So a couple of weeks ago, a very significant study came out. Iran, as you know, has had a theocratic government since the revolution in 1979. The government claims to be some 99% Muslim and 90% Shia as of the last census, which was in 2011 and pretty much universally considered illegitimate.
But now, for the first time in modern history, an organization (The Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in IRAN, or GAMAAN) has completed a religious survey of Iranians without state approval. How this was done is in the links below, but so far nobody has been able to cast serious doubt on the methodology. Which is rather significant because of what the results of the poll claimed.
That being that about 45% of Iranians say they've left religion entirely. Yes, you did read that correctly. The report was out in Farsi a couple weeks ago and I learned about it through a speaker then, but now the English version is published.
News articleGAMAAN source and English reportPeople have for
decades now questioned the official story on religiosity in Iran, and now that questioning has borne fruit, and rather extreme tasting fruit at that! This is, it is safe to say, much more than I think most people opposed to the Islamic Republic would ever have dreamed of hoping for. And quite a serious bellwether for the Iranian government as well.
Significant survey results:In total, only 32% of Iranians self-describe as Shia Muslims. The other major groupings are No Religion at 22%, Atheist at 9% (higher than the US!), Zoroastrian at 7.5% (
far more than Iran claims), Spiritual at 7%, Agnostic at 6%, and Sunni Muslim at 5%. This is...it's just
not the picture that the Iranian government paints. It's not even remotely congruent with their understanding of reality. If accurate, this survey means there is no majority religion in Iran.
While most Iranians still believe in a God (78%), that is the
only supernatural belief which is in the majority. Even the second highest result, life after death, is a minority belief at 37%. Not exactly traditional Islam, that. 20% say they do not believe in
any of the supernatural concepts surveyed.
As above, vast numbers of Iranians in all demographics report having been religious before but that they are no longer religious today. This figure is between 40-50% across age, education, sex, and location.
60% say they do not pray at all. Only 27% claim to perform the five daily prayers which are required in Islam. I should further note that people are historically very,
very apt to lie about how often they pray or attend services on self-reporting surveys like this one (surveys in the US report about double the church attendance compared to objective attendance studies) and as such the number could be even higher.
68% of Iranians say that the government should
not legislate based on religious precepts even if the religious are the majority in government. Not a good look for the Islamic Republic. 70% say that religious organizations should be responsible for themselves and not receive state funding.
A mere 4% of Iranians say that only Muslims should be allowed to proselytize. Most of the rest are evenly divided between saying promotion of religion should always be illegal (42%) or that it always should be legal regardless of religion (40%). The remainder expressed no opinion.
A basic majority said that they wanted children to be educated on diverse religions in school, as well as saying that they did
not want children to be educated on religious teachings and duties in school. This seems to indicate a desire for the end of the current Islamic studies policy in Iran in favor of neutral teaching of religion.
As people have noted for a long time now, the hijab law in Iran is extremely controversial. But even here, this survey's results are mind-blowing: 72% say they disagree with the hijab law and only 15% explicitly agree with it. Beyond that, 58% disagree with even voluntary hijab wearing while 23% agree with it. Of those who say they disagree with voluntarily wearing hijab, 98% disagree with the hijab law. So yeah, that's...that's a lot.
Finally, most people still do not drink alcohol. This is probably more of a supply issue than an ideology issue, looking at the rest of this.
So yeah. That all happened. I had seen signs before that Islam was starting to surfer the same decline as Christianity in countries with good internet access, but holy fuck. Looks like theocracy is a good way to just eviscerate your religious authority. So. Good luck to the Iranian people in the coming years. I think they're going to need it.
Poll
70 (27.6%)
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Topic: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion (Read 582306 times)