Zakaria Qaderi is a Kurdish distinguished scholar who has written extensively on history of Islam, Arab, Persia and Kurdish topics.
Dr. Qaderi has decided to flee after receiving death threats by the Islamic Republic authorities for writing an essay about Islam in a bilingual literary and cultural magazine, Zirebar. He has fled Iran on Jan 7, 2016 and he is in hiding.
Dr. Qaderi was born in the Kurdish town of Paveh. After receiving his B.S in Political Science from Kermanshah Razi University in 2006, he pursued his higher education in Tehran; he received his Master’s in Political Science from Allameh Tabataba’i University in 2009 and his Ph.D. in with the same specialization form the University of Tehran in 2014. Living during dangerous times with dynamic changes in the Middle East, Dr. Qaderi reexamines and reassess the body of literature, findings and methodologies to arrive at new perspectives about the Middle East history. His expertise is in how ancient history informs contemporary developments. He has published extensively about the formation of ancient and modern states and the intricate relationship between the past and present in historical developments. He is the author of multiple books and tens of scholarly articles including “ Political Logic in Iran and the Kurdish Quest for Identity, a translated collection of his essays about regional powers and multilateral relations in international relationships entitled “Regional Powers, Iran, the New Rising Power, “a Critique of the Philosophy of Modernity: subject, truth, and power in Michael Foucault’s thought published in the scientific and research Journal of “Political Studies”, “ From Ghazali to Kant: The Foundations of Moral Imperatives and its Relation to epistemology in Ghazali and Kant and its influence on the development of political thoughts in the East and West” , “Post Islamic Discourse and Post Modernity”, “A Critique of Postmodern Discourse : Nietzsche and Transition to Post modernity , “The Genesis of Hegel’s Political Thought”, “ Iranian Revolution and Postmodernism” , “Three Narratives about State, Nation, Survey of Javad Tabatabahi’s, Homayun Katuzian’s, and Hamid Ahmadi’s Approaches”, “A Comparison of Three Ideal State: Iranian, Zoroastrian, Islamic/Arabic with Kurdish Mithra-ism” , “Social Contracts among the Medes: From Medes to Rojava.
Dr. Qaderi’s article “The Relation between Islam and Fanaticism of Arab Nationalism; Islam from Quraysh to the Rise of Daesh (ISIS)” is a historical analysis of the genesis of Islam, its history, and competing interpretations.
According to Human Rights Activists News Agency, Hrana (January 11, 2016) [1], a clergy named Shirazi in the city of Marivan during Friday prayers has denounced Dr. Zakria’s work as “crossing the red line, a direct insult on Muslims and the prophet himself”. Subsequently the National Guidance Office and the governor of the province had joined the Imam to bring criminal charges against the author and the magazine in which the essay had appeared. Dr. Qaderi had to go into hiding for fear of his life as he had been charged with “Moharebeh “enmity against God”, a capital offense punishable by death.
Dr. Qaderi has written not only to political scientists and historians but to the layman on a variety of topics lucidly with an emphasis on political history; although most of his academic contributions have been published primarily in academic journals, he has also published his works on current topics, historical roots and social and political background of contemporary issues on popular social media and his personal blog reaching a wider audience of readers with his rich and valuable source of ideas, particularly in an under-examined and misrepresented field of Kurdish studies.
[1] Media report by HRA-News (Human-Right Agency News) on Charging Mr. Qaderi for act of enmity against God, Jan 11, 2016, available at https://hra-news.org/fa/thought-and-expression/a-3681[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]