Religious Affiliations
Main articles: Religion in Iran, Islam in Iran, and Religious minorities in Iran See also: Christianity in Iran, Roman Catholicism in Iran, Persian Jews, and Hinduism in IranMost Iranians are Muslims; 87% belong to the Shi'a branch of Islam, the official state religion, and about 9% belong to the Sunni branch, which predominates in neighboring Muslim countries. 1% Non-Muslim minorities include Zoroastrians, Jews, Bahá'ís, Mandeans, Christians and Yarsan. The Bahá'í Faith, Iran's openly persecuted religious minority with a population around 300 000, is not officially recognized, and has been persecuted during its existence in Iran. Since the 1979 revolution the persecution of Bahá'ís has increased with executions, the denial of civil rights and liberties, and the denial of access to higher education and employment.
Non-Muslim minorities have been shrinking in the past few decades as they have been emigrating and leaving Iran. About 11,000 to 40,000 Jews remain in Iran today, still being the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside Israel, but it stood at about 100,000 before the Islamic Revolution. Zoroastrian, and Christian communities are seeing similar contraction. Today, there are about 8,000 Assyrian Christians in Iran, who belong to the Chaldean Catholic Church.
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of Iran
Famous quotes containing the words religious and/or affiliations:
“I have been grateful to you from the day you turned your attention to the follies and fanaticisms of religious sects. Against those fools and impostors you employ the most appropriate weapons: to use others would be to imitate them. It is by ridicule that they must be attacked, and by scorn that they must be punished.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)