Persian-English interpreter, as well as an interviewee throughout this podcast, about her organisation, and how they help women refugees from Iran and Kurdistan in Stockholm, where they live and operate. They also fight what they call the “gender apartheid” between men and women in Iran, help homosexuals of Iran, and spread awareness about human trafficking through their satellite channel which is received by many Iranians through cables.

“The organisation runs a lot of campaigns to stop stoning and execution of Iranian women in their homeland.” – Shahla Nouri.

OWL – Iran cooperates with a lot of anonymous active organisations in Iran, whose names can’t be announced, otherwise, the life of those operating the organisations would be threatened.

Shahla is burdened by memories which date back to 32 years ago, when she was forced to flee Iran in 1979, alongside her Kurdish political activist husband, and never returned back home. The family who has fled Iran 32 years ago, until they settled in Sweden 7 years later, after wandering through many countries in between.

“I want to see my homeland after 32 years abroad.” – Shahla Nouri

OWL was launched on 14th December 2002 in London, upon direct response to the growing women’s movement in Iran for equality and liberation The contemporary history of women’s movement in Iran dates back to the 1979 uprising, when their struggle and aspirations for an equal and just society for all was crushed by the newly empowered Islamic Republic of Iran, which didn’t hesitate since then in showing their alter ego, especially against women.

“Women were the first social strata of the society to be suppressed by the Islamic regime. The imposition of Islamic laws, such as the compulsory veil, gender segregation in public places, negation of the right to divorce or custody of children for women, and the subsequent punishments for defying these laws, such as arrests, imprisonment, stoning and execution have all made life a hell for millions of women in Iran.” – OWL – Iran official website.

There’s a growing women’s movement to combat suppression and humiliation in Iran. Today, a lot of  Iranians are very vocal when it comes to freedom, equality, separation of religion from state, and an end to sexual apartheid, whether outside or inside the borders, however the latter population need a proxy and a creative pseudonym. OWL is overwhelmed with reform, and merged in this movement overseas.

“We regard political Islam as one of the main obstacles in the path of women’s movement for change, especially in the Middle Eastern countries.” – OWL – Iran.

The organisation’s founder and director is the prominent activist Azar Majedi, well-known for her freedom and equality efforts. I was honoured to read one of OWL‘s publications, and I was really amazed by Ms Azar’s deep analysis and insightful approaches.

Check out OWL’s official website here.

On the other side of the table, stays Dennis, the interpreter and the son, who has just finished his high school in Sweden, the country where he was born and raised for all his life.

Dennis, soon to turn 20 year old, has refused, prior to recording, to declare his full name, because that would put his family and extended family at risk.

Dennis, an Iranian-Swedish who has only navigated to his homeland through Google Earth, talks in this podcast about how he used social media in the 2009 presidential elections in Iran, and how he helped decrypting the social media news leaking from behind the Mullah-Firewall, and defusing them into the internationally recognized media outlets. Smuggled news were the world’s media headlines during the presidential campaign, however the state controlled propaganda strived to label the foreign news sources as conspirators and spies.

We can see through this family, how two different, yet united, generations, share an old struggle against an oppressive regime in their homeland by connecting the offline and online worlds together – Streetbook, as my English friend would like to call it.

The last question to both of them was about their future dreams. The emotional Shahla couldn’t help her tears, while uttering, “revolution!” But at the end, they both shared laughs while spelling their website domain on the Internet – an Iranian internal joke apparently.

Listen to this podcast with this small, yet strong, Iranian family, or download it now!

Check out our newest projects, Ahwaa, a safe and dogma-free space to debate LGBTQ-related issues in the MENA region!

What’s like to belong to a religious minority in Egypt after January 25th? Will the long history of oppression get worsened or relieved? To better know, we’ve interviewed four young activists who represent a major portion of the religious minorities in Egypt; a Baha’i, an atheist, a secular, and a Christian, in quest for their opinions, reflections, thoughts, ideas, and hopes about the Egyptian people’s uprising which made the news for the last 2 consecutive months.

To better understand the situation, the listener has to put in mind that Egypt hosts two major religious institutions, the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria established in the middle of the 1st century by Saint Mark the Evangelist, and Al-Azhar University founded in 970 A.D by the Fatimids as the first Islamic University in the world. Cairo has a unique cityscape with its ancient mosques, especially around the area of Old Cairo. Cairo is also known as the “city of a thousand minarets.”

Egypt’s “recognized” religions are Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and more recently the “Dash religion,” which denotes the Baha’i faith according the the state. The Bahai’s of Egypt, who were granted their basic rights to issue an ID after uphill trials and long waiting years, still face a lot of problems though. You’re not allowed, by state, to believe in any other religion, or practise any other rites. Egypt is a predominantly Sunni Muslim country with Islam as the recognized state religion. The percentage of the adherents of various religions is a controversial topic in Egypt, with different sources citing different figures. According to public figures, around 90% are identified as Muslim “by birth or by I.D.,” however it’s nearly impossible to estimate accurate figures, because it’s considered “deadly” to announce a convert publicly. A significant number of Muslim Egyptians also follow native Sufi orders, and there is a minority of Shi’a. Islam plays a central role in the lives of most Egyptian Muslims, however the state of ambivalence is a wide trend in Egypt. The Adhan (Islamic call to prayer) is heard five times a day, and has the informal effect of regulating the pace of everything from business to media and entertainment. Cairo also comprises a significant number of church towers.

According to the current constitution of Egypt, until Saturday’s referendum, any new legislation must at least implicitly, but ambiguously, agree with Islamic law; however, the constitution bans political parties with a religious agenda, moreover the constitution is mostly secular, except for the personal status laws which are derived from Sharia Law.

Religious minorities face discrimination and marginalization on many levels. In terms of religious freedom, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life ranks Egypt as the fifth worst country in the world, after Saudi Arabia, Iran, Uzbekistan and China. In addition, Egypt ranks among the 12 worst countries in the world in terms of religious violence against religious minorities and in terms of social hostilities against Christians in specific. Furthermore, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has placed Egypt on its watch list for religious freedom that requires close monitoring due to the nature and extent of violations of religious freedom engaged in or tolerated by the government.*

Listen to the podcast now or download it!

* Wikipedia.

The picture from here.

Mideast Youth Podcast: Broadcasting Ahead

The last move of the king

Hashtag Tahrir, hashtag revolution, Lotus revolution, among many other names given to describe the ongoing protests in Egypt.

The last 12 days have seen a lot of twists and turning points since the very beginning, when we’ve expected here that Egypt was on the verge of several successive days of rage, following the first Day of Rage which has jolted the regime on Tuesday 25th of January 2011. Accordingly, the regime has had to step closer to a real democratic reform, but on the other side, the protesters kept their pressure up, their hands high, and their fingers crossed.

Mohamed Bouazizi has started it all in Sidi Bouzid. In Egypt, it was #SidiBouzid only which has broken the border of fear, it was the firing level and the parent of #Jan25. Sidi Bouzid has inspired a historic cyclone of sweeping revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa.

Today it’s in Egypt, but Algeria, Jordan, Yemen, Iraq, and others are queuing. The world is following Tahrir closely with some mixed feelings, between admiring the Egyptian youth bravery and worrying about the Muslim Brotherhood rising power and massive popularity.

We’ve taken one step closer, and decided to penetrate the heart of the revolution, the famous Tahrir square, not the virtual one.

The first demand: To overthrow the regime

A spontaneous debate between a group protesters with different opinions has arisen in the making of this podcast; An English debate between a group of Egyptians in the heart of Tahrir. The experience of wandering the square, Maidan in Arabic, talking to people, debating, singing, laughing, chanting, eating, and even cleaning the square with the protesters was beyond all the expectations. Everything was well organized, and everyone was civilised. The protesters were expressing their opinions peacefully while respecting the others. This Tahrir Carnival should be commemorated every year, I can’t get enough of it really; the creativity, the high morale and spirits, and even the songs. So make sure you don’t miss this! Listen or download this exclusive podcast directly from the core of Tahrir square, Egypt.

The song used in the intro of this podcast is a sample of Rebel, a new song by Arabian Knightz dedicated to the Egyptian protests. Check it out on Mideast Tunes here.

Stay tuned to everything about the ongoing unprecedented protests in Egypt around the clock through Egypt’s voice on CrowdVoice here.

Browse and listen to Mideast Youth podcasts and Arabicasts all in one comprehensive place here.

Special thanks for Ahmed Youssry for his help and participation in the making of this podcast, and also I’d like to thank all the protesters who have taken time to record this from the square, risking being labelled as foreign agents “with agendas” by the state controlled media outlets in Egypt.

Mideast Youth interviews Seyran Duran, the chairperson of Kurdistan’s Women Federation in Sweden (یه‌کێتی ژنانی کوردستان له‌ سوید). Ms Seyran is a Kurdish-Swedish who has been living in Sweden as a refugee for most of her life.

Kurdistan’s Women Federation in Sweden (KWf-S) is a non-political, religious-free, and a non-profit organisation that works for the equality between the Kurdish women and men.

The organisation, which operates since 1992, has a lot of goals, among them is to end completely the discrimination and hostility towards foreigners in Sweden, improve the conditions of Kurdish women both in homeland and abroad, integrate the Kurdish women in the Swedish society, fight all forms of patriarchy and violence against women, and also support the struggle of the Kurdish people to achieve their dream of independence.

KWf-S works on different platforms, locally and internationally, to achieve their goals, like collaboration with women and Kurdish organisations around the globe. It organises seminars, demonstrations, and different kinds of projects to enhance the status of Kurdish women in Sweden, which has around 50,000 citizens from Kurdish backgrounds.

KWf-S, which has more than 3,000 members, tries to support the active participation of women to help the Kurdish case positively. Their flyers insist that the union of Kurdistan is essential, because Kurds share one language, ethnicity, history, and future. The organisation doesn’t isolate the full participation and integration of the Kurdish women in the political and social arenas, especially in Sweden which has the third largest Kurdish community in Europe after only Germany and France, from the whole Kurdish case.

KWf-S is considered a nationwide umbrella organisation for Kurdish women in Sweden.

At the end of the podcast, Ms Seyran speaks out her Kurdish dream:

I wish all the Kurds of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria live in one country together in peace, and all the refugees to return to their homeland, Kurdistan. Bring the Kurds back home!

The interpreter of this podcast is the Swedish friend and activist, Maria Hagberg.

Visit the KWf-S official website here, but please note that it’s only available in Swedish and Kurdish.

Visit the Alliance for Kurdish Rights website, a Mideast Youth project to defend the Kurdish human rights. Watch our video campaigns dedicated to Kurds here and here. Read more about the Kurdish people here. And follow the Alliance for Kurdish Rights on Twitter here.

The campaign is also available in Arabic here.

P.S. Excuse me for the noise in the background.

My online presence is blending with my offline life in a very complementary way which has given breadth to both, and made my life rich and full. – Joakim Jardenberg.

He calls himself “a new media guy in an old media world. Jack of all trades, yet master of some.” Meanwhile, some call him “a social media therapist.”

His Facebook favourite quotation reads, “those who say it cannot be done should get out of the way of those who are doing it.”

Joakim Jardenberg, aka the Swedish social media guru, is the founder and CEO of Mindpark, and he’s fond of, or maybe possessed by the, social media – likewise most of us.

We followed, in the offline sense of the word, Mr Joakim’s footsteps, after he had delivered an inspiring presentation about social media in the Young Leaders’ Social Media Café in Cairo.

Social Media Café, founded in 2010, is a unique experience where all those online friends meet each other behind the limits of statuses and tweets. Its founders say, “it’s a place for people interested in social media for social change to gather, get acquainted, plan, scheme, share and learn from each other.

“It’s a confluence of the creative, tech, entrepreneurial, and (geeky) people who are currently gathering around social media and online social networking for a greater cause – social change issues. These issues vary from human rights to sustainability issues to social entrepreneurship, etc…”

The café is planned to take place in more than twelve Arab countries providing a friendly, and maybe “tweetingly”, social space for digital innovators in different fields, helping them connecting, expressing, advocating, creating, and working for social change in the Arab World.

The Social Media Café is a part of ”The Young Leaders’ Visitors Program (YLVP)” which has been successfully launched in 2008 as an inter-cultural leadership program supporting the development of young leaders through a combination of personal growth and practical experience, focusing on social media as a tool for positive change.

Listen to this podcast now to know more about Joakim’s opinions on various related concepts like the flow of information, the digestion of information, and the indispensable mixture of our new #digital lives.

“Social media in the Middle East is still under developing, however I’m hopeful that it can change the lives of many people here. The internet is the foundation of the world in every aspect of our daily lives now, therefore I’m hoping for a future change of the region, which is inspired and driven by the role of social media.” – Joakim Jardenberg.

Visit Joakim’s English website here, or his Swedish website here. Mindpark website can be found here.

Stay in touch with Joakim Jardenberg through Facebook, as he appreciates getting in touch with all MEY readers, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

Visit The Young Leaders’ Social Media Café official website from here. And stay in touch with them to know more about the scheduled events of the upcoming Arab countries on Facebook, or Twitter.

Know more about The Young Leaders’ Visitors Program (YLVP) from here. And visit the Swedish Institute from here.

MasterPeace logo was launched on May 2010

In this podcast, we’re interviewing the energetic Mr Ilco van der Linde, the co-founder of MasterPeace and the founder of Dance for Life, to know more about MP, during the introductory event in the heart of Cairo amid MP’s celebrations of World Peace Day 2010.

Another event was held 4 days later in Den Haag on the World Peace Day 2010, Tuesday 21st of September, commemorating Prince’s Day and the International Peace Day, when ten female MPs, representing different arrays of the Dutch political spectrum, and nine cutting-edge designers have paid homage to MasterPeace. They’ve wore a custom-designed hat. Together, these MPs form a new coalition which puts aside its differences and collaborates for a higher purpose – the significance of International Peace Day and MasterPeace. MP was founded in 2009. Meanwhile, it will officially launch on the World Peace Day 2011.

The logo was launched on the 5th of May 2010 at the BevrijdingsPop Festival in Haarlem. Astonishingly enough, BevrijdingsPop Festival is the first project Ilco has ever started. And it is still held 30 years later.

”World Peace Day, on the 21st of September in the UN’s most kept secret. Let’s spread it!” – Ilco van der Linde.

Read more about Mr Ilco van der Linde on his official website here.

Check out the photostream on Flickr here, follow @MasterPeace on Twitter here, support MP’s page on Facebook here, and you can be a part of this ambitious tremendous initiative from here.

MasterPeace: Creating Peace Together.

A transcript of the podcast is below (it has been slightly edited for clarity:)

Q: Can you first introduce yourself?
A: I am Firouz Khandjani, I am a member of the National Council of Church of Iran.

Q: Can you describe the situation of Christians in Iran?
A: Yes, we are facing the worst persecution in Iran since the beginning of the Revolution. We can say that the persecution in Iran had two steps, the first step since the beginning of the Revolution was what we may call not hard persecution. Christians would lose jobs. And the opportunity to work were very limited. But since four years ago we can say that we have a hard persecution – that Christians are losing everything, and they are being targeted by security forces everywhere. They used to come in the houses and confiscate everything. Since one year, our leadership in Iran is targeted and Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani in Rasht has been arrested because he asked that his children must receive Christian courses, not Islamic courses. It’s his right. Since January my brother, Pastor Behrouz Khanjani has been arrested too, because he had connections with pastor Yousef and as the National Council of Church of Iran.

Q: And your brother, where is he now?
A: Now he is in Shiraz. And we have limited possibilities to contact him.

Q: How is the Iranian government treating religious minorities in Iran compared with average Iranians? In general the Iranian people within Iran they are treating religious minorities with respect?
A: Yes.

Q: So it’s only the government that is persecuting them?
A: Yes, usually the people are very tolerant. We can say that Iran is a country where many minorities exist. We have several ethnicities in Iran, several religious in Iran. Usually he people of Iran and the minorities coexist without problem. We have no problem with the people. We are Iranians like others and we are accept as such by other Iranians. You may be Sunni, Shia, you may be Christian or Jew, there is no difference in Iran. The very problem is the government that tries to limit the minorities who are considered as “enemies.” We can say that what’s happening in Iran is religious apartheid. We can say that the Iranian government is a racist government because it has discriminating policies against minorities.

Q: What about other religious minorities there – like the Baha’is and Zoroastrians, are they facing similar things?
A: Every minority meet quite the same problem. For example, the Baha’i situation is worse but we can say that even the Armenians and Assyrians who have Christian ancestry are very limited in Iran. You may see for example one area in the past once an Armenian area in Esfahan, New Julfa, the majority are not Muslim, the Armenians left the country. Maybe 80% of Christians left the country since the beginning of the Revolution. The same with Jews or the Baha’is. As you live in the Persian Gulf, you may see that there are many Sunnis live there. They come to work in Dubai or other Sunni places. They are Iranian too. They have the right to stay in Iran to work.

Q: How many Christians are there in Iran? The population of Christians.
A: It’s difficult to say but we can estimate that we have maybe – Greek Orthodox and Catholic Christians – maybe 3 or 400,000 Christians. And protestant Christians, maybe 30,000. Maybe 95% of Protestant Christians left the country.

Q: What’s the best way for people to help?
A: The people have to show they can’t accept in the 21st century we have in the Middle East, in Iran the same situation that minorities used to meet in France 500 years ago. It is unacceptable that in the 21st century, the Christians and other minorities in the Middle East are living the same situation. The people have to express that we have to end the religious apartheid in the Middle East. The people who are living in the Middle East who even come from other countries – they are from these areas, they didn’t come from other countries – and they have a right to live in their countries without problems.

Q: You have a blog that talks about the Christian persecution in Iran?
A: I have a blog discussing the Christian persecution of Iran, yes. It’s http://bereshith.over-blog.com/

Q: Do you have help from other Christian groups around the world?
A: It’s difficult to have information about all the Christian groups in Iran, we may have news about people we know, because we know that there were many Christians being arrested and no one knew about that. And we can only report about the people we know and are sure about them.

Q: That’s the end of my questions – do you want to add anything else?
A: I hope that we will have in the future a better Middle East, where all people, Christians, Jews, Muslims may live together in peace, and other groups. We have the Sabeans, Zoroastrians, Baha’is, and before speaking about the situation of Western countries to express concern when the Hijab is forbidden for example in France, we have to start in our own area to give freedom to all the identities in the Middle East and this is the condition for a better future for our countries.

Leaders need to have better policies toward the people – righteousness and justice is the basis of equality. Better policies will be profitable for everybody.

Interviewer: I agree with you, completely. And I hope one day we will live in a place where all minorities will be respected regardless of their faith, and I really wanted to thank you for the work that you’re doing because a lot of people they witness this persecution and they don’t speak out and they don’t tell us, then the people aren’t aware of what’s going on and how they can help, and I think the work you’re doing is important and that you will continue doing it. So thank you very much. We’ll be writing a post about what you’ve said in this podcast and also show people your blog and help people get the information that they need in order to help out.

Firouz: Thank you very much.

Dr Opal Palmer Adisa is an award-winning Jamaican-American novelist, editor, teacher, performer, poet, and activist.

Opal Palmer Adisa, who served as the Chair of the Ethnic Studies/Cultural Diversity Program at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland since 1993, fights against oppression throughout her poetry and live performances, and she’s also a feminist and child advocate.

She’s touring the world at the moment to promote for her new book, I Name Me Name, which is a collection of poetry, prose, and memories from her childhood back in Jamaica.

We’ve met with Opal, who also teaches at The University of the Virgin Islands (UVI), St. Croix Campus, and edits The Caribbean Writer, during her short stay in Egypt, and recorded this podcast with her, at which she talks about the similarities between The Caribbean and The Middle East, the challenges of peace, the possible ways to deliver messages through poetry, her sources of inspiration at her homeland Jamaica, the land of reggae and Bob Marley, and also talks to us about her latest books, I Name Me Name.

At the end of this podcast, Opal gives us a live performance of Nanny of the Maroons*, a folkloric story about the legend of Nanny of the Maroons, a Jamaican national heroine who fought against the British occupation.

Visit Dr Opal website here, and read more about her on Wikipedia here. Check her channel on YouTube here, and follow her on Twitter here. You can also find her on Facebook here.

You may also like to buy her books from Amazon here.

* Read more about Nanny of the Maroons here.

Today we speak with Huma Imtiaz, Pakistani journalist, who gives us an insight of what’s going on.

Update: The ban on Facebook has been lifted, but several other sites remain censored.

We are extremely proud of Nuha’s work and her continued dedication. For more information please visit the Alliance for Kurdish Rights website, and please considering installing this Facebook application.