Minorities

This paper takes a broad and novel approach to analysing the Iranian Jewish community of Iran, both as a distinct group and as a constituent part of Iran’s wider population sharing its national culture. The goal was to find a new way of addressing the topic, avoiding many ambiguities, and bringing all discourse back to its starting point: Iranian identity. If we identify Persian roots as the focus and the heart of our investigation, and we establish that a cultural study of the Iranian Jewscannot be separated from Iranian identity itself, we not only shift attention to a common denominator that links a variety of topics, but raise new questions, new issues, and new considerations. The aim was to identify an analytical tool through which we could interpret and relate various outlooks on Iranian identity: the analysis led us to consider religion as the source of a common sense of belonging, in contrast to most scholars whose work is predicated on the dichotomy of “secularism vs religion.” Instead, the Iranian identity discourse that emerges from this paper finds connections and affinities across the common dividing lines represented by religion, ethnicity, and geography. Reinforcing an Iranian discourse through the Jewish experience can constitute a valid response to the deep crisis of the Iranian national question and the enhancement of national, economic, and religious alliances. This paper employs a qualitative approach to the framework ofnational identity, based on the idea of its progressive character and related to the concept of identity as socially constructed. The theoretical assumptions expressed throughout this paper have found their empirical explanation in fieldwork that the author conducted in Iran in 2019.

After the fall of the republic in Afghanistan and the raising of the Taliban flag on the presidential palace, many thought that Afghanistan would GO back in time and return to the years before 2001. There WERE serious concerns about endangering the rights of women, the rights of ethnic-religious minorities, as well as the reappearance of foreign terrorist groups, especially Al-Qaeda, in Afghanistan. Considering these elements, many researchers question whether the Taliban has changed its principles, and whether or not the world is facing neo-Talibans. This study aimed to analyze the intellectual tradition of the Taliban with the framework of Laclau and Mouffe's theory, along with discourse methodology. The research examines the central signifiers of the Taliban discourse and their effect on the right of women, ethnic-religious, and foreign terrorist groups. The results indicate that the intellectual tradition of the Taliban is influenced by the powerful Pashtun culture of the governorate, which follows the three principles of honor, superiority, and hospitality, and affects the right of women, ethnic-religious, and foreign terrorist groups, along with the teachings of the Deobandy school.