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The dispute in the Parsi-Zoroastrian community over the bar on two priests accused of ‘irreligious’ activities has moved to the Supreme Court, which will hear an appeal later this month against the Bombay high court order that criticised the bar. While a senior advocate from Mumbai will represent those who challenged the ban, a leading Delhi lawyer who is also a senior member in a political party has been reportedly engaged by those who support the bar. The priests were barred from the Towers of Silence cemetery and two fire temples because they had conducted after-death prayers for community members...

In the book "From Nowruz till Nowruz”, Cyrus Niknam explores how to hold and the philosophy of Iranian Zoroastrian celebrations and ceremonies, passing a solar year. In this book, he has tried to collect all the customs and related ceremonies and to explain how the ceremonies are held as well. More pages of Niknam‘s book is dedicated to celebrating Nowruz. The orders and ceremonies include 32 celebrations, each of which is considered as a sign of depth and precious heritage of Iranian culture and civilization. At the beginning he explains that in ancient Iranian belief, happiness is a good display...

Maryam had invited her two daughters and their husbands and grandchildren for Norouz, the New Year's feast, to her home in western Tehran when I called her on Saturday. It was after 9:02 p.m. when "tahvil," the change from the old to the new year, 1389 after Iranian calendar, was celebrated at Maryam's apartment, as it was in hundreds of thousands of other households in Iran and other countries. She had prepared a beautiful Haft Seen, the Norouz table, and cooked delicious Iranian food. The television was on to follow the announcement of the "tahvil," after which everyone congratulated each...

Far removed from Tehran's bustling tin-roofed teashops and Isfahan's verdant pomegranate gardens, the deserts known as Dasht-e Kavir and Dasht-e Lut meet at the city of Yazd, once the heart of the Persian Empire. Walking across the wind-whipped plains of the forgotten city, a young Iranian woman dressed in colorful floral garbs points out a sand-dusted tower hovering in the distance like a dormant volcano under a relentless sun. "This is where we put tens of thousands of corpses over the years," she explains with a congenial smile. The funerary tower is part of the ancient burial practice of Zoroastrianism,...

Flicking through photographs of immigrant Zoroastrian friends in sunny California, 40-year-old Farzad Dehnavizadeh sighs and wishes the young people of his faith would stop leaving Iran for the west. His 40,000-strong Zoroastrian community has survived centuries of conquest, oppression and forced conversion to keep their 3,200-year-old monotheistic faith alive and guard ancient traditions in Shiite Muslim majority Iran. Having withstood the ravages of history, the community is now threatened by emigration, which is day by day robbing the Zoroastrians of their precious youth. Precise figures on the scale of the exodus are not available but sources in the community estimate...

Duhok's Director of Antiquities, Hasan Ahmed Qassim, has announced the discovery of a Zoroastrian temple near Jar Ston Cave, a famous ancient site. The temple is believed to be the most complete to have been unearthed in the region. It is also said that it was a Metherani temple... "This new discovery will alter the history of the region due to its unique architectural style, which differs considerably from Zoroastrian temples previously discovered," explained the Director of Antiquities. "The temple's style which looks toward the four-directions is a unique style ever discovered in the area; thus it becomes an entry...

Sucias, Meet Lylah Alphonse. She is the "LA" who keeps blasting me on this blog. She used to work with me at the Boston Globe. She was a copy editor at the time, and the only solid thing I really remember about her is that she made her own coffee in a cute little desktop pot. ... I should say that Lylah eventually got a book published. It is called "Triumph Over Discrimination: The Life Story of Farhang Mehr." I haven't read it all the way through, mostly because I fell asleep after page...nine. The writing is passive, weak, bland,...

One of the truly astounding prophecies of the Bible is found in the last verse of Isaiah 44, together with chapter 45:1ff, (an unfortunate chapter break). It has to do with Cyrus, king of Persia. According to the historian Herodotus (i.46), Cyrus was the son of Cambyses I. He came to the Persian throne in 559 B.C. Nine years later he conquered the Medes, thus unifying the kingdoms of the Medes and the Persians. Cyrus is mentioned some 23 times in the literature of the Old Testament. Isaiah refers to Cyrus as Jehovah’s “shepherd,” the Lord’s “anointed,” who was providentially...

From al-Reuters, we have a masterpiece of disinformation: ISFAHAN — Iranian authorities beat up and tear gassed exuberant young revellers as they breathed new life into a pre-Islamic fire festival with a night of dancing, flirting and fireworks. The Islamic Republic, which has an awkward relationship with its ancient Zoroastrian religion, only gave guarded recognition to the "Chaharshanbe Souri" festival last year. The Islamic republic does not have "an awkward relationship" with Zoroastrianism. It forbids Zoroastrian practices, including the celebration of the Zoroastrian New Year, Norooz. Forget about "guarded recognition;" there is a ban. The mullahs know something that al-Reuters...

Zoroaster’s followers are increasingly few in number and might disappear thanks to India’s caste system and their own restrictive religious laws.Mumbai (AsiaNews/SCMP) – The Parsis, the last followers of Zoroaster, today number 70,000 and dropping, this according to the latest census. In 15 years, there might be only 21,000 believers left of a religion founded 2,600 years ago by the world’s first monotheist: Zarathushtra (Zoroaster). After fleeing their Persian homeland, the Parsis found sanctuary in India where they loyally served the British Raj and Queen Victoria. They are concentrated in and around Mumbai (ex Bombay) where the community has shaped...

Almost everyone knows about the magi, the "wise men from the East" who herald the birth of Jesus with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. But few realize that these three kings of Orient are not Christians or Jews, but Zoroastrians -- members of an ancient faith that not only survives to this day, but holds its national convention next week -- Tuesday to Saturday -- in San Jose. Who were these pagan astrologers, following yonder star into the Gospel according to Matthew and onto the set of countless Christmas cards and nativity scenes? And what do they have to...

Magi (Majusian) From old Persian language, a priest of Zarathustra (Zoroaster). The Bible gives us the direction, East and the legend states that the wise men were from Persia (Iran) - Balthasar, Melchior, Caspar - thus being priests of Zarathustra religion, the mages. Obviously the pilgrimage had some religious significance for these men, otherwise they would not have taken the trouble and risk of travelling so far. But what was it? An astrological phenomenon, the Star? Matthew 2:1 - "After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi [*] from the east came to...

Watch video... http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week817/feature.html DEBORAH POTTER, guest anchor: This week marks an observance for a belief system much older than Christianity -- the anniversary of the death of the prophet Zarathustra, also known as Zoroaster. Zoroastrianism began in ancient Iran or Persia and may be little known today, but it left its historical imprint on Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Estimates vary widely, but some claim that as few as 115,000 Zoroastrians remain, a few in Europe, North America and Iran; the vast majority in India, where they are called Parsis. From Bombay, now officially known as Mombai, Fred DeSam Lazaro reports....

Tehran, Dec 20, IRNA -- Millions of Iranians all over the world Monday night will celebrate 'Yalda', the longest night of the year and the first night of winter as a token of victory of the angel of goodness over the devil of badness. 'Yalda' is a Syriac word meaning birth and according to Mithraism, a faith that initially originated from Persia and later spread out throughout the ancient civilized world, the first day of winter which falls on December 21 this year, was celebrated as the birthday of Mithra, the angel of light. Ancient Iranians believed that two groups...

NEW DELHI: Lt. Gen (Retd) A M Sethna, member, National Commission for Minorities, and president, Delhi Parsi Anjuman, is touching 80, and has an interesting story to tell about the Parsi identity crisis that dates back to the 1940s. This was a time when the affable general was a cadet and it was mandatory to wear a badge with one’s religion inscribed on it. “It was part of the uniform. For Christians, you had to even mention if you were Pros [Protestant] or RC [Roman Catholic],” Sethna remembers. “When I was asked what I was, I said ‘Parsi’, and the...

Despite the tendency to see Iran as an Islamic monolith and the attempts of the ruling clerics in Tehran to cast it as such, the full complexity of Iranian identity is little understood and almost never discussed—even by Iranians themselves. Long before it was absorbed into the Islamic empire by Arab armies under Caliphs Umar and Uthman in the mid-seventh century, Persia had been the birthplace of Zarathustianism, or Zoroastrianism, the world’s first monotheistic religion.The religion was forged some 3,500 years ago around the philosopher-prophet Zarathustra’s teachings, which emphasized personal morality and a conscious choice between good and evil. From...

<p>A respected Iranian ex-patriot, Dr. Ahura Pirouz Khaleghi Yazdi, hosts a news program on a southern California based Iranian satellite broadcasting station (Rangarang TV, which means colorful), has recently announced he is returning to Iran to serve as a catalyst for a regime change in Iran no later than that date.</p>

City Journal Our Islamic Fifth Column Farrukh Dhondy Autumn 2001 My first name gives rise to confusion. It’s a common Muslim name, so people I meet, or who read my byline, assume that I am of the faith. Most recently, in response to a column I write for an Indian paper, in which I confessed to having met a few terrorists in my time and attempted to analyze their limited grasp of the world, I received a lot of hate mail. Some of the e-mailers clearly thought I was a Muslim apostate and reminded me that the penalty for that...