The Islamic Republic

The Islamic Republic of Iran is ending. It might be over before I finish this post. It is a Zombie regime. It cannot survive. It’s been a brutal, repressive and completely corrupt regime: Not a theocracy, but an ecclesiocracy, that is, rule by sectarian clerics. Bloodthirsty and fanatical clerics indeed, intent on ending the world through Jihad so the Kingdom of God can be gained. The Carter Administration was notorious for not supporting American allies when they needed it. I will not blame Jimmy Carter for Iran’s Islamists rise to power and their bloodthirsty “Islamic Republic.” Neither would I criticize anyone faulting Carter. The kindest thing I can say about Jimmy Carter’s Iranian foreign policy is, it was grossly incompetent. The Unites States could have prevented Iran’s Islamic Revolution and that would have been a very good thing to do.

But this essay is about the future, not the past. In the Netherlands, The Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran (GAMAAN) is highly respected for the high-quality anonymous online surveys they have conducted (2020 - 2025) to gauge how Iranian people answer the questions when they are confident no one is listening in. GAMAAN’s Methodology - If you have time to peruse the different surveys GAMAAN has listed, I encourage you to do so. Just follow the link. Below, is a summary on Iranian survey answers about religion from 2020:

The official statistics of Iran’s Islamic Republic show 95-99% of the Iranian population is Muslim. GAAMAN reports its less than 40%, (32% Shia, 5%, Sunni, <3% Sufi). Support for Sharia as the basis for law is around 15%. Look at the table below:

Sharia as the basis of law has more support with UK Muslims than it does with the Iranians who still identify as Muslims. The GAAMAN survey data reveals an amazing repudiation of Islam by the Iranian people.

The survey data also shows by one set of measurements, Christianity is growing faster in Iran than anywhere else in the world. You can see the explosive growth of the last fifteen years correlates closely with the development of near universal cell phone/internet access over the last ten years in Iran:

Metrics aren’t argument. But the numbers above indicate the Islamic Republic has lost control of the narrative in Iran, if they ever had it. Recently millions of protesters in all of Iran’s cities have made my point. The mayor of Tehran, Alireza Zakani, stated 61 mosques have been burned down in the recent rioting. Iranian state news agencies and government officials have reported dozens of mosques have been attacked or burned. The weight of evidence indicates Islam as a religious system for understanding the world and mankind’s place in it - it's over in Iran for most people. True believers don’t burn the mosque down.

Some of you know, I teach a twice a year at the School of Evangelism at Kibidula in Tanzania. I teach a one-week course on the holy communion. The School of Evangelism trains Seventh-day Adventist laymen for evangelistic outreach. These teaching trips do me good, I’ve learned a lot teaching, I hope it’s helpful for my students.

With that background, it’s not unusual that a few of my students have grown up Muslim. One session the majority of the students had Muslim backgrounds, and they came from all over East Africa. They were older and they helped me better understand the difference between the Qur’an and the Bible. The Qur’an is proclamatory text, but the Bible is always narrated in historical context. The Qur’an’s context often references biblical narratives in its proclamations, but the Qur’an is not a remembered past. When Protestants say the bible should interpret itself, they mean understanding a passage of scripture fails if it depends on falsifying other passages of scripture. The Qur’an has teachers, not interpreters. If the teacher wants to show the Qur’an proclaims biblical truth, he simply connects the proclamation to the what the bible says about it. And in the age of the internet, everyone can read the anything, including all the scriptures. Or listen to new teachers, wherever they may be. My students told me the Qur’an mentions the Christ ten times, the Son of Mary twenty-four times, and Mohammad four times. Many Muslims are remaining Muslims in community, but they are secret subversives. They believe the gospels are the final authority about who Jesus of Nazareth is, and a true account of what He did.

The Christian church in Europe is growing only because Muslims in Europe are converting to Christianity. There are around 250,000 (MBBs) Muslim Background Converts living in Europe right now. Far and away Iranians are the largest contributors to that number, followed next by Afghans and Kurds. It might be more accurate to say Christianity is declining more slowly in Europe because of these Muslim converts.

All religions are in steep decline, not so much a decline in the belief in God, but religion in the organized sense is not very important in most people’s lives and does not help them understand God, themselves, the world, or mankind like the internet. Islam especially is in an existential crisis. Islam has a difficult time adding to people’s happiness in any sort of positive way. Its success has always been in the opportunities afforded its adherents (the carrot of belonging) and the harsh penalties meted out to those who resist submitting (the stick). Islam will give you peace, only if you submit. Because the internet dissolves physical community, the stick is broken and the carrot is rotten. Pilate asked Jesus, “What is Truth?” Islam’s appeal has never had much to do with the truth about God. The Judeo-Christian understanding, that true love embraces suffering and sacrifice - that is not easy to teach from the Qur’an. As the Muslim convert replied forty years ago when he was asked why he would risk so much converting, “It’s the love my friend, it’s the love.” For God so loved the world He gave his only begotten son… Because of love, God chose Abraham and Isaac.

The GAAMAN surveys show Iranians are abandoning religious belief. The ethnic Christians of Iran: The Chaldean Catholic Church, The Armenian Christians, The Assyrian Church of the East, these are all in steep decline. Low birth rates and emigration over the last fifty years is mostly responsible - but the trend away from all religion is global.

I’m reading a book, Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America. Metrics aren’t argument, but how do you argue with metrics? The author, Christian Smith, shows you thirty different ways to measure the decline. The graph below shows, by generation, the decline in attendance of religious services.

I’m going to wrap this up with a personal anecdote from thirty years ago. I was in Hawaii and I attended an Amway meeting with friends. A couple of days later I went to church. I needed hearing aids, but I hadn’t got them yet. The windows at church were open, there was plenty of road noise, and the speaker was soft spoken and without amplification. I couldn’t hear him. But I could see him; he was drawing charts and timelines to illustrate prophetic interpretation. (Old Adventists will remember) I was unnerved as I considered; I couldn’t tell the difference between church and the recent Amway meeting. Was church an MLM? Was it an information system? There I was, thinking something was wrong. For many people, the Real Presence is missing in Church. Without a Real Presence of God at church, what do you have? Who needs an obsolete information system? All the old information systems (schools, newspapers, universities) are being replaced with the network, that is, the internet.

God is free. He made man in His image: Muslims, Christians, and Jews, everybody. All are free to believe whatever they want. We are at the beginning of a dark new age of deep-fakes when nobody is willing to believe anybody - it’s going to be every man for himself when it comes to believing the truth. God help us to believe the truth.