____________________________________________ 3 IICC Perspectives The achound, the religious figure, has a central place in Iranian society. He conveys and disseminates the messages, but when someone is referred to as an achound, the connotations are “sophisticated, manipulative, deceitful and fixer.” Shi’a is the source of inspiration and authority and rules everything. In Tehran, a city with millions of people, there is not a single Sunni mosque. To understand the depth of Shi'a influence on the average Iranian, one has to see the hundreds of thousands of Iranians who fill the streets of Iranian cities during the days of Ashura, flagellating themselves until they bleed. Iranian society is a society of opposing identities. That does not mean that each group has its own identity which clashes with the others, but rather that opposing identities exist within almost every Iranian, whether regime leaders or opposition leaders living abroad. Despite the many influences which infiltrated Iranian society because of its past conquests of foreign countries, as well as Western influences and modernization, it has remained Persian. It is difficult to separate the various components of Iranian identity, but generally speaking, it can be said that it is part Persian, part Islamic and part Western, and the contradictions between them coexist within it. However, there is a separate Persian identity that merged into Shi’ite Islamic culture and developed it into an art form. Ambivalence is at the foundation of Iranian society, and there are several Zoroastrian traditions that are preserved even today, despite the domination over the state of Shi’a and the mullahs. Eid al-Fitr ceremony in Tehran (Photo: Khamenei.ir, CC BY 4.0)
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