– HRWF (17.09.2020) – In June 2020, the Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in IRAN (GAMAAN), conducted an online survey with the collaboration of Ladan Boroumand, co-founder of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran.
The results verify Iranian society’s unprecedented secularisation.
“Our results reveal dramatic changes in Iranian religiosity, with an increase in secularisation and a diversity of faiths and beliefs,” GAMAAN says. “Compared with Iran’s 99.5% census figure, we found that only 40% identified as Muslim.”
In contrast with state propaganda that portrays Iran as a Shia nation, only 32% explicitly identified as such, while 5% said they were Sunni Muslim and 3% Sufi Muslim. Another 9% said they were atheists, along with 7% who prefer the label of spirituality. Among the other selected religions, 8% said they were Zoroastrians – which can be interpreted as a reflection of Persian nationalism and a desire for an alternative to Islam, rather than strict adherence to the Zoroastrian faith – while 1.5% said they were Christian. Agnostics account for 5.8%, Humanists 2.7%, Baha’is 0.5%, Jews 0.1% and others 3.3%.
Read the full article in The Conversation (10 September): https://bit.ly/35NQV6X