Myth vs. Fact: Iran’s Sunni Muslims
/By Research Fellow Andrew Lumsden
MYTH: (1) There is no difference between Islam in Iran and in any other Muslim country. (2) Only non-Muslims face religious persecution in Iran.
FACT: Although Sunnis make up a commanding majority (85% to 90%) of the world’s Muslim population, they are a minority in Shi’a dominated Iran. According to government estimates, Sunnis make up between 7% and 10% of Iran’s population. Sunni community leaders, however, say that figure may be as high as 25%. Iranian Sunnis have faced state-sanctioned repression of their faith, societal discrimination and economic deprivation for centuries. Despite constitutional protections and guarantees, for Iran’s Sunnis, many of these challenges and injustices persist, oftentimes in the name of national security.
The Sunni-Shi’a Divide
The Shi’a/Sunni divergence in Islam dates back to the death of Muhammad in 632. The majority of the Muslim Arab community agreed that his father-in-law and close friend Abu Bakr should succeed him as Islam’s political and religious leader. Others however, argued that Ali, Muhammad’s cousin, was the rightful successor. The word Shi’a, comes from the Arabic term Shiaat Ali, which literally means “followers of Ali.”
The political rift over time became spiritual after the assassinations of Ali in 661 and his son in 680. As Sunnis monopolized political power, Shi’as looked to their own Imams, the first 12 of whom were directly descended from Ali, for religious leadership. Sunnis conversely, relied on the Sunnah, a body of literature detailing Muhammad’s behavior, customs and legal rulings, as their guide to Islamic life, hence the term Sunni Islam.
Although Sunnis and Shi’as agree on most of the tenets of Islam, Shi’as have some differing holidays, holy sites and religious practices. They also look to their ayatollahs for spiritual and cultural leadership, as opposed to the Sunnah. For this reason, some Sunnis see them as heretics. A Pew Research poll in 2012 found that 40% of Sunni Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa do not believe Shi’as are truly Muslim. On the other hand, Iranian Shi’as generally see Sunnis as Muslim, but as practioncers of a flawed form of Islam.
Emergence of a Shi’a Iran
The dominance of Shi’a Islam in Iran is a relatively new development, having only come about in the 16th century. Iran had been dominated mostly by Sunni, non-Persian rulers since the Arab conquests of 637. In 1501, Shah Ismail I took control of the country and established the Safavid Dynasty, Iran’s first native ruling dynasty in nine centuries.
Ismail, a Shi’a zealot, declared Shi’a Islam to be Iran’s new state religion. Shi’as from other parts of the Middle East were invited to settle in Iran. These immigrant Shi’a Arabs were then granted key positions in the imperial administration as judges, educators, prayer leaders and government ministers, in which they would teach and promote the Shi’a faith and lead congregations in condemning Caliph Abu-Bakr and other historical Sunni caliphs, as well as in praise for Ali. The Safavid regime also went about repressing the practice of Sunni Islam. Sunni mosques were destroyed or repurposed, and Sunni practitioners faced execution, exile, forced conversions, extortion, harassment and intimidation. Within roughly a century, Iran had been transformed into a predominantly Shi’a nation.
Despite the Safavids’ efforts, Sunni Muslims maintained a fairly substantial presence in Iran, albeit largely in rural areas and among some of the country’s minority ethnic groups. Scholars posit that Sunni Islam in Iran was able to survive due to the flight of some Sunnis from urban centers to rural parts of country outside of the government’s reach. Also, according to scholars, remote, rural communities such as those of many non-Persian ethnic groups in Iran, were already outside the reach of the Safavid government and thus were able to preserve their Sunni faith.
Today, Sunni Islam in Iran is still concentrated primarily in regions with large populations of ethnic Kurds, Balochs and Turkmen. These include the provinces of West Azerbaijan, Kurdistan and Kermanshah (known collectively as Iranian Kurdistan), Golestan and North Khorasan (known collectively as Turkmen Sahra), and Sistan-Balochistan. Some ethnically Persian and Arab Sunni communities also exist in Southern and Western Iran.
Anti-Sunni Discrimination in Modern Iran
Politics
Although it affirms Shi’a Islam as the state religion, Article 12 of Iran’s modern constitution insists that other schools of Islam be afforded “full respect” and “official status.” Despite this, Iranian Sunnis are by law and by practice barred from many key sectors of Iranian politics.
The constitution excludes Sunni Iranians from holding the Presidency by mandating that the holder of that office be someone who has “convinced belief” in the state religion (i.e. Shi’a Islam).
Even in areas of government where no law exists banning Sunnis, they often face consistent and systematic exclusion. No Sunnis have ever been appointed as government ministers in Iran since the 1979 revolution, nor have they ever been selected to serve as provincial governors or mayors even in provinces with significant Sunni populations. For example, in Sistan-Balochistan, where Sunnis are a majority, less than 15% of government workers are Sunni.
Former officials such as Sunni members of Parliament Hasel Daseh and Jalal Jalalizadeh, as well as Ali Younesi, former Intelligence Minister and Rouhani administration advisor, say that pressure from hardline Shi’a religious authorities upon willing administrations is the reason for this exclusion of Sunnis from government. They say that these hardliners doubt the loyalty of Sunnis to Iran and fear that allowing Sunnis into positions of power and making them privy to state secrets would compromise Iran’s security and lead to critical information being leaked to Iran’s regional adversaries.
Both Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have made public calls for an end to discrimination against Sunnis and other minorities in the country. Although there have been some advances, such as the election of 21 Sunni members to Iran’s Parliament in 2016 (up from 19 in the previous election), and the appointment of some Sunni local officials in Sistan-Balochistan, Sunni community leaders and international observers have noted that little has changed.
Religious Expression
Despite constitutional recognition of their faith, Iran’s Sunnis face considerable and widespread infringements on their ability to practice freely. Sunni leaders have reported that Sunni teachings and literature are largely banned in public schools, including in Sunni-majority areas. Moreover, the Sunni community in Tehran has been barred by authorities from establishing an official mosque. The local community must rely on private homes and rented “prayer houses” to gather. As former Sunni MP Ali Jalalizadeh notes, Sunni worshippers are not allowed to hang signs or broadcast calls to prayer from these prayer houses, and they face eviction at any time. Sunni mosques exist in other parts of the country, however, in Sistan-Balochistan, Mashhad and possibly other regions, some have been destroyed by the authorities.
When they are able to find places to worship, Sunnis in Iran also face intimidation, harassment and arbitrary raids by authorities. Over the past five years, human rights organizations have documented dozens of cases of police raids on both public and private Sunni gatherings and beatings and arrests of worshippers. As recently as 2018, police blocked many Sunnis’ access to their places of worship on important holidays such as Eid al-Adha.
Iranian intelligence officials have also taken aim at specific Sunni religious leaders, most notably Molavi Abdulhamid, the leader of the Sunni community in the city of Zahedan in Sistan-Balochistan, and Iran’s most prominent Sunni cleric. Abdulhamid was forbidden to leave Iran for over a decade, and was even denied leave to visit relatives in nearby Qatar. He has also faced difficulties even in traveling to other cities within Iran, including for funerals. Other Sunni leaders also face travel restrictions and have been barred from visiting Abdulhamid in Zahedan.
Although they haven’t spoken on the matter, the authorities’ restrictions on Abdulhamid and other Sunni leaders potentially reflects a concern that they may, either amongst themselves, or in conjunction with Sunnis in other countries, pose a threat to Iran’s security. Abdulhamid vehemently denies this, stressing that he and other Iranian Sunni leaders “are not the opposition,” and “have always stressed unity between Shias and Sunnis.” He concludes that authorities’ restrictions on Sunni leadership “all comes down to intolerance.”
Economic Participation and Prosperity
Government policies have also had severely adverse impacts on the ability of Sunni Iranians to participate effectively and succeed in the country’s economy. Their access to gainful employment is often limited by gozinesh, the government’s employee candidate screening process. Under gozinesh, candidates for government jobs or jobs with para-statal companies are tested for their loyalty to the Islamic Republic, the state religion and the principle of Velâyat-e Faqih (Governance of the Jurists), which does not exist in Sunni Islam. Accordingly, Sunnis and other non-Shi’as face a disadvantage when looking for work with the state. This is especially problematic given that the government is Iran’s largest employer.
Unemployment rates in Sunni-majority provinces such as Kurdistan and Sistan-Balochistan exceed the national average, and a 2018 report from the Iranian Parliament’s Research Center found that in Sistan-Balochistan and Hormuzgan, another province with a sizable Sunni population, nearly 40% live in extreme poverty (defined by the World Bank as living on less than US$1.90 a day).
Despite the constitution’s demand that all of Iran’s provinces be treated equally by the state, areas with majority or sizable Sunni populations such as Sistan-Balochistan and Iranian Kurdistan have suffered decades of economic and infrastructural neglect. In Kurdish regions, the state has still yet to repair some of the damage caused by the Iran-Iraq War, which ended in 1988. Moreover, authorities still have yet to remove all of the more than 20 million wartime landmines in the region, which have rendered an estimated 2.4 million hectares of potentially productive farmland unusable to the local population. These explosives kill and injure dozens of mostly Kurdish, Sunni civilians each year and are estimated to have caused the deaths of almost 4,000 civilians in the three decades since the Iran-Iraq War. In Sistan-Balochistan, most government funds earmarked for economic development are put instead towards security and law enforcement leaving quality of life in the region and opportunities for personal advancement for residents, sorely lacking.
It should be noted however, that since nearly all the Sunnis in these neglected areas are also members of minority ethnic groups, it is unclear whether the state’s investment discrimination is motivated by religious or ethnic anima.
Criminal Justice
The criminal justice system is another sector in which many of Iran’s Sunnis face abuses instigated and compounded both by their religious and ethnic identities. According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom’s 2018 report, at least 140 Iranian Sunnis are currently incarcerated on charges related to their “beliefs and religious activities.” Data gathered by the human rights advocacy group United for Iran, reveals that at least 38% of Iranians currently incarcerated on political charges are Sunnis, a higher proportion than any other religious group.
Sunni Iranians, particularly those living in Sistan-Balochistan and Iran’s Kurdish regions, have reported facing arrests for attending religious meetings and disseminating religious materials, routine torture and beatings in detention by Shi’a guards, and unfair court proceedings in which legal counsel was not provided. The charges handed down to many of these Sunni political prisoners can be vague, such as “moharebeh,” (which means ‘enmity against God’), and “acting against national security.” These charges can carry the death penalty, and Iranian Sunnis, particularly ethnic Kurds and Balochs make up a disproportionate amount of those executed each year. The advocacy organization Iran Human Rights (IHR) reported in 2017 that more than 120 prisoners were executed in Sistan-Balochistan and the Kurdish regions. The U.S. Department of State reported that at least 20 of these were for vague, political charges like moharebeh, but as more than 100 of these executions were unreported by authorities, their reasons are unknown.
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) reports that harassment of the Sunni community by Iranian authorities has intensified since June 2017, when terrorists linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) attacked Iran’s Parliament building and the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic’s founder, killing 12 and wounding 46. Since then, authorities have imposed “communal punishment of the Sunni community,” which has included arbitrary detentions and police intimidation. In fact, citing pressure from the Ministry of Intelligence, the Council of Sunni Theologians of Iran, which represents Sunni clerics in Northwestern Iran, suspended its meetings and operations in 2017.
Conclusion
Aside from being a clear violation of their human and constitutional rights, Iran’s mistreatment of its Sunni population undermines the very security Iranian hardliners believe restriction and exclusion of Sunnis would preserve. Although Iranian Sunni community leaders have been quick to denounce extremism, terror analysts have noted that groups such as ISIS, al-Qaeda and smaller affiliates have been actively working to influence and recruit disaffected Iranian Sunnis. Per a report from West Point’s Countering Terrorism Center, ISIS has released online videos specifically geared towards ethnic Arab and Baloch Iranian Sunnis. The 2017 ISIS attack on Tehran proves they have already had a measure of success, as it has been discovered that five of the attackers were Iranian Kurds.
Moreover, homegrown Sunni extremist groups already have a presence in Iran, primarily Iranian Kurdistan and in Sistan-Balochistan, where Sunni militant groups such as the Jaish al-Adl have waged an aggressive terror campaign against Iranian security forces. Jaish al-Adl has already launched dozens of bombings, ambushes and abductions of Iranian soldiers, police and border guards. No less than 60 Iranian servicemen have been killed since the group emerged in 2012.
Continued disenfranchisement, entrenched poverty, lack of opportunity and disaffection within Iran’s Sunni community is poised to provide Sunni militant groups, inside and outside of Iran, a significant pool of potential recruits and supporters. The West Point report warns that ISIS likely sees Iran’s Sunni community as an “opportunity to reinvigorate its standing,” after catastrophic defeats; and the existence of “multiple, hardline [Sunni jihadist]-inspired insurgencies may provide it with additional opportunities to establish a lasting presence within Iran’s borders.”
