Greater Iran

Several important religions and religious movements originated in Greater Iran, that is, among speakers of various Iranian languages and hence with an Iranian cultural background. Moreover, Iranians played a significant role in the development and transmission of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Antiquity[link]

• Zoroastrianism
• Zurvanism: By late Achaemenid times, Zoroastrianism was also evident as Zurvanism (Zurvanite Zoroastrianism), a monist dualism that had a following as late as the Sassanid era.
• Mandaeism: A gnostic monotheism of (at the latest) the 1st century CE observed Mandā d-Heyyi - "Knowledge of Life". Mandaean theology is based more on a common heritage than on any set of religious creeds and doctrines.
• Manichaeism: 3rd century ditheistic gnosticism that may have been influenced by Mandaeism. Manichaens believed in a "Father of Greatness" (Aramaic: Abbā dəRabbūṯā, Persian: pīd ī wuzurgīh) and observed Him to be the highest deity (of light).
• Mazdakism: A late 5th/early 6th century proto-socialist gnosticism that sought to do away with private property.

Medieval period[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

• The early Islamic period saw the development of Persian mysticism, a traditional interpretation of existence, life and love with Perso-Islamic Sufi monotheism as its practical aspect. This development believed in a direct perception of spiritual truth (God), through mystic practices based on divine love.

• Khurramites, a 9th century religious and political movement based on the 8th century teachings of Sunpadh, who preached a syncretism of Shia Islam and Zoroastrianism. Under Babak Khorramdin, the movement sought the redistribution of private wealth and the abolition of Islam.
• Behafaridians, an 8th century cult movement around the self-acclaimed prophet Behafarid. Although the movement is considered to have its roots in Zoroastrianism, Behafarid and his followers were executed on charges (made by Zoroastrians) of harm to both Zoroastrianism and Islam.
• Yarsan, a religious order of Yazdanism, which is believed to have been founded in the 16th century. Yazdanism promulgated the belief in a God manifest as one primary and five secondary avatars to form with God the Holy Seven.

Modern[link]

• Bábísm, a mid-19th century monotheistic religion founded by the Báb that was a predecessor of the Bahá'í Faith.
• Bahá'í Faith, an emerging monotheistic religion founded by Bahá'u'lláh, a 19th century Persian exile.

References[link]

	Iran portal
	Religion portal

• Alessandro Bausani, Religion in Iran: From Zoroaster to Bahaullah, Bibliotheca Persica, 2000
• Richard Foltz,Spirituality in the Land of the Noble: How Iran Shaped the World's Religions, Oneworld publications, 2004

Omid Djalili
Djalili at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival
Born	(1965-09-30) 30 September 1965 (age 46) Chelsea, London, England, United Kingdom
Medium	Film, television, stand-up
Subject(s)	Religion, race, culture, stereotypes, human interaction
Spouse	Annabel Knight

Omid Djalili ( /əˈmiːd dʒəˈlɪli/; Persian: امید جلیلی‎; born 30 September 1965)^[1] is a British Iranian stand-up comedian, actor, television producer and writer.

Personal life[link]

Djalili was born in Chelsea, London to Iranian Bahá'í parents and is a Bahá'í himself.^[2][3] He attended Holland Park School and then the University of Ulster in Coleraine, Northern Ireland, studying English and Theatre studies.^[4]

Djalili is a Chelsea fan.^[5] He is married to British actress and playwright Annabel Knight, with whom he has a daughter, Isabella, and two sons, Louis and Daniel. ^[6][7]

Comedy career[link]

This biographical section of an article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (February 2011)

Djalili performing at the Arts Depot in 2007

The first significant success of his stand-up comedy career was at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1995 with "Short, Fat Kebab Shop Owner's Son", followed by "The Arab and the Jew" in 1996.

He has performed in numerous countries, including Australia, Ireland, Sweden, Belgium, Canada and the United States, where he had his own HBO Special and did 22 episodes of the NBC sitcom Whoopi with Whoopi Goldberg.

He did his part for Comic Relief after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami and also in 2005 he appeared on the British TV show Top Gear as a celebrity driver. The same year he broke Edinburgh Festival box office records with over 16,500 ticket sales.

In 2006, Sky Television picked him to be the face of their Saturday night film premières, and he also announced a new tour of the UK called 'No Agenda', from January 2007 until March 2007, covering 23 different dates. The No Agenda tour DVD was released in late 2007.

On 18 March 2007, he was voted by the British public as the 60th best stand-up comedian in a Channel 4 programme "The 100 Greatest Stand-Ups". On 26 October 2007, he guest-presented the BBC political quiz show Have I Got News for You.^{[citation needed]} The Omid Djalili Show started on BBC1 on 17 November 2007. The series is a mix of sketches and stand-up material. A second series was recorded in late 2008 and began broadcast on BBC1 on 20 April 2009. He performed on We Are Most Amused on ITV1 to mark Prince Charles's 60th birthday in 2008.

A touring stand-up, his next tour starts on 14 October 2011 although previews of this tour are being performed in smaller venues such as The Beggar's Theatre, Millom. Another small venue that he has performed in is the Victoria Hall in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. When he was there, he did an interview with local radio, 6 Towns Radio about his show in Hanley.^[8].

Acting career[link]

Djalili has appeared in a number of films, most notably Gladiator, The Mummy, Mean Machine, The World Is Not Enough, Alien Autopsy, Spy Game, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Grow Your Own, Notting Hill, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Sex and the City 2 and provides his voice in Over the Hedge.

He had observed that he usually appears as a generic Middle Eastern background character in many of these films, often commenting that he appears in the James Bond film as the "Second Azerbaijani oil pipe attendant". He appeared as Nasim in the U.S. sitcom Whoopi, starring Whoopi Goldberg, and picked up an international film award for Best Supporting Actor in Casanova, starring alongside Heath Ledger and Jeremy Irons.

On 12 February 2009, Cameron Macintosh (producer) announced that Djalili will appear as the second Fagin in the new West End production of Oliver! at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London. Omid took over from Rowan Atkinson, who was contracted until 18 July 2009.^[9]

In 2009, Djalili became the voice of Yusuf Amir in the popular gaming series Grand Theft Auto. He took up the role in the Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony spin-off game. In 2010, he starred in the David Baddiel scripted film The Infidel.

In 2010, Djalili starred in a series of TV and cinema adverts for Moneysupermarket.com.^[10]

Djalili appeared in the short-lived NBC sitcom The Paul Reiser Show, which was a midseason replacement for the 2010-11 television season.^[11]

For the BBC Learning project "Off By Heart Shakespeare", Omid played Lord Capulet from Romeo and Juliet and delivered the speech "Hang thee, young baggage, disobedient wretch!"^[12]

Other activities[link]

On 13 June 2010, Djalili appeared in a Meltdown Festival concert^[13] given by the Philharmonia Orchestra at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall, performing the part of the narrator in 'Rubaiyat', a tone poem by American classical composer Alan Hovhaness which sets the words of Omar Khayyám to music. He also appeared on the Graham Norton Show on 17 February 2012, alongside Daniel Radcliffe and Cuba Gooding Jr..

Filmography[link]

Cinema[link]

• The Mummy (1999)
• Notting Hill (1999)
• Mad Cows (1999)
• The World Is Not Enough (1999)
• Gladiator (2000)
• Spy Game (2001)
• Mean Machine (2001)
• Anita and Me (2002)
• Cross My Heart (2003)
• Deadlines (2004)
• The Calcium Kid (2004)
• Modigliani (2004)
• Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)
• Casanova (2005)
• Alien Autopsy (2006)
• Over the Hedge as Tiger, the bad tempered Persian cat (2006)
• Grow Your Own (2007)
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)
• The Love Guru (2008)
• Dead Man Running (2009)
• The Infidel (2010)
• Sex and the City 2 (2010)
• Animals United (2010)
• Mr. Nice (2010)
• Big Fat Gypsy Gangster (2011)

Television[link]

• The Friday Night Armistice (1996)
• Alexei Sayle's Merry-Go-Round (1998)
• The Bill (1998)
• Barking (TV series) (1998)
• The Lake of Darkness (1999)
• Cleopatra (1999)
• Coming Soon (1999)
• Small Potatoes (1999)
• Black Books (2000)
• Jason and the Argonauts (2000)
• Lenny Henry in Pieces (2000)
• So What Now? (2001)
• Relic Hunter (2002)
• Dinotopia: The Series (2002)
• Between Iraq and a Hard Place (2003)
• Whoopi (2003)
• Live at the Apollo (2004)
• Age of Awakening. Narrator (2005)
• Chopra Town (2005)
• One Night Stand (HBO) (2005)
• My Family and Other Animals (2005)
• Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive (2006)
• Jack Dee's Lead Balloon (2006)
• Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law (2006)
• TV Heaven, Telly Hell (2007)
• Have I Got News For You (2007)
• The Omid Djalili Show (2007)
• Premier League All Stars (2007)
• Never Mind The Buzzcocks (2008)
• The Omid Djalili Show - Series 2 (2009)
• Would I Lie To You? (2009)
• The Paul Reiser Show (2011)

Video games[link]

• Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony as Yusuf Amir.^[14] (2009)

• 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand as Eddie.^[15] (2009)

Awards[link]

Djalili has won awards for his comedy. These include the EMMA Award, Time Out Award, and LWT Comedy Award for Best Stand-up Comedian, Spirit of the Fringe Award as well as the One World Media Award for his Channel 4 documentary, Bloody Foreigners.

He has also been nominated for awards, such as the Perrier Award for Best Comedian, the Gemini Award for Best Comedy Performance of 2003, the South Bank Award for Best Comedy of 2003, the Royal Television Society Award for Best Stand-up, and the European TV Award for his Bloody Foreigners.

Stand-up DVDs[link]

• No Agenda: Live at the London Palladium (26 November 2007) - Live at the London Palladium
• Live in London (16 November 2009) - Live at the Apollo, Hammersmith

See also[link]

• Iranian stand-up comedy

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Omid Djalili

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Omid Djalili

• Omid Djalili's official web site
• Omid Djalili at the Internet Movie Database
• Omid Djalili on Twitter

This article relies on references to primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject, rather than references from independent authors and third-party publications. Please add citations from reliable sources. (November 2007)

Reza Aslan
Born	(1972-05-03) 3 May 1972 (age 40) Tehran, Tehran Province, Iran
Occupation	Writer, Islamic thinker
Nationality	American
Spouse(s)	Jessica Jackley

Reza Aslan (Persian رضا اصلان, born May 3, 1972) is an Iranian-American activist, a nationally acclaimed writer of religions. He is on the faculty at the University of California, Riverside, and is a contributing editor for The Daily Beast. His books include the international bestseller, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, which has been translated into thirteen languages, and named one of the 100 most important books of the last decade. He is also the author of How to Win a Cosmic War, published in paperback as Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in a Globalized Age. He is also editor of Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East, published by W. W. Norton, and co-editor with Aaron Hahn-Tapper of Muslims and Jews in America: Commonalities, Contentions, and Complexities, published by Palgrave Macmillan. Dr. Reza Aslan is CEO of Aslan Media Inc., whose holdings include BoomGen Studios, the first ever motion picture studio entirely focused on entertainment content about the Greater Middle East and its globally dispersed communities. His non-profit organization, Aslan Media Initiatives (AslanMedia.com), uses social-media technology to provide news and information about the Middle East to young people all over the world.

Background[link]

Aslan's family came to the United States from Tehran in 1979, fleeing the Iranian Revolution. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the early 1990s, Aslan taught courses at De La Salle High School in Concord, California. Iranian singer Leila Forouhar is his aunt.

Aslan holds a Bachelor of Arts' degree in religions from Santa Clara University, a Master of Theological Studies' degree from Harvard Divinity School, a doctorate in the sociology of religions from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Master of Fine Arts' degree from the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He has served as Legislative Assistant for the Friends Committee on National Legislation in Washington D.C., and was elected President of the World Conference of Religions for Peace, Harvard Chapter. He serves on the board of directors of the Ploughshares Fund, PEN Center USA, and serves on the national advisory board of the Levantine Cultural Center.

As Contributing Editor, Aslan has written numerous articles for The Daily Beast. He has also written for various newspapers and periodicals, including The Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Slate, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Guardian, the Chicago Tribune, and The Nation. He has made numerous appearances on TV and radio, including National Public Radio (NPR), PBS, The Rachel Maddow Show, Meet the Press, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, Anderson Cooper 360°, Hardball, Nightline, Real Time with Bill Maher, Fareed Zakaria GPS, and ABC Australia's Big Ideas.^[1]

Currently[link]

Aslan is President and CEO of Aslan Media Inc., whose holdings include BoomGen Studios, a mini-motion picture and media company focused entirely on entertainment about the Greater Middle East and its Diaspora communities. He currently lives in Hollywood, California where he is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. In addition, he is a Research Associate at the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy.

War on Terrorism[link]

Aslan refers to Al Qaeda's jihad against west as "a cosmic war", distinct from holy war, in which rival religious groups are engaged in an earthly battle for material goals. "A cosmic war is like a ritual drama in which participants act out on earth a battle they believe is actually taking place in the heavens." American rhetoric of "war on terrorism", Aslan says, is in precise "cosmic dualism" to Al Qaeda's jihad. Aslan draws a distinction between Islamism and Jihadism. Islamists have legitimate goals and can be negotiated with, unlike Jihadists, who dream of an idealized past of a pan Islamic borderless "religious communalism". Aslan's prescription for winning the cosmic war is to not fight one and engage moderate Islamic political forces in democratic process. "Throughout the Middle East, whenever moderate Islamist parties have been allowed to participate in the political process, popular support for more extremist groups has diminished."^[2]

Other publications[link]

• 'The Struggle for Islam's Soul', essay in With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty, Will Marshall, ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006.
• 'From Here to Mullahcracy', essay in My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes: Uncensored Iranian Voices, Lila Azam Zanganeh, ed. Beacon Press, 2006.
• 'Forward', Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions, Catherine Bell, Oxford University Press, 2009.
• 'Losing the War', The New World Reader, Gilbert H Muller, ed., CUNY Press, 2010.
• 'Preface', Reframing 9/11: Film, Popular Culture and the War on Terror, Jeff Birkenstein, Anna Froula, and Karen Randell, eds. Continuum, 2010.
• 'Preface'. Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal, Amarnath Amarasingam, ed. Brill, 2010.

Quotations[link]

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This biographical section of an article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (April 2012)

• "I believe we are living in the time of the Islamic reformation. In fact, I think we are living in the twilight of that reformation. For me, the word reform is defined by its inevitability. This process cannot be stopped; it can be slowed down for a time but reform is inevitable. It's an historic reformation taking place within Islam — it's adapting itself to the realities of the world around it. I think we'll see the same process we saw in the Christian reformation from doctrinal absolutism to doctrinal relativism; toward a truly indigenous Islamic enlightenment. And it's up to us as Muslims in the US to give voice to that for our brothers and sisters who don't have the voice or the same ability to speak out as we do."
• "It is pluralism—the peaceful coexistence and legal equality between different ethnic, religious or political ideologies—that defines democracy, not secularism."
• "The veil is seen as a symbol of Islam but like all symbols, it's meaningless unless interpreted. The veil is as much a symbol of oppression of women as it is an expression of Muslim femininity. The strangeness of this is that if you go to a country where the veil is either mandatory or there is a lot of pressure to wear it, you'll find the vast majority of women are against it. But, if you go to a country like Turkey where the veil is outlawed in much of the public realm — in the latest polls, 70 percent of the Muslim women want to remove that law."
• "Iraq should look to Israel for a model that combines democracy and religious belief."
• "Despite the apartheid state that has resulted from over half a century of bloody territorial conflicts with its neighboring Palestinian territories, few would deny that the state of Israel is a democracy. At the same time, Israel is a country founded upon an exclusivist Jewish moral framework, which offers all the world's Jews — regardless of their nationality — immediate citizenship, providing them with a host of benefits and privileges over its non-Jewish citizens. It is a country in which the Orthodox rabbinical courts have jurisdiction over all matters relating to Judaism (including who is a Jew); where religious schools (yeshivas) are subsidized by the state, and marriages are religious, rather than civil affairs (meaning no official will marry a Jew to a non-Jew); and the government is dominated by religious parties such as the ultra-Orthodox Shas, the Yahadut Hatorah, and of course the ruling Likud."
• "If we don't figure out a way to strip these conflicts of their religious connotations, then we will never figure out a way to put an end to them. Because as long as these remain cosmic conflicts, they will go on for eternity."
• "A lot of scholars, myself included, believe the future of Islam, especially Islamic democracy, rests in the Shia world. It's Iran and Iraq where the most exciting experiments are being carried out."
• "Iraq’s 2,000-year-old Christian community is on the brink of extinction, its members targeted by al Qaeda attacks and fleeing abroad... This silence cannot stand. Americans of all faiths must band together and pressure the State Department to do something about the wanton murder of Iraqi Christians before it's too late and there are no more Christians in Iraq to protect. What is happening in Iraq is genocide, plain and simple. It must be stopped now."
• "The fact of the matter is that Islam, like all religions, has been in a constant state of evolution for 1400 years. It has been constantly adapting to the spiritual, the cultural, the political, the social realities and the landscape in which it finds itself, which is why there is such a wide diversity of belief and practices within the Muslim world."

See also[link]

• No God but God (book)
• List of Islamic scholars
• Extremism
• List of Muslim reformers

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Reza Aslan speaks at Asia Society, November 2010 (w/ video)
• at Levantine Cultural Center
• Interview with Reza Aslan from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Reza Aslan's Intellectual Groupie's on Livejournal
• His biography
• The Islamic reformation Reza Aslan speaks with Madrid11.net
• LA Weekly Interview
• Reza Aslan Interview with Islamica Magazine
• Aslan's articles in the Public Diplomacy Blog

Video and audio[link]

• Reza Aslan is a keynote speaker in the upcoming conference December 4–6, 2009 Los Angeles, USC CA
• Reza Aslan interviewed by Bree Walker March 30, 2008
• Reza Aslan talks about The Future of U.S./Iran Relations (video)
• Reza Aslan in Conversation with Jack Miles (video)
• Reza Aslan vs. Sam Harris Debate
• Video debates featuring Aslan on Bloggingheads.tv
• Raza's talk, "How to Get Out of the Cosmic War in the Middle East."
• Reza talks to Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks.