Free Republic

Some 300 million people around the world are starting their annual celebration of renewal and harmony with nature in what is to them the biggest cultural holiday of the year, typically involving 13 days of rituals. Nowruz (alternatively spelled Nauruz, Nauryz, Navruz, Nevruz, Nooruz, Norooz, Norouz, or Novruz), also known as Persian New Year (Nowruz means “new day” in Persian), is celebrated across ethnic groups with a common Silk Roads heritage, including Afghanistan, India, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Turkey, as well as their diaspora in other countries. Watch more from TIME Click to Learn More AD pause volume_off...

Google commemorates Nowruz, the Persian New Year, with a vibrant doodle symbolizing equal daylight and darkness on the vernal equinox. The doodle features haft-sīn, a table Google has created a colourful and vibrant doodle to celebrate Nowruz, the Persian New Year. Nowruz means 'new day' in Persian and it aligns with the vernal equinox, marking the period when daylight and darkness are nearly equal in duration.The Google doodle consist of multiple colourful elements which represent the Persian culture. The doodle comprises of traditional calligraphy, floral designs and the most important tradition haft-sīn.For those unaware, Haft-sin is a distinctive table arrangement...

Monday marked the beginning of spring, and that means celebrations commemorating the centuries-old holiday of Nowruz are underway. Commonly known as the Persian New Year, Nowruz translates to "new day" and symbolizes revival and renewal for its more than 300 million celebrants in modern-day Iran and beyond. Historically, the holiday has been observed in the Middle East and parts of Asia. The roughly two-week festival typically includes food, dancing, singing and poetry. This year, Nowruz will overlap with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when observers typically fast during daylight hours. Nowruz is more than 3,000 years old Though the...

Sousan, a young Yazidi girl of 16, had one of the happiest days of her life when she was married to Fouzi, a Yazidi man, in the town of Sinjar, northern Kurdistan, Iraq. What she didn’t know was that five months after the wedding, in August 2014, ISIS would attack and take her town. This was after ISIS had already attacked and taken a large part of Iraq as well as Syria. The ISIS fighers swooped in with machine guns, tanks, and mortars, destroying all in front of them and targeting the Yazidi especially for brutal treatment. The Yazidis practice...

Zoroastrian texts such as the Avesta clearly define the status of Persian women and reveal that at a time when many women in the world were deprived of their basic rights, Persian women enjoyed social and legal freedom and were treated with great respect. Avestan texts mention both genders asking them to share responsibility and make decisions together. They are equally praised for their good deeds rather than their gender, wealth or power. “Whoever, man or woman, does what Thou, O Ahura Mazda, knowest to be the best in Life. Whoever does right for the sake of Right; Whoever in...

They have decreed that any Parsi man marrying outside the community will cease to be recognised as one of its members. Originally from Iran, the Parsis practice Zorastrianism. There are only 130,000 Parsis left around the world, of whom about 55,000 reside in India's financial capital, Bombay, or Mumbai. New rule Parsi women have for years been threatened with excommunication if they marry outside the community but now this rule has been extended to men. Their families, too, will not be initiated into the community if they marry out of it. The only good thing about this resolution is that...

HOUSTON: The Zoroastrian Association of Houston celebrated the Grand Opening of the first fire Temple to be built outside India, Pakistan and Iran and included the Navroze (the Iranian New Year heralding the first day of Spring) in 5 days of celebrations from March 20 to 24. The Bhandara Atash Kadeh (fire temple) is a new addition on the site of the vast ZAH grounds on West Airport near the Beltway and is a result of decades of planning and was made possible by the generous donation of Feroze and Shernaz Bhandara. Vada Dasturji Khurshed Dastoor (High Priest of Iranshah in...

The rise of the Arab Caliphate in the seventh and eighth centuries is considered among the most important turning points in the history of the Middle East. Within two centuries,vast areas were united under the banner of Islam, and great empires were brought to their knees at the sword of the Arab soldiers. Among those great empires wasSassanid Persia, and the death of the last Sassanian emperor Yazdegerd III (r. 632-651) is usually considered the point when the Muslim forces put an end to Zoroastrianism in Iran. And while it is true that the fall of the Sassanids dealt a heavy blow to Zoroastrianism,...

A Turkish man has been sentenced to prison on charges of membership of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on the basis of his identity card showed his religion as Zoroastrian, Turkish newspaper Evrensel said. The case began in 2006, at which time Yücel Delek was a student at Niğde University. He was taken into custody on suspicion of having attended a PKK-linked protest, but was acquitted the following year after the university provided evidence he had been attending a class at the time. The case was re-opened in 2013. This time he was not so lucky. The evidence against him...

In the Towers of Silence, an ancient ritual of death comes under threat By Peter Foster in New Delhi (Filed: 12/09/2006) The viability of the centuries-old Zoroastrian custom of allowing vultures to consume the corpses of its devotees has been called into question after a relative of one of the dead discovered piles of rotting bodies lying almost untouched by the birds. Dhun Baria, a member of Bombay's Zoroastrian community, known as Parsis, was shocked to be told that the body of her mother had lain untouched for nine months after she was laid to rest at the Towers of...

Among the world’s present-day religions, Zoroastrianism, founded more than 3,000 years ago, is one of the most ancient and historically influential. Yet even though its adherents maintain vibrant communities on four continents, they acknowledge their numbers are dauntingly small — perhaps 125,000 worldwide. Starting Friday, about 1,200 attendees from 16 countries will be assessing their faith’s prospects during the four-day World Zoroastrian Congress in New York City, the first one held in the United States since 2000. The agenda reflects a keen awareness of the challenges facing their religion. Prospects for growth are limited, given that Zoroastrians don’t seek to...

When I first heard about this, I didn't want to believe it. I pulled out sources I save for only the most important stories out of DC. And when I confirmed it, I had to interview the man who first revealed it to me. Former Mayor of Shiloh, Israel David Rubin joined us and set the record straight. To the Ayatollah’s current regime and for as long as the Ayatollahs have ruled Iran, America is their “Shaytân-e Bozorg.” We’ve heard it before in English as the “Great Satan.” They believe we are pure evil and must be destroyed at any...

On March 16, 2021, Iranians celebrated the ancient festival of Chaharshanbe Soori or fire festival which has its origin in ancient Iranian rituals. on the eve of the last Wednesday before Nowruz (the first day of New year in the Iranian calendars). Before the start of the festival, people gather brushwood in an open, free exterior space. At sunset, after making one or more bonfires, they jump over the flames while singing. The regime hates Chaharshanbe Soori and views it as a threat to its security. Iranians celebrate regardless of the regime's threats against the celebration of the Fire Festival....

According to Yasna, an association that promotes Zoroastrianism in Kurdistan, since 2014 about 15,000 people have registered with the organization, most of them Kurds converting from Islam.Aram Mehdi, an Iraqi Kurd who recently converted from Islam to Zoroastriansim, poses for camera as he holds a pendant representing Zoroaster, in Dohuk, Iraq Carefully tucking his Farvahar pendant under his shirt, Aram Mehdi reminds himself of the core Zoroastrian principles it represents: good words, good thoughts and good deeds.Born and raised in a conservative Muslim family, the 31-year-old Iraqi Kurd from the city of Dohuk, in the north of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan...

...“To Zoroastrians, fire is the physical form of God’s energy. It’s in all Zoroastrian rituals,” Mr. Bhandara explains. “We say that the fire has warmth and light. Light is a metaphor that cuts through the darkness of ignorance, bringing one face to face with the truth of the divine.” ...The supreme deity in the faith is Ahura Mazda. Zoroaster, or Zarathustra in ancient Persian, was actually a prophet after whom the religion came to be known among Westerners. Cyrus the Great, founder of the first Persian Empire circa 550 B.C., was a Zoroastrian. While Persia served as an incubator for...

By: Hassan.Mahmoudi Nowruz marks the first day of the Iranian calendar and the new year. People participate in the Nowruz celebrations and traditional Iranian Spring Festival. Spring starts in the Northern Hemisphere at 4:49 on Friday, March 20, 2020. The beginning of this spring and the new year is a pain since last year, for the Iranian people, have suffered amid the spread of the disastrous coronavirus in 198 cities, with 7,000 dead (according to the main opposition, the NCRI), the crackdown of their protests in November with 1,500 killed, the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane with 176 dead,...

In a ceremony at an ancient, ruined temple in northern Iraq, Faiza Fuad joined a growing number of Kurds who are leaving Islam to embrace the faith of their ancestors -- Zoroastrianism.Years of violence by the Islamic State jihadis have left many disillusioned with Islam, while a much longer history of state oppression has pushed some in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region to see the millennia-old religion as a way of reasserting their identity."After Kurds witnessed the brutality of IS, many started to rethink their faith," said Asrawan Qadrok, the faith's top priest in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.During Fuad's conversion...

An organizer reads excerpts from a sacred Zoroastrian text at one of the Kurdistan Region's fire temples in Darbandikhan, Aug. 8, 2019. (Photo: Kurdistan 24/Karwan Yara) A local organization dedicated to the Zoroastrian religion and philosophy on Thursday held a special ceremony at one of the group's fire temples located in the Kurdistan Region.Members of the Basna Organization, whose efforts usually focus on preserving local archaeological sites, performed the rite in Sulaimani province’s town of Darbandikhan.During the event, participants observed a number of the religion's rituals and read some of the faith's texts and core doctrines aloud to attendees. Organizers...

Among the many stories of encounters between different cultures, the meeting of Zoroastrianism and Islam may be one of the most dramatic. After many centuries in which it was the dominant religion of the ancient Iranian states and after having achieved the status of official religion in the Sassanid Empire (224-651 AD), Zoroastrian teaching was practically driven from its homeland and replaced by the religion of Muhammad. The number of Zoroastrians in modern Iran today does not exceed forty thousand..... and total number worldwide is reckoned to be less than 120,000. It is difficult to describe the fate of Zoroastrianism...

With Constantine's turn toward Christianity in AD 312, the systematic persecution of Christians within the Roman Empire came to an end. However, at the same time Christianity was enjoying increasing imperial favor in the Roman world, a great persecution erupted in the neighboring kingdom of Persia, starting about the year AD 339. Constantine himself had written a letterto the Persian king, Sapor II, lauding the Christian religion to his fellow ruler and asking him to protect the Christians among his subjects. But some within the Persian court—and eventually Sapor himself—came to view the dramatic rise of Christianity as a dire...