Amid the nationwide protests that have shaken Iran in recent weeks—brutally suppressed by the regime at the cost of countless dead—there was one particularly striking detail. Some of the protesters targeted not only government offices and security headquarters but religious sites as well. According to reports from Iranian state media, as well as opposition outlets like Iran International, dozens of mosques and shrines across the country have been harmed. Some were torched, with copies of the Quran burned inside.
One was the iconic Al Rasool mosque in Tehran, which was set ablaze on Jan. 9. Some protestors cheered, chanting “Death to the Dictator!”
This vandalism, of course, is not something to celebrate. Places of worship should never be attacked, in any context, in any country. Also, the small number of dissidents who seem to have perpetrated these assaults, or at least justified them, should realize that such acts are not going to help the cause for a free Iran, which is also shared by many Muslim believers, in Iran or elsewhere.
Yet the fact remains: It is the Islamic Republic itself that has helped create such fierce hostility to religion. For decades, the regime justified its authoritarian rule by constant references to Islam. While the Supreme Leader claimed to rule in the name of God, regime opponents were labeled as “enemies of God.” Some of those dissidents, in response, really did turn against God.
Mosques, which are widely respected across the Muslim world even by the impious, also became a part of this extreme politicization. Many became used as headquarters of the state’s repressive apparatus, including the infamous Basij militia, which is loathed by the dissidents for understandable reasons. In August 2024, it was the very commander of this militia who boasted that 79% of Basij bases “were located in mosques.”
Is it the regime’s endless exploitation of Islam, in other words, that has provoked an anti-Islamic wave that targeted even places of worship. “A murderous theocracy killing, raping, and executing Iranians in the name of Islam,” as Iranian journalist-in-exile Nazanin Nour put it on X, ended by creating “rage against religion.”
This self-made religious tragedy is not just about the utilization of religion as a political tool, which is not an uncommon problem in the Middle East. For decades, the Iranian theocracy has also tried to recreate society in its own image with top-down “Islamization” policies. It dictated religious practices like headscarves, banned vices like alcohol, and criminalized blasphemy, heresy, and apostasy. In return, Iranians did not become more faithful and pious. Quite to the contrary, many of them lost their faith in Islam, and even their respect to it.
This remarkably irony, has often surprised outsiders. One was sociologist Amitai Etzioni, who visited Tehran in the early 2000s and was astonished to see that mosques were “nearly empty” and few people were observing the Ramadan fast. In 2020, The Economist correspondent Nicholas Pelham spent time in Tehran –partly under detention – only to conclude that it “may well be the least religious capital in the Middle East.” Alcohol is strictly banned by the regime, he also observed, but “home delivery is faster for wine than for pizza.”
Meanwhile, surveys by GAMAAN (Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran) have documented the sharp drift away from Islam. In their 2020 online survey, only around 40% of respondents identified as Muslim, with many labeling themselves as non-religious, atheist, Zoroastrian, or “spiritual but not religious.” Many had also converted to Christianity, joining Iran’s underground church, which is defined by Christian organizations as “one of the fastest-growing in the world.”
A more recent survey by PAAIA (The Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans) also demonstrated a huge shift in the Iranian diaspora: In 2009, 43 % of Iranian Americans had identified as “Muslim.” In 2025, that number has dropped to mere 24 %. The share of “nones,, meanwhile, skyrocketed.
By looking at all this, some may conclude that Islam is a hopelessly — and mindlessly — oppressive religion, with Iran being just a showcase. I would disagree. In fact, Islam – both its Sunni and Shia traditions – also encompasses more enlightened views, with scholars who preach the faith but do not aspire to dictate through a theocratic state.
One of them was none other than the late Grand Ayatollah Hossein Borujerdi (d. 1961), the teacher of young Ayatollah Khomeini, the future leader of the Iranian Revolution. Decades before the revolution, Borujerdi had warned his zealous student that a religious dictatorship would harm religion itself. A later figure, Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri (d. 2009), also opposed religious dictatorship and coercion, and called his fellow Iranians to revive a much-neglected Quranic maxim: “There is no compulsion in religion.”
Will this tragic Iranian experiment with “compulsion in religion” come to end? Sooner or later, yes. This will not happen due to any foreign intervention, I believe, but because an increasing number of people refuse to believe in the official ideology, and the regime’s corruption and incompetence will pave the way to its ultimate collapse—just like the late Soviet Union. So, sooner or later, Iran will be free.
In the meantime, the Islamic Republic will have taught a timeless lesson to all religious believers, in all traditions, who may be tempted to trumpet their faith through power. Power corrupts. When it is married to religion, it corrupts religion, too.
Faith cannot be imposed by the power of a state, its laws, and its squads. Faith can only flourish by winning hearts and minds. And for that, it needs no theocracy, no religious tyranny. It only needs liberty.
Mustafa Akyol
Mustafa Akyol, an MBN columnist and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, is the editor of the forthcoming book “No Compulsion in Religion—No Exceptions: Islamic Arguments for Religious Freedom.”
