Dr. I. Koreivaitė – on Muslim marriages and the death penalty for homosexuals Life

“Unfortunately, we know about Islam mainly from the lips of radicals and terrorists, we know some radical formulations and we believe that they represent a religious tradition. But this is a really incomplete picture: in addition to a radical interpretation of Islam, there is also traditional moderate Islam, which is followed by the absolute majority of Muslims, ”says I. Koreivaitė.

Eve’s acquaintance with the Islamic religion began when she began studying Iranian ethnology at Vilnius University. Later he had to go to Iran to do a field investigation.

At that time, Eve fell in the annual commemoration of mourning, the ash, when during religious mourning the Shiites remember Hussein, the third Shiite imam killed by the Sunnis at the Battle of Kerbela in 680, along with 72 comrades.

“The ritual of his mourning left a great impression on me, I myself participated and described the practice of crying, and at the same time I began to delve into the need to cry for the imam who died in the 7th century. He was interested in religious studies. In Iran, religion is visual, it is extremely active in people’s daily life and advertising. People wear black one day, white one day, cakes are shared the third, and there are very different and interesting religious narratives behind it all.

Even more interesting is how religion can become a means of accumulating power. A state like Iran, which calls itself an Islamic state, exploits both the religious narratives and the religious feelings of the people, and builds a public mood by specifying when to cry and when to rejoice. Schools and workplaces should organize and participate in religious celebrations, prepare appropriate public programs. Basically, the life of the whole state is organized around religious postulates, so politics collides with religion, ”said Ieva.

However, while studying political religion, I. Kororei also needed to understand the basic concepts of Islam. For this reason, he began studying the Islamic seminary in Kumo and studied Islamic law here: “After studying in the seminary, I returned to Tehran and continued my studies at the Faculty of Political Science and Law of the University of Tehran. Yes, in two fields of study I have combined what interests me the most ”.

15min LIFE conversation with I.Koreivaite – about religious differences and similarities, rights and responsibilities of women and men in Iran, temporary and permanent marriages and the situation of homosexuals in Iran.

– Eva, we often like to compare different things in life. And is it possible to compare religions?

– Why not? I can say one thing about all religions: they are a way for people to achieve happiness. It is homework that can be used to make life seem meaningful.

Abrahamic religions like Islam and Christianity, that is, religions that are similar in logic, are easy to compare. Recently, Islamic radicals have been trying to show that Islam and Christianity are not related, yet it is just a political strategy derived from the painful historical experiences in the Middle East: first, due to the 20th century. the beginning of the colonial period and subsequent Western policy in the Middle East. Islam has become the ideology of the political resistance movement. And ideology is not religion, just the same name.

The two religions, Islam and Christianity, are linked both through the prophet Abraham and through everyone else like him. There are about 124 thousand in Islam. prophets, and some of them, Moses, Christ, Noah and others, are also seen in our religion as great prophets.

Islam states that God always speaks the same thing, does not change his mind, only the time and place are different. It says things relevant to a particular nation, in the period in which it lives.

Why is Muhammad the last prophet of Islam? Because Muslims believe that God has given people instruments to renew their religion for themselves. There is a saying: the intellect is a prophet in you. In other words, God gives man the right to use his intellect and he must become our prophet to help bring the divine will to these times.