Navid Fozi is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute of the National University of Singapore. He holds a PhD and a Master of Arts in sociocultural anthropology from Boston University and the University of Wisconsin Madison, respectively. He also earned a Master of Arts in applied sociology and a Bachelor of Arts in interdisciplinary studies, both from University of Texas Dallas. Dr. Fozi has been researching religious minorities in Iran, including his dissertation on the Zoroastrians (Dissertation Reviews), an essay on the Kurdish Ahl-e Haqq, and unpublished works on the Bahais. As a postdoctoral fellow he started a project in 2011 exploring contemporary Iranian politics and has presented the results at different conferences: Neo-Iranian Nationalism Pre-Islamic Grandeur and Shi’a Eschatology in Iranian Contemporary Politics ; Instability of Contemporary Iranian Foreign Policy ; Iran After the Elections (min.: 24). Since 2012 Dr. Fozi has developed an interest in the Iranian population in Malaysia and has conducted fieldwork in Kuala Lumpur. Based on his preliminary findings he has identified and is exploring the entwinement of two concomitant processes of polarization and pluralization among diasporic Iranians.
The Iranian Diaspora in Malaysia: Emergent Pluralism
The Iranian diaspora in Malaysia is incredibly diverse. Supporters of the Green Movement, students, individuals who fast and pray and those who do not know the direction of the qibla, clerics who promote secularism and those who promote the authority of the vilayat-i faqih, Iranian Kurds, Turks, and Arabs, journalists, artists, and environmentalists: all these—and more—constitute the community of Iranians who have fled or quietly moved to Malaysia.
