Sara Stone Converted to Islam
By Sara Ghasemilee
Updated Wednesday, 15 February 2012 19:02:09 - IST (UTC +5:30)

Dubai: Sean Stone, son of Oscar-winning U.S. filmmaker Oliver Stone, has converted to Islam while on a visit to Iran, the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Wednesday.
Sean Stone visited Iran’s historical city of Isfahan and went to the office of Shiite cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Nasseri Dowlatabadi where he recited the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith. According to Fars news, he also announced his change of name to Ali.
Born to a Jewish father and a Christian mother, Stone has not yet said why chose to convert to Islam.
“The conversion to Islam is not abandoning Christianity or Judaism, which I was born with,” Stone said in an interview with AFP. “It means I have accepted Mohammad (pbuh) and other prophets,” he added.
The 27-year-old, a filmmaker himself and a graduate from the Ivy League Princeton University, first visited the Islamic republic in September 2011 in connection with the making of a documentary.
He said he needed to know more about the country’s culture and civilizations as well as get better acquainted with Iranian traditions and rituals.
Upon his arrival to the U.S., Stone spoke about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s hard-liner president, in an interview with entertainment news website, The Wrap.
“He did come to America to extend a hand. And there’s a lot of mistranslation, literally, I’ve seen it. Ahmadinejad will say something and it will be mistranslated,” he said. “A lot of this is bullsh**, mistranslation. It’s an aggressive attitude on both parts, mostly on the American side.”
He returned to Iran in early February to attend the 30th annual Fajr International Film Festival.
Stone referred to Iran as one of Asia’s major filmmaking centers saying that he “would like to introduce Persian culture and civilization to the West.”
One Iranian filmmaker expressed dismay when he heard of Stone’s views.
“This is insulting,” said Mazdak Taebi, who has been banned from travelling back to Iran because of his anti-regime statements. “So many people have died. People there are shaking. They’re scared. It’s a police system.”
In December 2010 renowned Iran film directors Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof, were each sentenced to six years in prison and barred from making films for 20 years. Rasoulof was freed last year but Panahi remains in jail.
Also in late 2010, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s sister-in-law Lauren Booth, also converted to Islam in Iran, after having what she described as a “holy experience.” (Reported by Al-Arabia)
Tags: Sara Ghasemilee US Film maker, Oscar winner, Stone, Converted Islam, FARAS
-
MUMBAI: The last time Muslims and Dalits created a joint political platform in Maharashtra was in the 1980s. Led by former smuggler and don Haji Mastan, the Dalit Muslim Suraksha Mahasangh (DMSM)...
2012-05-07 17:11:22 |
0 comments -
MUMBAI: Chemical analysis of a powder-like substance collected from a Byculla apartment where two suspected Pakistani 13/7 bombers stayed has proved that it is the deadly explosive RDX. The...
2012-05-03 17:34:23 |
0 comments -
Srinagar : For Abdul Rashid Khan, it has been a long wait for justice. Twelve years after his father Juma Khan was allegedly picked from his house, killed in a fake encounter and dubbed a foreign...
2012-05-03 17:30:23 |
0 comments -
New Delhi : The Supreme Court gave the Army full “discretion” to choose between a court martial and a criminal trial for seven officers accused of killing five persons in an encounter in...
2012-05-03 17:27:07 |
0 comments
-
MUMBAI: Don't marry if you cannot maintain a wife, the Bombay high court on Wednesday told an art director while hearing his appeal against the family court's order rejecting his divorce plea. On...
2012-05-03 17:22:34 |
0 comments -
NEW DELHI: As India and Afghanistan on Monday got down to implementing their strategic partnership pact in the form of the first Partnership Council meeting, which was chaired by foreign minister S M...
2012-05-03 17:16:01 |
0 comments -
New Delhi: The Pakistan military is on the same page as that of the civilian democratic government as Islamabad seeks to redress its relations with India, Lt Gen. Talat Masood, the retired three-star...
2012-05-02 17:50:12 |
0 comments -
Congress president Maulana Abul Kalam Azad gave the following interview to journalist Shorish Kashmiri for a Lahore based Urdu magazine, Chattan, in April 1946. It was a time when the Cabinet Mission...
2012-05-02 17:32:32 |
0 comments
-
NEW DELHI: The Bhartiya Janta Party's (BJP) decision to not support the Congress party candidates for the upcoming presidential elections seems to have led to fissures within the National Democratic...
2012-05-01 17:28:10 |
0 comments -
NEW DELHI: The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is probing saffron terror cases, has found evidence that blasts in Purna, Parbhani, Jalna and Nanded between 2003 and 2006 are all connected...
2012-05-01 17:25:22 |
0 comments -
Manglore: St. Aloysius College has clarified its stand on the issue of students wearing burqa in classrooms, following a controversy over the issue. Registrar of the college A.M. Narahari told The...
2012-04-30 21:23:38 |
0 comments -
JAIPUR, April 29, 2012: A contentious ‘fatwa' issued by the Imam of the Gulmandi Jama Masjid in Bhilwara that formed the basis for sale of the century-old roofless mosque at Pur village to Jindal...
2012-04-30 21:19:36 |
0 comments
-
New Delhi: What’s is it like being a Muslim in India 65 years after the cataclysm of August 1947 that unleashed the ‘Great Divide’ in the South Asian subcontinent and spawned India and...
2012-04-30 21:00:17 |
0 comments -
Ahmedabad : Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind (JUH) here criticised the Centre for “ignoring” Muslims’ contributions in India’s freedom movements. Speaking at a seminar on Sheikul Hind Maulana Mahmood...
2012-04-30 20:57:16 |
0 comments -
Ahmedabad : Suspended IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt has petitioned President Pratibha Patil to appoint a new Commission of Inquiry to probe the role of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and others in...
2012-04-30 20:49:40 |
0 comments -
Hyderabad: In an interesting turn of events, special investigation team has arrested 4 Hindu youths belonging to Hindu Vahini on the charges of desecrating Hanuman mandir and triggering riots in the...
2012-04-30 20:47:44 |
0 comments
-
New Delhi. Syed Ghulam Akber, member Markazi Majlis-e-Shoora (Central Advisory Council) and former Secretary Jamaat-e-Islami Hind breathed his last at Care Hospital in Hyderabad at about 1 p.m....
2012-04-30 20:38:08 |
0 comments -
Government responsible for Communal Violence in Hyderabad city RSS outfits Communalizing the situation and polarizing population by developing Communal Sentiments. Introduce and pass Communal...
2012-04-25 11:01:25 |
0 comments
-
New Delhi: Stories about the Partition of India, Volumes I –III & IV, edited by Alok Bhalla, Manohar, 2012, Rs 1295+Rs995. That there are multiple histories rather than a history of the partition...
2012-04-21 23:39:01 |
0 comments -
While Urdu literature itself is rich with many diverse genres and styles, sadly the tradition of critical literary biographies is missing. What we have are largely hagiographical accounts of great...
2012-04-18 20:52:16 |
0 comments -
Here we copy an interesting and eye opener email which is great circulation. Originated by Mr. Indravadan Surati reached to the editor from a friend of mine. Read as it describes essence of Life: ...
2012-03-28 20:44:38 |
0 comments -
Sara Stone Converted to Islam
In picture: Oliver Stone's son Sean Stone Dubai: Sean Stone, son of Oscar-winning U.S. filmmaker Oliver Stone, has converted to Islam while on a visit to Iran, the semi-official Fars news agency...
2012-02-15 19:07:09 |
0 comments
-
Arundhati Roy is India’s best-known polemicist. That she is intelligent, articulate, camera-friendly and media-savvy too has helped, in no small measure, to build her image as an iconic writer,...
2011-10-01 16:22:22 |
0 comments -
Brussels – Senior European and Asian officials will meet in Hanoi on October 3-4 for the Green Growth Forum, an ASEM (Asia-Europe Meeting) initiative to discuss moves towards a green, low-carbon...
2011-10-01 12:55:00 |
0 comments -
A slim 47-page booklet forms the kernel of this book; the rest is mere padding in the form of introduction, appendices and notes. However, the 47 pages of Iqbal contain much that is illuminating and...
2011-09-26 14:09:54 |
0 comments -
It was with great pride that I watched Shahryar receive the country's highest literary award, the venerable Jnanpith, being conferred upon him on Sunday, 18th September 2011. That the person giving...
2011-09-24 14:41:54 |
0 comments
-
BOOK REVIEW--From Hindi to Urdu: A Social and Political History by Tariq Rahman (Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan), 2011; pp 456, Rs695. One of the unprecedented phenomena in the history of the...
2011-09-22 16:47:12 |
0 comments -
New Delhi: Zehra Nigah is a much loved and highly respected poet in Pakistan. In India she is an eagerly awaited figure on the mushaira circuit, especially the annual Indo-Pak mushaira hosted by the...
2011-09-11 13:02:45 |
0 comments -
A good storyteller is unlikely to be short of friends, or at least of a group of people gathered curiously around. But if the story told is so distressing as to repel its listeners, then it is up to...
2011-09-09 16:07:28 |
0 comments -
A trip to Lahore is incomplete without a visit to Faiz Ghar. Faiz Ahmad Faiz (1911-1984) wrote poetry that was at once passionate, direct, impetuous, that appealed with a startling near-prophetic...
2011-09-05 21:05:19 |
0 comments
-
Mecca: Come Ramzan, beggars are seen like bacteria swarming into mosques. An obnoxious sight which not only puts us off while going to a mosque but hurts us from within as to why only mosques are...
2011-08-21 12:02:00 |
0 comments -
DUBAI – In his desperate search for happiness, the life of Chauncey Lamont Hawkins, a former US rapper who enjoyed life luxuries of fame and money, has totally changed after a visit to the Gulf...
2011-08-14 18:16:45 |
0 comments -
According to a South African Newspaper Independent Online, Wayne Parnell has converted to Islamic faith. Wayne Parnell has converted to Islam after a period of personal study and reflection and will...
2011-08-14 17:00:09 |
0 comments -
London: British Actress Myriam Francois-Cerrah has recently embraced Islam after she was inspired by the life of Prophet Hazrat Muhammad S.A.. Cerrah is one of top actresses on Britain and popular...
2011-08-14 16:10:41 |
0 comments
-
Bollywood's style icon of the 50s and who was one of the first true blue superstars Shammi Kapoor died around 7 a.m. this morning at Mumbai's Breach Candy Hospital. The veteran actor was serious...
2011-08-14 11:50:34 |
0 comments -
I am a child of the sixties. I grew up in a country that still had vestiges of Nehruvian idealism and traces of the self-sufficient self-assurance that helped win its freedom. Universities and...
2011-08-12 18:17:37 |
0 comments



![Validate my RSS feed [Valid RSS]](/images/valid-rss-rogers.png)