Siavash Safavi is a translator, former student activist, and political prisoner from Iran. He was sentenced to prison and lashing and had to escape the country in 2011. He arrived in Canada as a refugee in 2013 and in January 2017, he was labeled by the IRGC as one of the 30 traitors to the Islamic Republic for his opposition to the nuclear deal (JCPOA).

Siavash

This podcast is an opportunity for you to join me in conversation with inspirational people from restrictive religious backgrounds who have fought and who have overcome. You know some names already: you know Malala Yousufzai, you know Ayaan Hirsi Ali. But there are countless others who have survived insurmountable odds, overcoming the most vicious of obstacles, and whose names you will not recognize. They are the unsung heroes. The warriors hidden in the shadows. Come meet them on the Yasmine Mohammed Podcast.

Religion & Spirituality

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Spirituality

Christianity

Buddhism

Hinduism

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Islam

Jaleh Tavakoli and I went to Israel for a week as part of a delegation of people from across the Middle East invited to join a group called Sharaka. Sharaka means "partnership" in Arabic and the NGO is a partnership between the UAE and Israel that was inspired by the Abraham accords. Their mission is to "Shape a New Middle East- Together".While we were there we visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial, as well as the Nova Forest, which holds an Oct 7th memorial. It was the first time for bo...

Jaleh Tavakoli: An Iranian and a Palestinian in Israel

Elica Le Bon is a British-born attorney, artist, activist, and speaker. She was born and raised in London and moved to Los Angeles to go to law school. Since then, she has worked foremost as a criminal defense attorney while developing a second career in activism, initially focused primarily on bringing light to issues surrounding human rights in Iran and the wider Middle East. Since starting, her unique voice has reached millions across various audiences and platforms around the world as a v...

Elica le Bon: A Warning to the West

Gad Saad is a professor at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada - one of the cities that has seen the biggest eruption of antisemitism since Oct 7th. Gad was born in Beirut, Lebanon to a Jewish family with roots in Syria. As a child, the antisemitism his family encountered is one of the reasons why they fled from Lebanon to Canada. And now in Canada, he has to hear professors telling students to “go back to Poland” in reference to Auschwitz and the Holocaust where millions of Jewish peopl...

Gad Saad Growing up in Lebanon, October 7th, and the future of the West

Golsa Golestaneh is an Iranian-Canadian woman whose main passion is challenging misinformation, bias, and propaganda. Having a background in both Iranian and Canadian activist circles has helped her in analyzing sociopolitical issues factually and independently, rather than by relying on the mainstream narrative. Golsa will be joining us to talk about how she has been forced to attend diversity and inclusion reprogramming at her job because speaking up against the regime she escaped is social...

Golsa: An Iranian Accused of Islamophobia in Canada

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is an American writer and analyst who grew up in Gaza City which he left in 2005 as a teenage exchange student. He writes extensively on Gaza’s political and humanitarian affairs and has been an outspoken critic of Hamas and a promoter of coexistence and peace as the only path forward between Palestinians and Israelis. Alkhatib has a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a Master’s in intelligence and national security studies. His writing has been published in...

Siavash

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