Irreligion in Iran has a long historical background, non-religious citizens are officially unrecognized by the Iranian government. In official 2011 census, 265,899 persons didn't state any religion. Under Iranian law, apostasy from Islam is punishable by death. Non-religious Iranians are officially unrecognized by the government, and one must declare oneself as a member of one of the four recognized faiths in order to avail oneself of many of the rights of citizenship. Citizens of the Islamic Republic of Iran are officially divided into four categories: Muslims, Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians. This official division ignores other religious minorities in Iran, notably the agnostics, atheists and Bahá'ís.
Within Iran
There is a historical context to opposing organised religion and not having faith in Islam throughout the centuries in Iran. In the 10th century AD, the famous Persian scientist Rhazes famously opposed religion and the divine revelation of prophets in his treatises Fī al-Nubuwwāt and Fī Ḥiyal al-Mutanabbīn. Further skepticism of the ideas of God could be seen in the quatrains of Khayyam where the compassion of God and the ideas of afterlife are continuously questioned. This work was also written in the 10th century. Under the Pahlavi dynasty from 1925 until the Iranian revolution of 1979, even though atheism was not officially accepted, it was tolerated. With the advent of communism in Russia and the huge popularity of communist parties in Iran, such as the Tudeh Party especially in the late 1940s and 1960s, atheism grew in popularity. For example, Karo Derderian, the Armenian-Iranian poet and brother to the famous singer Viguen, famously wrote poetry rejecting both God and religion. Although atheism was tolerated by the successive governments, socially the vast majority of people in Iran have been religious. When the revolution in Iran succeeded, given that the Islamic faction of revolutionaries succeeded in gaining total control over the political landscape of the country, irreligion became a political issue. Mehdi Bazargan noted "to view Islam as an opposition to Iranian nationalism is tantamount to destroying ourselves. To deny Iranian identity and consider nationalism irreligious is part and parcel of the anti-Iranian movement and is the work of the anti-revolutionaries". According to the Ali Reza Eshraghi, religious pressure and inadequate governing from the Iranian government have made Iranian people less religious. Some Iranian feminists have also been noted as being irreligious and atheistic. Irreligious Iranian youth aim to moderate Iranian government policy, and the Iranian youth are among the most politically active among the 57 nations of the Islamic world. As the most restive segment of Iranian society, the young also represent one of the greatest long-term threats to the current form of theocratic rule. After the 2009 presidential election, youth was the biggest bloc involved in the region's first sustained “people power” movement for democratic change, creating a new political dynamic in the Middle East. Iran is one of the most tech-savvy societies in the developing world, with an estimated 28 million Internet users, led by youth. Most young Iranians are believed to want to be part of the international community and globalization.
Persecution
Iran was reported by The Washington Post to be among the thirteen countries where atheism can attract capital punishment. The last noted legal execution for apostasy in Iran was in 2014, when Mohsen Amir-Aslani was convicted and executed for making "innovations in religion" and insulting the ProphetJonah. Furthermore, many people, such as Youcef Nadarkhani, Saeed Abedini have been recently harassed, jailed and sentenced to death for apostasy.
List of Non-Religious Iranians
Armin Navabi Ex-Muslim atheist and secular activist, author, podcaster and vlogger including founder of Atheist Republic
Hadi Khorsandi Contemporary Iranian poet and satirist. Since 1979, he has been the editor and writer of the Persian-language satirical journal Asghar Agha
According to Harvard University professor Robert D. Putnam, the average Iranian-American is slightly less religious than the average American. Iranian-Americans are distancing themselves from Islam, having accepted the negative characteristics associated with the religion. This is due to Islam being imposed on the Iranians through war and invasion, equating to authoritarianism, brutality and corruption. In the book, Social Movements in 20th Century Iran: Culture, Ideology, and Mobilizing Frameworks, author Stephen C. Poulson adds that Western ideas are making Iranians irreligious. Nearly as many Iranian Americans identify as irreligious as Muslim, and a full one-fifth are Christians, Jews, Baha’is, or Zoroastrians. Additionally, the number of Muslim Iranian-Americans decreased from 42% in 2008 to 31% in 2012.
A British-Iranian organisation, “Iranian Atheists Association”, has been established in 2013 to form a platform for Iranian atheists to start debate and question the current Islamic republic’s attitude towards atheists, apostasy and human rights. A significant number of Iranians abroad, especially Iranian-Americans, are irreligious, agnostic or atheist.
