4 - Religions
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Summary
Chapter 4 discusses Iran’s religious diversity. It examines the two main sects of Islam (Sunnism and Shiism) and describes their expressions in Iran. Of the world’s many Muslim-majority nation-states, Iran is one of the few Shi‘i-dominant ones. Safavid rulers proclaimed Shi‘i Islam as the state religion in 1501. Shi‘i clergymen declared a Shi‘i Islamic republic in 1979, after the popular revolution that ousted the secular monarchy. Iran features multiple kinds of religious communities. They include a wide range of Shi‘is and Shi‘i-related peoples, ethnoreligious minorities, Sunni-dominant minorities, and non-Muslims who are Bahais, Christians (Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans), Jews, Zoroastrians, and Mandaeans. The chapter discusses the positioning of religious minorities within the fundamentalist Shi‘i Islamic republic and the changes that have occurred for them since 1978. Iranians who are not mainstream Twelver Shi‘is are not well integrated in Iranian society. Shi‘i Muslims since 1978 also underwent changes in doctrine and practice. Iran’s new “religious” minorities include growing numbers of secularists and others who reject the ruling Shi‘i regime and its restrictive politico-religious ideologies and programs. They threaten the regime’s stability and longevity.
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- Iran's MinoritiesSocial Diversity and State Power, pp. 194 - 330Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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