Re-Secularization in Iranian Post-revolution generation
Amin Ghazaei
Student Number: 10463011
General Sociology
Peter Van Rooden & David Bos
July 3, 2014
Abstract
The rise of the theocratic regime of Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) after the 1979 revolution in Iran is mostly used as evidences against the secularization theory. The proponents of the theory assume that religion has lost its social significance through differentiation, modernization, rationalization or
privatization. On the other hand, the critics refer to some circumstances including Islamic revolution in Iran to dismiss secularization theory or at least challenge the universality and irresistibility of the process. Nevertheless, in the case of Iran, “secularization” and “secularism” did not go hand in hand. Although the reliable statistics are not available, there are convincing evidences indicating that since the onset of the Islamic revolution, people have been consistently re-secularizing their worldviews and lifestyles or at least have transformed their religious beliefs into a more moderate personalized religion. The re-secularization of post-revolution generation (the scope of this remains, however, a subject for further studies) remind us not to take for granted the co-existence of “secularization” and “secularism”, a questionable assumption that critics of secularization theory usually make. In this paper, I have
engaged with the apparently re-secularized post-revolutionary generation as a population to investigate how the process of re-secularization at micro-level happens. I have selected six social factors that are more relevant in the case of Iran, namely religious knowledge (or religious human capital), parents’ religiosity, peer groups, higher education, becoming both economically and spatially independent from family and sexual activities to explore to what extent and how the factors influence the process. I
conduct a mixed (both qualitative and quantitative) methods research aimed to reveal the ways in which the mentioned above social factors affect on the process of re-secularization at micro-level.
I interviewed 49 Iranian ex-Muslims (ages between 20 -45) who have had more or less religious experiences from the childhood. From the six above mentioned factors, the findings show that the association with peer groups makes access available to secularized information, resources and non-religious world views. Friends pave the way for an individual to become familiar with more secular social values, political organizations, and pluralistic views towards religion. The second influential factor is parent’s religiosity. However, I also discovered that strict religious families pressure the individual to yearn for a less restrictive life.
None of the aforementioned factors can convincingly be perceived as a decisive cause of
re-secularization. These factors influence the process by providing some contradictions that encourage one to doubt, rethink and finally leave Islam. This change of heart mostly happens in adolescent age or young adulthood. Interestingly, for the subjects of this research, religious education at schools had an affirmative effect on the decision to leave religion. The difficulty of acquiring a religious view which socialization in a modern age, could bring about ideological contradictions for an individual; this process can be regarded a micro-level explanation for the secularization process. This paper is proving accounts of secularization within societal structure of a theocratic regime when religious socialization contradicts with an individual’s association with more diverse and secular settings.
Introduction
Since the beginning of the 20th century, in European countries religious affiliation or at least the
importance of religion has sharply declined. Many facts have brought sociologists to the idea that through differentiation, modernization, rationalization or privatization of religion, religion has lost its social significance dramatically.
The word secularism was first coined by the then popular writer George Holyoake, who defined secularism as “the improvement of life by material means” (Holyoake, 1871). However, he did not distinguish between secularism and secularization. The former is the separation between the church and the state as defined in political philosophy, while the latter is a sociological term implying the decreasing importance of religion in a society that has nothing to do with the role of religion in legislation. The secularization as a growing process, which finally put end to the religion in the future has also been adopted by classical thinkers such as Karl Marx, Max Weber and Émile Durkheim. In the the Communist Manifesto, referring to religion in particular, Marx and Engels (1848) declare that by the advent of capitalist mode of production,
All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. (Marx and Engels, 1848)
In Marx’s articulation, as false consciousness and “illusory happiness of men,” religion is condemned to be replaced by class consciousness and “real happiness.”
For Weber, the secularization though implicitly is confirmed by formal rationalization and what he calls the disenchantment of the world. The rationalization that has taken place both in the de-sacralization of the legal order and in the objective way of seeing the world advocated in science made Weber (1904) to declare: “secularization is something that has already happened” (as cited in Pierucci, 1998). According to Weber is secularization rather than being just a modern phenomenon, a long process of
disenchantment dating back to the ancient age particularly the advent of Judaism.
Emphasizing the traditional role of religion in sustaining social solidarity and cohesion, Durkheim also accepts that religion has lost this essential function in the modern age. Durkheim argued that
industrialized societies exclusively in Western Europe are characterized by functional differentiation, whereby specialized professionals and organizations have taken over most of the tasks once carried out by monasteries, priests, and parish churches (as cited in Norris & Inglehart, 2004).
While accepting the main process of secularization, these thinkers have identified different connotations of the term “secularization,” which can make the thesis questionable. Jose Casanova distinguishes three central theses of secularization. The first refers to functional differentiation and emancipation of secular spheres such as the state, education system, the economy and sciences from the religious sphere
(Casanova, 1994). Such process of differentiation has also resulted in the separation of the secular spheres (like the state and the market) from each other.
However, there remains a mutual dependence between religious and secular spheres in Casanova’s articulation. The religious sphere, rather than being a central axis especially in legislation, became just another sphere with its marginal functions. In this meaning, the secularism namely the separation of the state and religion becomes part of the secularization process. As far as the meaning is concerned, the given undeniable facts like the Protestant reformation, the formation of modern states, the growth of modern capitalism and the early modern scientific revolution, scholars can hardly deny the historical validity of the secularization process.
In the second place, Casanova suggests from the differentiation process, there is a tendency to conclude that religion is declining and would likely continue to decline until its eventual disappearance as one can find in the theories of three above thinkers. The criticism of secularization is mostly against this claim that the differentiation inevitably brings about the decline and disappearance of religion. In this regard, there are both empirical evidences and counter-evidences which have made consensus impossible in the sociology of religion. While the decline of religion in Western Europe, as the most industrialized, differentiated and educated societies, is still continuing, the United States remains a significant exception used to demonstrate that industrialization, urbanization and differentiation does not necessarily bring religious decline (Casanova, 1994).
Another conclusion originating from the differentiation process is that religious beliefs have become subjective, individualized and de-politicized due to losing power of religious institutions, which used to have influence on legislation and political sphere.
For example, in ‘Invisible Religion,’ Thomas Luckmann argues that the segregation of religious norms from legislation as a result of differentiation could weaken the integrating function of religious institutions. As a result the place of religious beliefs has shifted from social to private spheres, from church to the minds (Luckmann, 1967). Since each relative autonomous sphere is governed by its functionally rational internal norms, the religious norms and beliefs are no longer relevant to other spheres. Subjectively speaking, individuals should behave differently according to different rules of each sphere that makes it difficult for an individual to remain religiously committed to the traditional global claims of religious norms.
In short, there are three different meanings of secularization: 1. Differentiation on which there is a consensus among sociologists. 2. The decline of religion and its eventual disappearance. 3. The privatization of religion, which makes religious beliefs and claims for salvation irrelevant in public spheres.
Contradictory to the two last conclusions, the opponents of the secularization theory usually point out to two evidences challenging the claim that religion is losing ground. The first objection refers to the modern kinds of religious life. Rather than the diminishing religion, forms of religion have been changed as one can see in the new versions of modern spirituality and the New Age in particular. By taking a wide definition of religion into account, one might conceive the growing spiritualism of the past hundred
years as a modern alternative to the role of traditional religions. One might even categorize this growing spiritualism as a new kind of religion. In brief, the declining importance of traditional religion should not be interpreted as the decline of religion. Here, what makes the issue confusing is the lack of consensus about the definition of religion as a concept used by both the proponents and opponents of
secularization theory.
The second evidence against the secularization theory indicates some important recent successes of religious institutions and regimes. The reestablishment of religion in growing US’ cities during the 20th
century and the rise of a theocratic regime in the 1979 revolution in Iran are mostly used as evidences against the secularization theory (e.g. Beyer, 1999). Despite ever-growing differentiation and
urbanization, the Protestant fundamentalism has been growing significantly in American politics. It has led the proponents of secularization theory to restrict the secularization to European countries, where the theory works well (e.g. Bruce, 2002).
The abovementioned evidences, though not totally dismissing secularization process, push some sociologists to rethink and revise the existing theories of secularization. For example, within the whole process of secularization Casanova reveals a trend of de-privatization of religion referring to the fact that “religious traditions throughout the world are refusing to accept the marginal and privatized role which theories of modernity, as well as theories of secularization, had reversed for them”(Casanova, 1994)
The Iranian theocratic regime coming to power after the 1979 revolution and the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism particularly after 9/11 terrorist attacks can be seen as the failure of both secularization process and secularism in the Islam world. Nevertheless, using 1979 revolution as an argument against the secularization theory could put us at risk of confusing “secularization” with “secularism.” In this regard, Iran case is emblematic. The rise of a religious regime in Iran does not necessarily indicate that people suddenly have been de-secularized, even though they supported the establishment of a religious regime. Moreover, although there are no reliable statistics, there are some data which indicate that since the revolution, people have been consistently re-secularized or at least have transformed their religious beliefs into a more moderate personalized religion. Abdolmohammad Kazemipur and Ali Rezaei’s study in 2003, for example, shows that the establishment of a theocratic regime in Iran has led to the transformation of the nature of faith, marked by a noticeable shift from collective to a more choice religion ( Kazemipur and Rezaei, 2003). Therefore, although the process of secularism in Iran has been diminished, one should not ignore the subsequent social re-secularization that has taken place after the establishment of an extreme religious regime. In this case one can even see an inconsistency between social re-secularization in social strata, which should be studied on its own right and a longstanding secularism. The re-secularization of post-revolution generation in Iran (the scope of the process however remains a subject for further studies) reminds us not to take the co-existence of “secularization” and “secularism” for granted.
One of the main reasons for this re-secularization is the reaction of the majority of Iranian youth against religious policies adopted by the government. The regime strives to forcefully propel youth to behave according to the established Islamic rules. Due to these restrictive Islamic measures, which limit the
freedom of the youth in Iran, the popularity of religion has dropped over last decades. One striking example is the establishment of a so-called cultural police, settled in main squares of the cities aimed to arrest those who (especially women) do not dress properly and appear with provocative attires
according the Islamic dressing codes. In this context, provocative means wearing colorful veils or showing too much hair under the veil. Another example is the launching a set of widespread operations to collect satellites dishes that the regime has labeled as Western plots and Western cultural invasions. Given that the Iranian regime prosecutes non-believers on the charge of heresy, people do not feel secure to reject religion or to show any doubts regarding their faith openly. As a consequence, no one can give an accurate account of this new wave of re-secularization. The forms of the re-secularization among the post-revolution generation vary from a pure atheism to a new version of revised spiritual- individualized Islamic faith that is compatible with the modern lifestyle.
Kamran Monsef (2004) describes Iran “as a deviant case in the Islamic world, the demand for political secularization has been expressed through, and can be seen in, societal unrest, voting patterns, and opposition’s activities.” Regime repression has turned many Iranians against the idea of Islamism and has exacerbated the demand for secularization on a political level. Seyyed Hussein Serajzadeh and Mohammad-Reza Pouyafar have found a negative correlation on the relation between age (from 15 to 75) and secularization among Iranian population in their study (Serajzadeh & Pouyafar, 2012). It means that old generation is far more religious compared to the younger generations. They also argue that “although the importance of and respect for religious elders, scripts and places have not so much decreased, religious affiliation and the belief that religion is a personal matter (secularism) have increased.” In brief, their intergenerational research confirms the post-revolution re-secularization process.
Even some authorities agree with the point that the post-revolutionary generation is far less religious compared to the older generations as an official news agency (Baztab) acknowledges:
Since one hundred years ego with the arrival of modernity in Iran, some Islamic Shia clerics have warned against the devastating impact of instrumental use of religion in political affairs, which might lead to irreligious thoughts among people. Particularly in recent years, the warning has gained more important. During this period, the promotion of superstitions based on the religion by some authority figures and the media has reached its climax. Again and again some clerics have warned about the negative effects of such superstitions on the religiosity of people, but nobody took it seriously. Using religious beliefs against post-election protesters have brought about a tsunami of irreligiousness among youth so that lots of them publicly and explicitly express their disbelief towards religion even God in the social networks (as cited in Amanun Website, 2012)
Like many other state-related media outlets, the Baztab article sees the post-revolutionary re-secularization as a reaction against the (mis-)using of religion by the government. The account of this wave of secularization, which appears to be a prevalent trend among moderate authorities, however,
remains a vague speculation. Those who examined the post-revolutionary processes of secularization in Iran have not attempted to historicize, specify or theoretically articulate the processes involved. Most of the scholarships on the secularization processes in the past 35 years in Iran have been vague narratives simply stating that there is a widespread interest in secularization amongst younger generations of Iranians.
PEW foundation examines in a survey on American religiosity after millennium a new wave of secularization due to the politicization that is comparable to the post-revolution re-secularization in Iran.Claude Fischer, professor of Sociology at Berkeley, explains the increasing number of those who identify themselves as none-religious as a result of the association between conservative politics and the religion in recent years in the United States (3.2% increasing from 2008 to 2012). Rather than a
substantial change in beliefs, it is probably a change in the label to avoid the political associations that Christianity might bring about (Pew Research, 2012). Similarly, the negative effect of a religious regime on the religion can be seen in Iran where more and more people declare that if that is what Islam is, I cannot accept it as my religion.
The re-secularization after an Islamic revolution warns us about handy using Islamic revolution in Iran as evidence against secularization theory. It seems that the de-secularization has confronted lots of
problems if not an adverse trend. By investigating the post-revolution secularization at the micro-level, the paper attempts to study religious socialization and its problem in the modern world. Conversely, instead of measuring the decline of religion in a secular society, we can take a look at the emergence a resistant secularization to religion in a religious society. This paper focuses on the process of religious socialization to give an account of another version of secularization at the micro-level. There is a tendency to see secularization as a result of a macro process (such as rationalization, differentiation, urbanization, industrialization) influencing individuals. A converse approach, however, can take by investigating how people and by means of what social factors can become secularized.
So, regardless to what extent the re-secularism in Iran is widespread, the secularized post-revolution generation provides an opportunity to study the process of leaving religion and seeking the social factors of secularization at the individual level. Here, I would like to delve into the micro-level processes involved; particularly, into the religious life experiences of Iranian youth in order find out how, by what means and through which social factors secularization has grown in a religious-dominant environment. It is interesting to see how people react to their surrounding social environment that constantly and forcefully attempts to regulate their social acceptable behavior in public and private spheres according to state religious ideology, rules and beliefs. In the Islamic Republic of Iran almost everything (most families, educational institutions, media and the hegemonic culture that is state regulated) is in favor of the religious socialization. How has the re-secularization process taken place in such a social
environment, at the micro-level? Which social factors are the most influential in this regard? There are many social factors suggested by sociologists as the predictors of the religiosity among adolescents and young adults such as childhood upbringing, religious schooling and education system, education level, cognitive ability, psychodynamic needs, parenting style, family structure and lifestyle, peer groups, demographic background, religious human capital, sexual activities, leaving parents’ home,
urbanization and immigration from rural to urban areas, etc. (e.g. Gunnoe and Moore, 2002). I have selected six social factors that are the most relevant in the case of Iran. These are religious knowledge (or religious human capital), parents’ religiosity, peer groups, higher education, becoming both economically and spatially independent from family and sexual activities. All these factors will be addressed in two next chapters.
Selecting the ex-Muslims of Iranian post-revolutionary generation as the research population, the paper puts the research question as follows: How and to what extent the six aforementioned social factors
influence one’s religiosity that finally leads to the choice and act of leaving Islam?
The respondents were asked at what age events such as losing faith, leaving home for the first time, reading Quran in Farsi, entering the university, etc. took place. In this way, there are enough data to correlate or better to link the chronological order of denouncing the religion to major life events. The social factors are regarded influential if the time of each relevant event precedes the time the subject felt they had denounced religion. As such, in this research, higher education, for instance, cannot have any effect if one has already left religion before entering university.
Besides calculating the time-spans between life events, I also asked the respondents’ opinion about the reasons or circumstances that encouraged them or by any means prompted them to leave religion. In this way, the respondents’ anecdotes or accounts can shed light on some unforeseen factors. Moreover, the compatibility between the results and one’s opinion can be checked which makes sure that the findings are reliable.
In short, while at the macro-level the re-secularization process in post-revolutionary Iran remains a subject for further studies, I conduct the research with a mixed (both qualitative and quantitative) method aimed to reveal the ways in which aforementioned social factors affect on the process of secularization at a micro-level. In other words, the research aims to find out micro-level process of re-secularization through understanding social factors that affect Iranian youth to become secularized. In order to understand the re-secularization process at a micro-level and the effect of social factors, one should first have a general apprehension over the social and historical context in which such process has taken place.
Context
The 1979 revolution replaced Pahlavi dynasty with a theocratic regime under the name of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Soon after the establishment through holding a referendum, the new regime immediately began to suppress leftist revolutionary parties who had taken part in the revolution (Five people whom I interviewed come from a family in which one of the members at least belonged to the leftist parties). It also incorporated extreme Islamic rules in the new constitution. The Islamic penal codes, as well as other Sharia-based laws, excluded women from having
equal social rights with men. Based on these Islamic laws which inherently were in stark contrast with the revolutionary slogans including freedom and equality, the regime began to impose Islamic veil on women and prevent them from participation in many social activities like sport. The new regime also banned lots of entertainment like mixed-sex parties, drinking alcohol, gambling, playing card and even chess. The Islamic law about punishment of extra-marital relationships made private life a vulnerable sphere to the intervention of a religious state policing apparatus. In the first decade of the life of the Islamic republic, as an example to show the scope of intervention, if the police arrested a matured couple on the street who were not officially married, the couple will be forced legally to marry according to the laws of Sharia. If they were married to other parties and not each other, the adultery was
punishable by stoning.
The IRI established gender segregation at all educational institutions and sexual segregation in other social spaces such as public transport vehicles. Under the name of Cultural Revolution, the Islamist regime closed the universities for three years (1980-1983) in order to purge universities from leftist and non-Islamic students and lecturers.
This wide de-secularization is mostly used as evidence against the historical validity and universal generalizability of secularization theory ( e.g. Kazemi Pour and Rezaei, 2003). Therefore, one has to bear in mind that Iranian post-revolution generation has been growing up in a restrictive social sphere depriving them of many forms of pleasure including the entertainment industry, sexual flirtation and mingling, music, dance other enjoyments for adolescents. We have to add to this the suffering of eight years of war with Iraq from 1980 to 1988 with a death toll of 750,000 Iranians.
In the early years of the revolution, the IRI enjoyed massive support, but when people got tired of war, poverty, injustice and the lack of both social and political freedom, they gradually became unsatisfied. The massive support of a moderate clergy, Mohammad Khatami, in May 1997 presidential elections and the subsequent uprising of students in July 1999 can be seen as the first sign of the dissatisfaction. The dissatisfaction culminated in post-election protests against electoral fraud in 2009 led to mass
demonstrations and rebels. Today, many political analysts argue that the IRI has no legitimacy among the vast majority of people. Along with this, the popularity of Islam has been also diminished; even believers prefer a more moderate version of Islam than what the ruling Mullahs advocate. More than three decades of bitter experiences with a religious regime caused many people to support secularism in the sense of separation of religion and the state. Although there are no reliable statistics to measure the dissatisfaction and re-secularization, but it is apparent from people’s narratives that ever more people, even religious ones, are beginning to argue that religion is a matter of private life and should not intervene in political issues and the constitution. Besides the increasing popularity of secularism (separation of religion and the state) one can easily distinguish an astonishing secularization amongst younger generation Iranians, particularly those born after the 1979 revolution. One can explain this process as a backlash against the regime’s suppressing of social and political freedoms.
The people I have interviewed have been growing up in this context in which by no means they could remain indifferent toward religion. Even for those who have been born in secular families, religion has played a crucial role in their life. Given the fact that according to Islamic rules Muslim-born people
should become Muslim otherwise they are be labeled as heretic, they have taken risks by leaving Islam. The process of secularization cannot be viewed as a gradual increasing indifference towards religion, a process that one might observe in the pluralistic social sphere of the Western countries.
As far as religion is concerned, there is a generational gap between people of the younger generation and the corresponding older generations. Far more than their parents, the post-revolution generation mostly is ready to welcome Western culture and lifestyle to push back the oppressive and stifling Islamic rules.
Therefore, while reading this paper, one has to keep in mind that the reaction against hegemonic Islamic ideology, strongly imposed by the regime, schools and other traditional institutions always remains a social and political reason for the re-secularization of Iranian society at large. The effect of conflicts between the demands of the young generation for freedom and equality and the restrictive
suppressions of the regime on the process of re-secularization is worthy of further studies. However, here, while recognizing the effect, the paper focuses just on the social factors (such as parents, friends or university…) by which the macro-level process is represented at a micro-level. The results of the micro-level study can be supplemented by the analysis of macro-level factors including rationalization, the political conflicts and the demand of emancipation.
The effects of religious brainwashing at educational institutions exposed every single Iranian youth to the state ideology in valuing Shiite Islam. Most respondents of this research have mentioned the
positive of negative effects of the education system on their beliefs. Even those who have been growing up in secular families for a while became religious believers before leaving religion during adolescent age or adulthood.
Elementary and high school atmospheres in Iran, especially in the first two decades after the Islamic revolution were extremely religious. The subsequent large-scale privatization of the education sector in the second decade of the revolution liberalized schooling and decreased the religious strictness at schools. However, the religious frameworks of schooling remain intact that are compulsory material for all schools, whether private or public.
The students at all levels of schooling have religious disciplines as part of their curriculum of study which only functions within the framework of Shiite Islam. Courses such as “Religious Insights”, “Islamic History”, “Quran Reading” and even Arabic are still compulsory credits in Iranian schools. For the language of Arabic, the Board of Education for past 35 years has imposed a compulsory course at every grade of school and has justified this by arguing that because Quran has been originally written in Arabic, all Iranians should learn Arabic. Any schooling material which can cast doubt on religious faith has been censored including studies of evolutionary biology, astrological physics, materialist
philosophies and even alternative religious writing including Sunni Islam, which is a minority group in Iran. As an example, students are introduced creationism as truth without having a chance to become familiar with the scientific evolutionary theory.
In the schoolyard, students are forced to line up and chant political and religious slogans. They are also forced to pray and fast or if they cannot fast they do not have any rights to consumption of food or
beverages at school sphere during Ramadan month. Annually, the education ministry holds a national competition among students to award those who can recite or memorize Quran properly. Students are also forced to participate in government-supported demonstration and annual celebration for the Islamic revolution. A special teacher has been employed to ensure that students have been religious upbringing. Girls and boys are told that after respectively the age of 9 and 15 that they are committed to dress and behave according the Islamic rules otherwise they would be sent to hell by God. Such strict religious brainwashing has obviously brought about undeniable effects on the respondents even amongst those who come from secular families.
Not surprisingly, in childhood, Iranian post-revolutionary generation is exposed to school or parents’ ideology. What remains unclear is that to what extent such norms and values in early socialization can last during the adolescence period and young adulthood. What and how do social factors (like family and peer group) undo the effects of the brainwashing of the religious system? What happened when some people leave religion while others do not, despite the fact that they all have been educated more or less in the same educational system?
Before explaining and discussing the method and findings, the six above mentioned social factors and relevant theories behind them are introduced.
Social Factors:
Religious Human Capital
The Religious Economies Theory proposes that religious ideologies are produced by religious institutions to meet the demands of the market economy usually measured by the indicator named religiosity (Spark and Finke, 2000). In this theory, religious goods are seen as abstract commodities which supply
satisfaction with participation in religious activities (Corcoran, 2012). Explaining the religious institutions as suppliers of the demands already existed (however affected by the changes in supply) entails the hypothesis that people with high Human Religious Capital (RHC) are more likely to remain potential customers of the religious goods and therefore keep their faith in the future.
Following Corcoran, I use the measure of Quranic knowledge as a direct indicator of RHC to test the hypothesis that RHC increases religious participation (Corcoran, 2012) or conversely speaking a less RHC helps one easier to put religion aside. In other words, I want to test the hypothesis claiming Muslims should have gained more Quranic scripture knowledge compared with ex-Muslims in duration of adolescence. If this theory is correct, simply it should be so that Muslims have gained particular Islamic knowledge which ex-Muslims did not.
I have to note that unlike the Christian tradition where teaching biblical scripture is allowed and encouraged in one’s own language, Persian-speaking Shiite clergies and Ayatollahs usually advocate reading Quran and other relevant scriptures in the Arabic language of its assumed origin. It is despite the fact that Iranian people (consisting of Persian speakers, Kurds, Turks, Balouch people) do not understand Arabic. Arabic has been the lingua Franca in the Middle East since the Muslim army progressed in the sixth century CE, and as such, most languages in the region have the Arabic alphabet for their writing
system. Having the knowledge of the writing system, Iranians can pronounce Arabic texts however they are unable to comprehend the language. Therefore, the habit of regular reading of Quran is by no means indicative of the knowledge of scripture content.
To better explain the relation of Iranians with Arabic language and Quran as an Arabic text, one can compare the role of Arabic writing system to that of Latin in the middle ages. Iranian Shiite clergy for the past 300 years have used Knowledge of the Arabic language as a marker to show their exclusive power with regards to understanding the word of God and to distinguish themselves from the general public. For the purposes of this research reading Quran in Persian can be an indicator of Religious Human Capital as it shows that the subject is interested in the content of the scripture and is establishing a less frivolous relation with the text.
To test RHC hypothesis (people with high RHC are more likely to remain potential customers of the religious goods and therefore keep their faith in the future.) and unlike testing other factors, the knowledge of Muslims about Quran has to be tested and measured. I have done so by sending a short questionnaire consisting of eight questions to twenty randomly selected from those who still regard themselves as Muslim believers. From them, 14 people have filled the questionnaire accurately. The sample is, of course, not rich but since the investigation is basically focused on the process of leaving religion, the findings from the Muslim respondents should be just considered as extra data to provide a better evaluation of RHC of the main respondents namely ex-Muslims.
Parents’ Influence
Family comes to mind as the first factor influencing one’s religious beliefs and attitudes because religion like class is to some extent inherited. Family institution, particularly in a conservative society, is the first societal structure that takes on the responsibility of the transmission of religious values and beliefs across generations. While there is substantial prior research confirming the intergenerational
transmission of religiosity within the family structure (as some examples see to Min & Kim, 2005; Yuri, 2005; Copen & Silverstein, 2007), labeled as socialization theory, the question remains how secular families transmit their values to the next generation especially in an extremely religious environment. To what extent can parents (re)produce (none)-religious orientations in their children? Do children inherit secular norms and values in the same manner they inherit religious ones? In this case, the question is that to what extent Iran’s secular generation are the products of the secular
intergenerational transmission.
Moreover, although parents’ religiosity or secularism affects children in the earliest stages of cognitive development related to linguistic and comprehension, it is doubtful if the influence continues during the adolescent age when one begins to become relatively both physically and mentally independent of family. Scott et al., for example, have found that the closeness to parent and family structure do not significantly affect initial changes in beliefs systems especially on the importance of religion (Desmond et al., 2010). There are also other studies that have questioned the parental influence in other ways (e.g.
Cornwall 1988, Erickson, 1992). Furthermore, Smith M Myers, challenges studies that question the primacy of parental influence on the religiosity of offspring, pointing out that offspring's experiences in late adolescence and early adulthood have independent effects on religious behavior; however Mayer does not completely dismiss studies that insist on the conditioning effect of family of origin on an offspring’s ideological stances (Myers, 1996).
It seems that the parental influence depends on the context and thus we cannot rely on simple statistical results without finding how exactly the influence acts and lasts.
Peer Group
The peer group theory assumes the membership and association with peer groups especially during adolescence are likely to influence a person’s beliefs and behaviors. The noticeable decline of religious participation among young adults, namely at the age when one tends to be accepted as a member of a peer group, has driven many sociologists to longitudinal studies in order to test the influence of peer groups (e.g. Dudely, 1999, Desmond et al., 2010). Based on these theories, I hypothesize that joining non-religious peer group pushes one to leave religion in order to adopt him/herself to the rules of conducts of that particular group.
Most researchers studying the effects of peer association in ideological development suffice to compare peer group attachment with the religiosity by quantitative (and sometimes longitudinal) studies without being able to explain how friend’s influence. Although the potential effect of friends on one’s beliefs and behavior is worthwhile to be incorporated in any study about religious sentiments and participation, one should not take for granted the underlying assumptions in theories: namely that the effect of peer group is due to one’s attempts to uncritically adopt group rules and ideas. Most of the time, the assumption is taken to find the causes of “deviant” behaviors of adolescents such as using drugs, dropping out of schools or delinquency. However, it is analytically problematic, if one describes a cognitive process such as changing one’s beliefs in the same line as self-destructive deviant behaviors individuals engage in out of peer pressure or persuaded by some friends. At the final analysis, leaving religion is a matter of individual choice and societal factors influencing such subjective choosing are the questions of this paper.
An alternative explanation is that friends can be influential by facilitating access to non-religious informational resources and organizations. Therefore, this study tries to find out whether the eventual influence is the result of an uncritical adaptation of new rules of the secular peer groups or the result of discussions and subsequent contemplations, as well as getting access to informational resources provided by some secular friends. In other words, friends can enlarge one’s social network and thus increase the chance of confronting different perspectives and ideas which based on secularization theory is a cause for changing or leaving religion.
In the study, among other things, by taking a qualitative approach I try to find out to what extent the influence is a matter of imitation of friends’ behavior and values and to what extent friends are suppliers of non-religious informational resource which were hardly accessible due to lack of free circulation of information in Iran specially before the advent of the Internet.
Higher Education
Many investigations suggest that sentiments of religiosity decline during university (or college) years. Conflicts between scientific views against religious ones, encountering pluralistic views, getting
introduced to ethical codes of conduct concerning freedoms of expression, and student involvement in serious intellectual debates all contribute to this decline of religiosity, that is, of course, if students do not merely join or associate with religious campus groups (e.g. Madsen and Vernon, 1983). Higher educated students are more likely to study none-religious books and adopt a scientific world views. Nevertheless, the results of some studies are counterfactual. For example, Harold Hartley has found out that American students today are more interested in "things spiritual" and more involved in religious activities (Hartley, 2004). Robert Wuthnow (1998) maintains that the resurgence of religious
involvement is in part a reaction to the social and cultural shifts since the 1960s, which include the breakdown of the nuclear family, the loss of confidence in basic social institutions, and a rampant consumer-oriented marketplace (Hartley, 2004).
Although, It is well-established that educated individuals are the least religious (e.g. Albrecht and Heaton, 1984; Bowen, 1997; Feldman & Newcome, 1969; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991), not many research have gone beyond a simple association between education and disbelief in religion. Making a direct association between religion and education, might be misleading if the research does not take into consideration the quality of the education, the epistemological foundation of one’s intellectual background, the scope and method of acquiring such body of knowledge and education that can be the grounds for the an ever-changing reciprocal relation between one’s education and acquiring of and non-religious beliefs. For the purposes of understanding the reciprocal relation between education and religious disbeliefs, this research evaluates the potential effect of the university by comparing the time of entering university to the time it took for the individual to consider leaving religion. Also, we have to bear in mind that the factors like the influence of the peer groups and becoming independent from family can overlap with the effect of university educating.
In the case of higher education institutions in the Islamic Republic of Iran, one has to note that the state controls the content of courses offered, and no syllabus can contain secular material for teaching. Since Iran’s education system excludes and suppresses secular ideas particularly the Theory of Evolution, we cannot easily relate the secularization among students to the official higher education. Although students, by entering higher education start educating themselves on banned subjects through peer organized underground study groups.
Independence and Immigration
The assumption is that as youths leave home they encounter more liberal and less traditional behaviors and attitudes than their parents possessed (Hoge et al. 1994). It is especially noteworthy when one immigrates from rural to urban areas where there are more likely to confront various ideas and perspectives. It is almost accepted both by lay people and most of sociologists that those who live in rural areas display greater religiosity compared to their urban counterparts. The studies of rural
a more conservative tone than does urban faith. The IRI also attempts to organize rural youths around mosques (for organizations such as the Basij militia movement of plain-clothed disciplinary police) or even persuade them to enter the seminary of traditional Islamic school (Hawza). In rural areas, mosques remain as the only place for religious oriented cultural activities. The similar sect-like nature of religion in rural areas has also been historicized and analyzed in Protestant fundamentalism in the US as a reaction to growing urbanization (Chalfant et al., 1987).
In Iran, many youth rural people consider Tehran and other great cities as a place of freedom for seeking sexual partner or any extra-marriage relationships without being controlled or trapped by their
traditional families.
The other possibility as a reason of secularization is the immigration to a Western country where in stark contrast to Iran, religious pluralism and tolerance prevails. The effect of pluralist urban space and Western countries remains, however, controversial on religiosity.
The most famous disagreement to the negative effects of the urban space on religiosity comes from Finke and Stark, who have shown that at least in the case of American city, urban areas have higher rates of religious participation than non-urban ones (Finke and Stark, 1988).Kevin D Breault points out that Finke and Stark’s sample is biased because their respondents are disproportionately Catholic. Also, Finke and Stark neglected areas in which other religious conservative religions are strongly represented (Breault, 1989). Breault’s study presents highly significant, consistent negative relation between religious pluralism and religious participation.
Here, in the research for the sake of simplicity, I have combined leaving parent’s house, becoming economically and spatially independent from family and immigration to the Western countries to the same factor labeled as independence and immigration factor. I have to note that this factor can strongly overlap with the factor of higher education. When someone leaves parents’ house to study at a
university in another city and after that he/she leaves religion, it is difficult to find out which of two factors have played a more significant role. Hence, I would also take respondent’s narration into the account by means of taking a mixed methods research which can supplement the deficiency of each method.
The Influence of Sexual Activities
There are many researches suggesting the negative affection of religious participation on sexual
behaviors and attitudes toward premarital sex. However, some researchers claim that teenagers’ sexual attitudes also affect their degree of religious involvement (e.g. Thornton and Camburn, 1989).
One can suppose that the behaviors and attitudes of adolescents who are sexually active conflict with standard religious teaching denouncing premarital sex. It is most relevant with regards to the strict Islamic codes strongly imposed by a religious government like Iran. Having an extramarital sex is an
extremely risky venture which can severely be punished, particularly for women (female adulterous behavior can be punished by stoning to death).
It is likely that many of Iranian youth in reaction against the sexual suppression have rejected their whole religious beliefs. Although the associations between general religiosity and premarital sexual activities have been found (e.g. Rowatt and Schmitt, 2003), the affection of adolescents’ sexual activities on reducing their religious commitment is not clear.
I hypothesize those premarital sexual experiences that have taken place before the time of leaving religion, influence leaving religion and its restrictive rules toward illegitimate sexual practices. In the case of Iran, sex-segregated schools, extreme restrictive rules against women, forbidding and punishing extra-marital sexual relationships, all reinforce the possibility of such influence. Therefore, having sex or sexual partner outside marriage before leaving religion can provide an affirmation for the hypothesis. However, instead of finding a simple correlation, by focusing on the development of the sexual activities, I will try to find out how the influence, if it exists at all, in actuality takes place. Methods
To examine the effect of the six above mentioned factors (religious, parents’ religiosity, peer groups, higher education, becoming both economically and spatially independent from family and sexual
activities) on the process of leaving Islam, I have chosen a mixed methods research with both qualitative and quantitative approach. The mixed method provides the possibility of comparing the findings of a quantitative analysis with what the respondents themselves mention as the reasons of the decision to leave the religion. To be able to evaluate the effect of human religious capital (independent variable) on the religiosity (dependent variable), I interviewed additionally 14 religious people (those who believe in Islam whether they do religious rituals or not). By doing so, I can test the effect of human religious capital on the commitment to the religion. I did it just for religious capital factor and not others. For all six factors the answers have been scored and then divided to three categories namely “not”, “somewhat” and “much influential” (see the Table1). Mostly the scoring has been based on the calculation of the time-spans and chronological sequences of events. For example, if one leaves the religion after or before entering the university, then the score of this factor respectively are 1 and 0. After scoring, I checked the findings if they are compatible with what the respondents think about the reasons. The narratives of respondents on explaining their choice or behavior is crucial to this research. The compatibility enhances the reliability of the findings that otherwise could hardly meet the needed scrutiny of a typical social research.
Examining the chronological sequence of events, I will be able to gain some data that are more reliable compared to personal beliefs about the process. Individuals tend to look at their beliefs as a result of personal contemplation and argumentation more or less independent of environmental factors. In other words, individuals do not have social constructionist view when it comes to personal changes in life. Such tendency can seriously diminish the reliability of data. Anyway, each quantitative and qualitative approach has its own pros and cons.
Besides checking the reliability of the findings, the interpretation of personal anecdotes makes us enable to understand how the social factors actually influence the process of secularization at a micro-level. For example, only by understanding the process and interpretation of respondents’ narration, we can understand whether secularization is a result of secular upbringing or not, and to what extent there is a matter of conscious decision making.
Also, it is likely that there are some special events or occurrences in an individual’s life that I have not already taken into the account. Also, it may be so that the coincidence of the events is just accidental. Therefore, by asking about personal beliefs and personal narratives of events, I will make sure that the respondents’ narration confirms the results from calculating time spans.
Sample
I interviewed 49 Iranian ex-Muslims (32 men and 17 women) who have had more or less religious experiences during their lifespan. I am aware that the gender disproportions can bias the sample, especially in the case of sexual activities. Nevertheless, since the sample is small, I decided to account for gender and ethnic diversities by studying the personal narratives, and not to examine such differentiations as separate factors. I have, therefore, assumed a relative homogenous
post-revolutionary generation when studying the specific social factors relevant to this paper. However, I have only accounted for ethnic and sexual diversities within interviews and as part of the study of narratives. For example, Kurds and Gilakis are far less religious compared to other Iranian ethnic groups. This differentiates between individuals associated with each culture. The cultural differences are, therefore, accounted for when interviewing each subject. Since, this study does not aim to give a comprehensive account of the re-secularization process, in my view, the assumption of a homogeneous post-revolutionary generation, serves this study’s purposes. However, for a national-scale survey aiming to study the re-secularization process at a macro-scale, ethnic, sexual, gendered and other forms of diversities have to be considered.
In order to focus exclusively on the generation that have grown up after the revolution in 1979 and have been educated under the Islamic education system, I selected the respondents from the age group between 20 and 45 and on the condition that they have spent their childhood in Iran.
Since students in Iran usually apply for the university at the age of 18 or 19, the minimum age of 20 has been chosen to ensure that one have had enough time to receive higher education. The maximum age of 45 makes sure that the respondent has received at least some education in the post-revolutionary religious primary schools. The average age is 30.91 with the standard deviation of 6.29.
Additionally, in order to test respondents’ knowledge of Quran as an indicator for the human religious capital, I sent a short questionnaire containing eight questions to twenty random selected respondents who call themselves Muslim. Fourteen people filled the questionnaire properly. By means of this small survey, I will be able to compare religious Muslims’ human capital to ex-Muslims’ one.
Because of the sensitivity of the subject research (the ex-Muslims can be prosecuted) and therefore the impossibility of creating a random sample, I chose snowball method to reach those who can trust me.
Since most of those Iranians who know me or can trust me belong to leftist political activists groups or are refugees, in order to make the sample less biased, I tried to call up respondents by referrals from people who do not directly know me, are not my friends, and are not close to my friends. Fairly enough, only four people of 49 come from a leftist family.
The relevant chronological questions include the age of individuals and the time of events during the lifespan of the respondent such as the age of leaving Islam, losing faith in god, leaving parents’ house, having sex, going to university, finding close friends and so forth. Given the fact that I leave outside Iran and as a refugee I am not able to travel to Iran, the many interviews have been conducted through Internet. I have conducted nine interviews face to face and other through Skype. The interviews were semi-structured providing a fairly open framework which allows for focused, conversational, two-way communication. The personal anecdotes about the process of leaving religion can shed light on the unexpected aspects of the process. Also, the exchanges that take place during a conversation can help the respondents to remember the circumstances surrounding their decisions or behaviors. On average, the interviews lasted half hour.
Moreover, before the beginning, to improve the quality and efficiency of the questionnaires, a pilot study has been conducted by interviewing eight randomly selected people. Another reason for this was to check eventual memory-problems since the questions are mostly about the past time. Except one case, I did not come across any considerable memory-related inconsistencies (the condition I set is that for chronological questions, the time error less than plus and minus one year is regarded negligible). After doing pilot study, I revised some questions.
Operationalization
Muslim clergies usually encourage people to read the Quran in Arabic by claiming that it will be more rewarded (Swab) by God than reading it in any other language. For the same reason, schools in which the most respondents for the first time began to read Quran, instead of focusing on the content, drive students to read Quran in Arabic correctly (Alphabet in both Farsi and Arabic is the same, then Persian people can read Quran without understanding the content). Therefore, I asked the respondents to indicate approximately how many percents they read Quran in Farsi before leaving religion. Reading Quran in Farsi/Persian is an indicator of the respondent’s content engagement with the Quran as opposed to a meaningless recitation. For those who claim that they have read Quran more than one time the score has been calculated by the number of reading multiplied by 100; for example if someone have read Quran two times, I scored it 200%.
Additionally, to measure the knowledge of Quran’s content, I asked two relatively easy and difficult questions:
1. How many chapters (Surah) does the Quran consist of?
2. What does Quran mean by the term “Ahzab” (that literally means parties) in a chapter of the same name?
The answers have been scored from 0 to 3.
To measure the religiosity of respondents’ parents, I asked the questions about the beliefs in God and Islam and the commitment to religious rituals (daily praying and fasting) of both mother and father at the time the respondents decide to leave religion. Furthermore, I asked if their parents encouraged or forced them to do religious rituals that have been scored separately. Each of believing in God, Islam for both parent has been scored 1 or 0. I scored the commitment to do religious rituals as the following: 0 for the answer of “not at all”, 1 for “yes but not regularly” and 2 for “yes regularly”. The score of total answers can vary from 0 to 9.
Here, I have to note an important point related to the difference between Islam and Christianity. The religiosity in the Christian tradition usually is measured by means of indicators like Church attendance and religious affiliation. Such indicators cannot be applied in the Islamic context simply because the most important religious practice, namely Salat (Namaz), performed five times a day that can be done at home without being registered in a Mosque or any other religious organization. Although Muslims believe that praying in congregation is much more valuable than praying individually, they usually perform the practice in their private sphere mostly due to the inconvenience of attending mosque services at early hours of the mornings or at nights. Instead of religious attendance and religious
affiliation, we can use the regularity of daily praying and fasting as an indicator for Islamic religiosity as I have used it in the research.
To find out the influence of friends the following questions have been asked:
1. How old were you when you for the first time began to find some close friends out of schools or outside your neighborhood? To be sure about a reliable answer, I also asked:
2. How old were you when you for the first time traveled with your friends? By means of travel, I mean spending at least a whole day outside of the city of residence.
3. Have you ever had a friend or friends encouraging you to leave Islam? If so, how old were you when you for the first time experienced such encounter?
The answers have been scored from -1 to 2.
Furthermore, to control the influence of the peer group in respondent’s behavior, I asked three more questions about the age of using alcohol, cigarette and drugs for the first time. From the view of most families and common sense in Iran, these behaviors are regarded as deviant mostly done secretly under the influence of some friends.
To measure the influence of becoming both spatially and economically independent from family and know if the respondent has experienced immigration I put the following questions:
1. How old were you when you for the first time left parents’ house to live somewhere else due to the reasons such as education, work, marriage or immigration?
2. How old were you when you for the first time became relatively economically independent from your family?
The answers have been scored from -2 to 3.
To find out the influence of higher education, I asked simply when they went to the university if at all. For those who have lost their belief in Islam after entering the University, the score is 1 and for others is 0.
Measuring the influence of sexual relationships is more challenging. I asked when they for the first time had sexual intercourse. But it does not seem to be enough to examine the influence of sexual needs and impulses. Therefore, I asked about the age of finding a girlfriend or boyfriend for the first time.
Unfortunately, the vague concept of girlfriend or boyfriend, even though I tried to give a definition to the respondent, can cast doubt on the reliability of the answers. Therefore, in this case, I have tried to rely on respondents’ explanations. The answers have been scored from -2 to 2.
Results
In addition to the questions about the age in which various events took place, as the final question, I asked the opinion of the respondents about the reasons or the social factors that affected their decision to leave religion. As a way to check the reliability of the findings, the results from the calculating of time spans should be compatible to what the respondents mention as the reason. The findings of 26
respondents are consistent with what themselves have mentioned; I confronted inconsistency in nine cases, and 16 cases I marked as unknown mostly because they did not refer to any of the six above social factors.
Table1 offers a summary of the results in which the influence of each factor have been categorized into three levels (none, somewhat and much influential). Although it is apparent from the table that the peer groups are the most influential factor, we have to keep in mind that since the scores by means of different, arbitrary criteria have been categorized, they should not be used to compare between the factors.
Also, there are some overlappings between the factors. For example, when one leaves religion after leaving parents’ house to migrate, study or work in somewhere else, we can hardly say which factor (the university or migration) is more influential.
From table 1, nevertheless, two significant conclusions can be made: one is that the distribution curve of parents’ factor is U-form that indicates that we can divide the respondents into two groups that come from either secular or extreme religious families. In the Conclusion section, I will use the division in recognizing two different processes of secularization in secular and religious families. The second is that religious capital is relatively homogenous that is not surprising due to the homogenous religious
Table1. The influence of the six social factors on secularization
Peers Group a Parents b University c Low Religious
capital d Independence & immigration e Sexual relationship f
Not influential 12 (24.4%) 26(53%) 36(73.5%) 16 (32.6%) 38 (78.8%) 22 (47.8%) some
influential 19 (38.8%) 9 (18.4%) 1(2%) 27(55.1%) 2 (4.1%) 15 (30.6%) Much
influential 16(32.7%) 14 (28.6%) 9(24.5%) 6(12.2%) 8 (16.4%) 9 (18.4%) a. Not influential (0 and -1); some influential (1); much influential (2)
b. The scores from 0 to 3 as much influential, 4 and 5 as some influential and from 6 to 9 as not influential have been regarded.
c. Much influential (losing faith after entering the university), some influential (at the same time of entering the university), Not influential (losing faith before entering the university).
d. Not influential (3,4 and 5); some influential (1,2); much influential (-1,0) e. Not influential (0,-1,-2); some influential (1); much influential (2 and 3) f. Not influential (-1,-2); some influential (0, 1); much influential (2)
Other results are as follows: the average age of losing faith in Islam is 18.42 with the standard deviation of 5.15 years. It shows that the most respondents have left religion during adolescence or young adult age. There are just six people who have lost their faith in Islam before the age of 15 not surprisingly indicating that they in the childhood have been influenced by the religious primary schools, but later they become able to get rid of the ideological brainwashing. Another striking finding is the amount of about two years (1.9 years) for the average duration of doubt before deciding decisively to put religion aside. It shows that the decision to leave religion ensues from a long process of contemplation, free study and discussion as the respondents themselves claim.
In the following sections, I summarize the special results about the influence of each factor:
Religious Capital
Regarding the fact that all respondents receive the same obligatory religious materials at school, including reading Quran, there is an expectation that religious capital will not vary so much. The normal distribution of the knowledge of Quran confirms the expectation (skewness =-0.12, standard deviation =1.5). Although it weakens the capability to evaluate the influence of religious capital, there is no significant relation between the age of leaving religion or the duration of the doubt before losing faith on one hand and the knowledge of Quran on the other hand.
In order to be able to evaluate the respondents’ religious capital, I also sent a short questionnaire to religious people, asking the same questions concerning religious knowledge. (Have you ever read Quran in Farsi? Approximately, how many percents of Quran have you read? How many chapters (Surah) does the Quran consist of? What does it mean by the term “Ahzab” (that literally means parties) in the chapter by the same name? ) By asking the aforementioned questions, I can test the hypothesis whether
religious people posses more religious capital than non-religious ones. Clashing with my hypothesis, I found no statistically significant relation between religious capital and religiosity. Though not significant, none-religious respondents show to have more knowledge about Quran compared to religious ones. It is so maybe because ex-Muslims are more involved in discussions and critical readings of Quran’s script. Therefore, there is no direct link between the religious capital and such thing like religious demands. Also, we can claim that religious knowledge does not strengthen religious faith.
A closer look, using qualitative approach, at the reasons mentioned by some respondents (11 people) shows that when they began to read the Quran’s script and other religious books, they found it in opposition with what they called morality and human values, and this contradiction helped them to doubt the validity of Islam. The following are some answers to the question about influential books helping to lose their faith:
From the age of 22, I got interested in religion. I wanted to know its structure. I read many books [he named some religious books]. I also became interested in mysticism. As I was
studying, gradually I began to view the religion from different perspectives. Finally, I came to the conclusion that all of these are just fictions. My study continued until I left completely Islam in the age of 26.
Once I read a religious book about the fourteen innocent Imams and their wars at the age of 16, the violent content of the book drive me to deny not only Islam, but even the God.
The book that I push me to leave Islam was Quran. From the sixteenth, I began to read Quran. I also read some materialistic books. But the most important was Quran.
All of the above make clear that a serious free study of Islam does not necessarily lead to strengthening the faith. As the citations show, if one studies the religion from different points of views, it is more likely to revise their beliefs.
I can presume a reason to the finding that more religious knowledge conversely leads to the less
religious demands. Unlike Judaism/Christian tradition, Iranian Muslims are not encouraged by clergies to read Quran in their own language. In general, since Islam has not had a long history of religious
hermeneutics, Quran’s scripts, as a result, are usually interpreted very literally. Also, I have to note that Quran’s text explicitly puts emphasis that it is a holy text, and the scripture itself demands that the believers do not treat it as a poem and therefore should not be interpreted metaphorically. Because of these, religious parents often have a superficial relationship with the text of Quran and their ties to the text are often with a superficial recitation without any contemplation in the content. Therefore, parents are not familiar with typical justifications provided by clergies to defend their holy scripts. So, when their children especially at the adolescent age began to read Quran or other religious books, they cannot answer their children’s questions and justifies the contradictions. Moreover, Islamic clergies due to having power tend to suppress any skepticism, and skeptic theological investigations are not much encouraged.
Based on questions about 1.parents’ beliefs in both God and Islam, 2.regular or irregular praying and fasting and 3.forcing or encouraging children to do religious rituals, parents’ religiosity has been scored from 0 to 9. Fourteen respondents mentioned the secular sphere of family had affected them to leave religion when they became older. The number exactly matches the number of parents’ religiosity score dropped from 0 to 3 (see Table1). However, this is not true at all for other respondents. Thirty-two respondents have been encouraged, and even eight of them forced by parents to pray and fast. Furthermore, five people see their decision to lose the faith as a rebellious reaction against parents’ pressure. As one of the respondents (a woman) contemplates:
Maybe if my family, especially my brother, were not so strict, I would not become an atheist. Maybe I would have remained a Muslim with a frail faith. But my family’s strictness drove me to doubt about it.
Another woman says:
The most influential was my father, because he was severely religious. He used the religious rules to discipline us.
Interestingly, there is a clear-cut division in the case of parents’ influence. It means that the family sphere of the ex-Muslims has been either much secular or extreme religious. The question remains how the secular parents influence their children to resist against religious propaganda of media and schools. Based on the explanation of 14 respondents who mentioned the family as influential it is clear that the secular parents did not succeed in secular upbringing or simply they did not want to do that. Their children did not inherit secular ideologies from them; rather the most of the respondents have had more or less a religious experience influenced by either education or personal curiousness. As one respondent who mentioned parents as a factor to leave Islam, describes:
My family did not perform religious rituals properly; there were not extreme at all. Even my siblings were Marxists. Nobody pushed me into religion. It was only I, and I alone, that started to explore what Islam is all about. After that, I got interested in literature. My friends, who did not enter into the literature sphere, did not put religion aside.
Another respondent says:
In my family, there were no strict beliefs in religion. Before the revolution although religion had stronger roots in people’s lives, it did not intervene in the private life. People used to drink alcohol [which is forbidden in Islam] and at the same time pray and fast.
The findings challenge those theories assuming direct casual relation between parents and children’s beliefs. Instead, as two above citations indicate, the influence of the secular parents is due to the lack of religious strictness or their indifferent attitude towards religion.
From 14 people apparently affected by the secular upbringing, just three people refer to the direct involvement of parents in the process of leaving religion by the efforts such as discussing against or mocking Islam. Rather than having a direct intervention, the secular family seems to affect individual’s
