FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 25th, 2015

 

Voices of Diaspora: The Fate of Religious Minorities in Today’s Middle East

A Panel Discussion with Yezidi, Coptic Christian, and Mizrahi Jewish Activists

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Thursday, February 26th from 7-9pm

Congregation Kol-Ami

1200 North La Brea Avenue, West Hollywood, CA 90038

Free Admission

RSVP required to natalie@jimena.org

View Flyer Here

  

Los Angeles, CA – In the politically turbulent Middle East & North Africa, religious minorities are too often marginalized, oppressed, and completely ignored.  But an upcoming event seeks to illuminate how these groups have more in common than conflict.  Bridging divides between culture and spirituality, “Voices of Dissent: A Refugee’s Story” will connect and build solidarity between Middle Eastern/North African Coptic Christians, Jews and Yazidis with shared experiences of political and faith-based persecution.

The forum will be presented by JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, an organization which aims to educate, advocate, and preserve the cultural heritage of the nearly one million Mizrahi & Sephardic refugees from the Middle East and North Africa, and Congregation Kol-Ami, a reform progressive synagogue. The forum will feature several dynamic speakers from Arab countries and Iran, who have lived through major upheaval, played influential roles in political movements, and whose families have been forced to flee their homes on account of their beliefs and actions. They will come together to provide insight into the perspectives of their communities, which are seldom heard in mainstream media or public discourse.

Participants include: Karmel Melamed, an award-winning Iranian Jewish journalist and Iran human rights advocate, who was born just after the Islamic Revolution and fled to the US, and Raymond Ibrahim, a widely published author, public speaker, and Middle East and Islam specialist, born in the U.S. to Coptic Egyptian parents alongside Elias Kasem, a Yazidi activist who was displaced from Iraq during the first Gulf War.

The convening will feature a panel discussion moderated by best-selling author Gina Nahai, professor of creative writing at the University of Southern California, and a regular contributor to the Jewish Journal.  The discussion and following question & answer forum will explore the unique struggles, commonalities and issues facing religious minorities in Arab countries & Iran, as well as ways to build solidarity and mutual support between groups.  This comes at a particularly poignant time, as severe oppression, imprisonment and torture of Christians have swept many Arab Muslim countries in recent years. The Mizrahi Jewish community, who has survived violent persecution in the same region, is greatly positioned to be an ally. This event will open an opportunity for dialogue between voices that rarely have a platform for meaningful and candid interaction.

The event is open to the public, and people of all religious and cultural backgrounds are encouraged to attend, share ideas and learn how to support one another as allies for religious pluralism and equality, from Southern California to the Middle East.

 

For further information please contact:

Natalie Farahan, Los Angeles Program Director

JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa

317-919-4971

natalia@jimena.org

jimena.org

 

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