Abdolmohammad Kazemipur in ‘Backlash: Streets, Young People, Women, and Demography’ uses available data from two different surveys; before and after the Islamic Revolution; to compare the levels of religiosity among the Iranian population. The author clarifies that following the Islamic Revolution, the Islamic Republic “made it a primary goal to thoroughly Islamize the populace through aggressive Islamization.” With that in mind, the author’s findings suggests a decline in the population’s religiosity since 1979 despite the Islamic Republic’s attempts.

The post Revolution survey’s data suggests that “individual beliefs and practices register the highest average values … with the lowers value reported for collective practices such as participation in group prayers and/or Friday congregation.” As a result, Kazemipur argues that Islamism or political Islam is not a natural extension of individual faith, as presented by the data. Instead, it seems that one’s individual approach or attachment to Islam is not necessarily the source of the politicized Islam.

In terms of youth’s religiosity, the piece finds an interesting difference in data collected from 1974 vs. 2000. Interestingly, the 1974 data suggests that “a larger proportion of the younger age groups believed that people were becoming more religious and that, with only one exception (those sixty-five and older), these proportions decrease as age increases.” And therefore, interestingly, “under a secularist state, a larger proportion of young adults believed that people were becoming more religious.” The main argument suggests that oppressive, anti-democratic, and economically challenged regime alongside the instrumental use of religiosity as an “antidote” to potential Marxism in the country.

As for post-Revolution, “Young Iranians seems to be withdrawing from dimensions of religion that have been more directly subjected to policy-making, an indication of their dissatisfaction with the newly assigned social roles of religion.” The author hypothesizes that “personal, private, and socially inconsequential beliefs and rituals” have either remained the same or have increased in contrast to the decline of public rituals. And secondly, that this decline could be tied to social and secular concerns given the restrictive Islamic regime in the country.

In his book, Yes, I am a Woman: The Fight for Women’s Rights, Arash Azizi discusses various elements that lent hand to the scale of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. In chapter six, The Fight for Freedom of Religion, Azizi highlights the diverse ethnic and religious population of Iran as the following; 

“More than 90% of Iranians are Shia Muslims, 8-10% Sunni Muslim, 1-2% Baha’is, Zoroastrians, Christians, Jews and others. Many are atheistic or agnostic, … but this would never be officially declared as the Islamic Republic could subject them to the death penalty.” (Azizi 2024, 92)

Chapter seven, Our Common Pain: The Fight for Refugee Rights goes on to highlight the Islamic Regime’s affinity with the neighboring ethno-religious extremist group, Taliban in Afghanistan. The chapter highlights cross border solidarity among Afghans and Iranians in which both are victims to the radical regimes. This chapter illustrates how the movement of Woman, Life, Freedom is beyond the borders of one city and country; making a case for the shared, globalized yearning for freedom and human integrity. This is to demonstrate the unbounded, ever expanding shared desire of freedom and human rights. As argued previously, Woman, Life, Freedom’s message can be applied beyond the borders of Iran and the shared solidarity among Afghan and Iranian populations is a testament to that.

The cross-territorial shared qualms and the experience of collective oppression under the Islamic Regime (and other similarly radical leaderships) are highlighted to emphasize the scale of what is at the core of Woman, Life, Freedom. It is key to understand that this is not a movement that could be bound to the limits of Iran. Nor to one ethnic or religious population, be it a majority or minority. Woman, Life, Freedom encompasses the cries and the hopes of a better future for generations and masses globally. This is one of the very few contemporary movements where intersecting identities come together which manifests itself in the still prevalent slogan and the shared hope for a better futur