Posted on 08/28/2019 2:18:44 AM PDT by Cronos
Qom became the bedrock of Iran’s theocracy and remains one of the country’s holiest places — home to 200,000 religious scholars, a destination for Shiite Muslim pilgrims and a center of Islamic thought in a country whose political system is controlled by the clerical establishment.
But the city of about 1 million is no longer single-mindedly religious.
....Mousavi said it was little surprise that clerics had slipped in popularity and attendance at mosques across the Islamic Republic seems to dip lower and lower.
“Clergymen have no role in the hearts and minds of people as they did 38 years ago,” he said. “The leaders of the revolution overpromised and under-delivered.” ... A coffee shop is one of the only functioning businesses in the building. A mural of a European sidewalk cafe filled one wall and a new, Italian-made espresso machine sat on a counter.
The owner, Ebrahim Mahmoudi, poured espressos, barely flinching when the call to afternoon prayer blared over the mall’s loudspeaker. He had named his shop the Free Speech Cafe, but its decidedly secular vibe did not deter customers in the “city of mullahs.”
On a recent day, a middle-aged mullah in a robe and turban came into the cafe and struck up such an intimate conversation that he left behind a pipe and tobacco flakes as gifts, Mahmoudi said. The man was considering sending his 21-year-old daughter to study in Germany, but had to grapple with leaving her on her own in the dissolute West.
“He knew she would be exposed to things,” Mahmoudi said. “He told her: ‘If you have sex, it does not mean you are a sinner.’ I was surprised. It was a very progressive way for a mullah to talk.”
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
.Iran
no more than 1-1½% attend Friday prayers, and lots of those who do are dragooned into being there. Three years ago one cleric said that 73% of Iranians did not even say their daily prayers.[8]
According to Zohreh Soleimani of the BBC, Iran has the lowest mosque attendance of any Muslim country; only 2% of adults attend Friday services.[9]
What a load of horse manure. Trying to rehab Iran ain’t gunna sell.
You don’t want to rehabilitate Iran - i.e. help it recover from Islam?
The article talks about Iran’s increasing disillusionment with Islam - mostly the political islam but moving into the religious aspect heavily since the 1990s.
If this is handled well, there is the chance they can be drawn away from Islam.
Why would you not want that?
You don’t want to rehabilitate Iran - i.e. help it recover from Islam?
I don’t want to by propagandizing the U.S. And I’m not buying the Bullsh!t SHASHANK BENGALI, RAMIN MOSTAGHIM are selling.
What propaganda?
Did you even read the article where it says
> clerics had slipped in popularity and attendance at mosques across the Islamic Republic seems to dip lower and lower.
> Clergymen have no role in the hearts and minds of people as they did 38 years ago
This is hardly propaganda for a theocratic state to have people LOSING their religion.
Iran is on the cusp of being lost to Islam. If that can be nudged — and President Trump is doing that by focusing on the economic blockade - then that will change dynamics in the ME
— so I repeat - why don’t you want to help Iran recover from Islam?
> clerics had slipped in popularity and attendance at mosques across the Islamic Republic seems to dip lower and lower.
And you take this report at face value. I lost my naiveté when I was 11.
No, I don’t take this particular article by itself as true.
I take it along with other articles plus also first hand accounts from people I know - both dissidents/exiles from the regime and businessmen traveling IN Iran.
The mosque attendance is abysmal; people do not believe in Islam in the cities and they all harken back to their golden age under the Sassanids or Achaemenids and ask themselves “what happened?” and since they are a literate society and with the Internet, they get the answer “Islam happened and Iran tumbled from the heights of civilization to the depths”
Qom huh?
Sounds like a great place to nuke.
I’ll believe it when I start hearing about mullahs being assassinated.
In fact Cronos is right. Iran is not anywhere near to that the war propaganda portrays. The regime is bad but the people are great.
Persian culture has always been based on enslavement. Todays established enslavement method is Islam. Even in the fertile crescent glory days, persians enslaved other civilizations. They have no historical, or modern western ideas of free men. Sure, they have some hot babes, but so does everyone else.
Tell me which old culture wasn’t based on enslavement? The Greek who invented the concept of freedom and liberty and representative republic were enthusiastic about enslavement too.
Your view is of a 1979 Iran. 40 years of indoctrination changes a society. Take a look around the U.S. While I agree there is still a spark of western ideology amongst the people of Iran, Iran is more than the country. They (the leadership) are the largest element of subversion in the middle east. The people are cowed, they’re not going to rise up. Obama saw to that. The Mullahs and their satellite states will quash any uprisings in the near term. They need to be broken first, and Trump is working on that nearly by himself.
I was acquainted with one of the Shah’s personal body guards in the early eighties just after the Shah succumbed to cancer. I also worked for a woman that had given refuge to the daughter of an Iranian dissident. Her father returned to Iran to collect their belongings after the family was safe here, he was never heard from again. See my post to Chronos so I don’t have to repeat.
Here's an article from the Jerusalem Post
IRANIAN IMAM MURDERED IN CITY KNOWN FOR ANTI-STATE PROTESTSPresident Trump's policy is working. If the USA nukes Qom, you push the people to the side of the Ayatollahs -- that happened when Saddam attacked in 1980 and going to another country and time, the same happened in 1941 when Germany attacked the USSR and pushed people reluctantly to Stalin's side
May 29, 2019
he Imam of Friday Prayer of the Iranian city of Kazeroun was stabbed to death on Wednesday morning, according to Radio Farda.
The Imam, Mohammad Khorsand, was stabbed in front of his home after returning from a religious ceremony early Wednesday morning, according to the provincial deputy police commander for social affairs, IRGC Colonel Kavous Mohammadi told the Iranian news agency
In videos on social media, protestors chanted slogans against Iranian state policy and stated that the United States was not Iran’s real enemy.
“Our enemy is right here. They’re wrong to say it’s America,” protestors chanted.
Did you have any recent contact with the recent Iranians?
many times I have read where the,”people” on Iran are against the crazy Mullahs.
Then do something, anything.
Rise up, enlist the military.
Lip service is crap.
Past tired of the nonsense.
I have been hearing from many for some time now that at a retail level Iran is becoming increasingly secular.
Yeah, you still have to say the right things to keep the religious police off your back. But fewer and fewer actually believe them.
It’s like the many people I know who had bad Catholic school experiences who became hard-core secularists. You just reach an overload point of having it crammed down your throat.
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