Islam in Practice
Religious Beliefs in a Persian Village

Loeffler offers a unique street-level view of the ways in which Islam's role has changed for Iranians, having spent three years in a large tribal village of southern Iran before the Islamic Revolution, and one year following it. Unsurprisingly, there are troubles in a society where girls at weddings have had to substitute slogans like "Salute to the martyrs," for traditional songs. Out of a sample of twenty-one men interviewed at length, all but two felt alienated by the new regime. "These men say they cannot find anything new in the new Islam ... nor can they find much Islam in the Islamic government.... They see the infusion of current political issues into the public religious rituals as a corruption of their original spirit, and deeply resent it. In an amazingly uniform, though in no way organized reaction, they express this resentment as well as their resentment against the regime in general by boycotting all regime-led rituals." This unhappiness has created a new and unhappy situation in Iran, one where the outlook of most Iranians, as well as their religious tradition, have now become "the schismatic sideline to a dominant state religion."