Population growth figures for 2018 based on World Bank statistics:
Turkey:
1.5%
Iran:
1.4%
Malaysia:
1.4%
Indonesia:
1.1%
Fertility rates as per 2017 World Bank numbers:
Indonesia:
2.34 births per woman
Iran:
2.12 births per woman
Turkey:
2.08 births per woman
Malaysia:
2.02 births per woman
In Turkey's case, bear in mind that the recent massive influx of Syrian nationals and the sizeable Kurdish minority, both of which have significantly higher fertility rates than the Turkish average, give that figure a boost.
As for Scandinavian nations, here are their 2018 population growth figures as given by the World Bank:
Finland:
0.2%
Denmark:
0.6%
Norway:
0.7%
Sweden:
1.2%
So with the exception of Sweden, they have considerably inferior growth rates compared to Iran. Plus, their population growth is first and foremost driven by immigrants from developing countries with high fertility rates, not by their native peoples.
Therefore when it comes to this topic, it is erroneous to state that the other three Muslim countries are doing better than Iran, or that Iran is getting close to Scandinevian levels. In fact all four Muslim countries named above have very comparable figures, and when it comes to both population growth and fertility rate, Iran is second best among the four. As for Scandinevian countries, they are in a desperate situation compared to Iran.
Regarding the population's comparative adherence to and reverence for Islam, I would recommend not to take political cliches, amplified by enemy-controlled media at face value. Most studies and surveys in this regard are conducted by mainstream sources that follow propagandistic guidelines set by the zio-American empire, or by institutes linked to or funded by hostile intelligence agencies. In short, they are political instruments more than objective scientific assessments. More realistic surveys applying sounder methods yield very different results. One such survey, the link to which I cannot find right now, even came to the conclusion that Iranians are the most religous people in the world.
I recently discussed this in another topic. For more information, see:
Pro and anti IR quarrel aside.. At the end of the day the Iranian people are going to look at what the IR has done for them in the past 41 years. What have they done to increase the quality of livelihood and well being of the population ? What are the results? I criticize both camps.. the Pro...
defence.pk
The thing is also that sometimes, Iranians will tend to establish somewhat flawed comparisons to other countries (including the non-Arab Muslim ones you cited) based on subjective experience and individual empirical observation of their own society coupled with lesser knowledge of the socities they compare Iran with. In fact, if you go looking for it, you will find lots of expressions of irreligiosity and even in some cases hostility towards Islam in Turkish, Indonesian, Malaysian societies too (but probably less so in Pakistan).
Another aspect to take into account here are the differences in political culture between these countries, particularly on the level of identity politics, including from a historical perspective. In Iran, the modern period has seen the emergence of a brand of nationalism focused on Iran's pre-Islamic history and identity, some of whose currents tend to delve into islamophobia. This has evolved into a feature of Iranian political life since the 1920's and has no comparable equivalent in the other Muslim countries mentioned. Less religious segments of society in Iran will thus have a greater tendency to find in Iran's pre-Islamic civilization a readily available substitute-identity to Islamic culture, whereas in the other Muslim countries cited, irreligiosity will more often be accompanied by ongoing adherence to Islam as a cultural identity rather than a religious practice, simply because in the political culture of those societies, no major political current has historically been focusing to the same extent on the pre-Islamic era and identity.
Now of course, this doesn't mean that all those who take pride in Iran's pre-Islamic heritage and civilization are destined to oppose Islam or vice versa - we also have many political and identitarian currents in Iran which reconcile the two dimensions instead of systematically contrasting them.
At any rate, when some distanciate themselves from Islam in favor of pre-Islamic identity, this is not so much a consequence of the dress code than of pre-existing patterns of political culture and identity.
At this point another observation can be made. Indeed, it is noticeable how many of those Iranians who tend to consider the religious cultural policies of the Islamic Republic, in particular the dress code, as responsible for what they perceive as a regression of tradition, are either (and I'm not saying it applies to you in person, please don't misunderstand):
* Not particularly attached to tradition themselves, seeing how they fully adhere to western liberalism in the social-cultural area. Their own lifestyles are largely westernized, yet they lament challenges to tradition allegedly induced by rebellious reactions to the Islamic Republic's non-secular, Islamic legislation.
* Naive to the point of believing that a government can tolerate and legalize every source and agent of moral corruption without directly jeopardizing deeply rooted cultural traditions in society. Or even assuming that as with a vaccine, the inoculation of a certain dosis of the nefarious element is going to generate a counter-reaction by the social body thanks to the resilience of cultural traditions, thereby ensuring that decadence will remain marginal.
Now this is a profoundly mistaken and highly dangerous belief. Because aforementioned agents of moral corruption appeal to primal biological instincts of man, and that culture and civilization cannot act as counter-weights to this unless they are backed by a measure of legal coercion.
Secondly, because national culture and civilization do not stand the slightest chance against "mafia"-like heavyweight multinational corporations (for example the pornographic "industry") propping up and making a living off these commercialized agents of moral corruption. The sheer power of the underlying capitalist logic will neutralize any resistance from society and devour those who dare to resist, as seen in the west - and make no mistake about it, the west too used to follow different cultural norms some time ago, although perhaps not as strict ones as the Islamic world. But in western society too, capitalists first needed to methodically dismantle any and all cultural obstacles, before being able to subject more and more areas of human life and interaction to the alienating process of commodification.
Let me also add a word or two about the divorce rate you mentioned. To begin with, the very notion of "divorce rate" is an extremely multi-faceted one, because it is very far from having a single universally admitted or even dominant acception. The Census Bureau of the US regime, for instance, uses two definitions:
- Crude divorce rate, that is the number of divorces per 1000 people, usually over a given year.
- Refined divorce rate, i.e. the number of divorces per 1000 married women.
In addition to this, there are many other ways of evaluation the prevalence of the phenomenon of divorce in a given society. For instance:
- "Divortiality" rate or reduced sum of divorces, meaning the number of divorces pronounced for each 1000 marriages within a given population over a year.
Each of these measures inform about slightly different aspects of the prevalence of divorce in a given society.
Now let us examine where Iran really stands, alarmist media reports massively relayed by hostile foreign-based Persian language media notwithstanding.
A ranking based on figures from the United Nations Statistical Division, Eurostat as well as national statistical institutes, places Iran in 92nd position of out 102 countries when it comes to "divortiality" rates in 2017. With a rate of 14,29 per 1000, Iran is among the 10% of countries with the lowest "divortiality" rates in the world. Many Muslim-majority countries, including Turkey, Algeria, Azarbaijan, the UAE, Qatar, Libya, Bangladesh, Qatar or Kuwait are worse off.
Source:
https://atlasocio.com/classements/s...ment-etats-par-taux-de-divortialite-monde.php
Looking at the crude divorce rate, Iran with a figure of 1,6 per 1000 in 2016 may not be as well positioned as it is in terms of "divortiality", but the figure for Turkey is the same, there are still various Muslim countries faring worse than Iran (such as Egypt, Kazakhstan, Jordan, Kuwait). One ranking puts Iran in 72nd position out of 135, which is stil in the lower half of the table, i.e. the majority of countries are doing worse than Iran.
Source:
https://atlasocio.com/classements/societe/divorce/classement-etats-par-taux-de-divorce-monde.php
Another ranking, of 104 countries this time, places Iran 56th with its 2017 crude divorce rate of 1,6, i.e. in the worldwide average. Here again, Muslim majority countries such as Jordan, Kuwait, Algeria fare worse and in some cases far worse, while figures for others such as Lebanon and Turkey are very close to Iran's.
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divor..._country/region_(per_1,000_population_/_year)
I'm not sure what the cited 50% figure was exactly referring to, but given the above it would in any case still place Iran in an average to favorable position on the global scale.
Also I must reiterate, as concerns divorce rates and statistics and survey results in general, please always be aware of biased and sometimes even faked numbers spread by sources with political interests linked to Iran's existential enemies, namely regimes such as the US and its European vassals, as well as the network of NGO's that oftentimes serve as a cover for propaganda, psy-ops, spying, sabotage and hostile social engineering activities by those same regimes. Many of these stats about Iran are plain untrustworthy, especially when encountered on or relayed by mainstream news platforms (the usual suspects, BBC, VOA, Manoto, Saudi International, plus anti-IR propaganda accounts on Instagram and Telegram etc).
Indeed, fake statistics have historically been a weapon of choice for social engineering. They are employed in the framework of the propagation of
self-fulfilling statistical falsehood (a term I coined). In fact, the imperial oligarchy used this very same method of social engineering to bring about the decadence of sexual norms in the US, soon followed by western Europe and the rest of the western world. Bogus experiment results are exactly what a scientist by the name of Alfred Kinsey, bankrolled by the capitalist (and probably zionist) publisher of erotic magazines Hugh Hefner, used to kickstart a process by which the remnants of traditional sexual morality were undermined and progressively eliminated in post-WW2 America. To this effect a targeted, elaborate scheme of social engineering was implemented.
At the core of this scheme is the effort to make the audience believe they are more decadent than they actually are, so as to dismantle the last bullwarks of resistance to immorality, to discourage people from resisting the upcoming onslaught of amoral cultural consumer goods though the generation of a virtual, suggestive and subliminal form of group think imposed from outside. The starting point is always to make people believe they are more degenerate than they really are.
Once again I would recommend taking a brief look at a previous commentary of mine which expands upon the subject in greater detail:
Pro and anti IR quarrel aside.. At the end of the day the Iranian people are going to look at what the IR has done for them in the past 41 years. What have they done to increase the quality of livelihood and well being of the population ? What are the results? I criticize both camps.. the Pro...
defence.pk
Hence my stern warning against all these dubious statistics and figures Iranians are flooded with on a daily basis, both by hostile foreign-based media and possibly by domestic agents of influence ('nofoozis'). I'm not saying that every figure published is always wrong, mind you. But that some will definitely be, while others will be used in specific contexts to serve as a basis for biased and erroneous conclusions, and that this entire, permanent, relentless bombarding of the Iranian public with seemingly negative figures and findings is clearly part of a comprehensive psychological operation by the enemies of the Iranian nation and of the Islamic Republic.
The political goals pursued by this sustained psy-ops endeavour are both to challenge the legitimacy of Iran's current Islamic ruling system because it is resisting zio-American imperial oppression and inviting others to join in, as well as to propagate false and counter-productive explanations regarding the actual sources of moral corruption, that if acted upon (i.e. through a progressive liberalization of Iran's legislation on cultural affairs, including but not restricted to the dress code) will only accelerate the decay of moral norms in society, instead of containing it.
Another point we need to pay attention to is social modernization sui generis as a factor of pressure on the viability of the traditional family structure. The Islamic Republic did not oppose modernization of society as long as it didn't go directly against Islamic customs. However, such processes are still fraught with indirect hazards that may negatively affect cultural traditions.
To give an example, both the phenomenon of urbanization (concerning over 70% of the Iranian population nowadays), and increased integration and participation of Iranian women in economic life, as well as the strong progress in the education levels of women, have been double-edged swords unfortunately. All of which were allowed to if not encouraged by successive administrations of the Islamic Republic (as well as the former regime, which however was far less concerned about conformity with Islamic sharia and theological principles).
Any "emancipatory" evolution of traditional gender roles of women, any accelerated urbanization, however confined within formal respect of Islamic norms, will inevitably lead to a heightened average age of marriage, to a decrease of fertility, which in turn will more or less of a challenge to the traditional family structure.
So prior to taking issue with the dress code as an alleged factor of adverse reaction to tradition, one should ask oneself what one's priorities and goals really are - if one wishes to preserve the traditional nuclear family, then one cannot remain oblivious to the way in which general social modernization and greater participation of women in education and the economy threatens said family structures. If we do everything in our might to ensure that Iranian women make up 60% or more of university graduates, if we encourage women to work, then we will hardly be in a position to lament the relative decline of fertility rates in Iran - Islamic dress code or Islamic no dress code.
The exposure to western cultural consumer goods via satellite TV, "Hollywoodian" productions in particular, as well as the exposure to the endless streams of insalubrious smut the internet is completely littered with, and which increasingly affects children at young age, are other decisive factors feeding the assault on traditional cultural customs. Here it is clearly the Islamic Republic's relative laxity and its high degree of tolerance, not a supposed conservatism and authoritarianism on its part, which allowed some Iranians to expose themselves to these agents of decadence. If anything, one can thus regret that Iranian authorities haven't been more heavy-handed in their cultural policies, rather than evoking elements such as the dress code to conclude that they've been too strict.
Hence the necessity, after 40 years of social modernization under the Islamic Republic, to sit back and review the pros and cons of the process, given the stage reached by society. And hence also the necessity to maintain any cultural safeguard one can maintain, in particular the Islamic dress code. Given how modernization itself has an innate although indirect way of challenging traditional customs, any introduction of additional laxity in the sphere of Islamic legislation on culture will inevitably spell the definitive end of tradition within one or two generation.
Another key point is that the cultural invasion Iran has to confront is of far, far greater intensity than what other countries, including Muslim ones, are being exposed to. Indeed, the imperial enemy is concentrating the bulk of its soft war, propaganda, psy-ops and social engineering assets on Iran and Iranians. Omid Dana (who is not in line with my analysis on this particular topic) had a presentation where he compared the number of items posted on social media by the different foreign language services of the BBC. The results were staggering, as it turned out that the Persian language service of the British regime's main propaganda and psy-ops arm has an output around ten (or more) times greater than the second most prolific foreign language department of the same BBC...
This unbelievable contrast clearly shows what country imperial powers consider as the biggest challenge to their hegemony and their biggest adversary, namely none other than Islamic Iran. Iran is not only the undisputed primary geostrategic adversary to the zio-American empire and its clients, but also one that is endowed with a historically rooted civilizational of its own, influential beyond its borders. This makes Iran particularly dangerous to the empire and calls for these massive, disproportionate acts of cultural aggression we are witnessing.
For BBC Persian's programming does not merely consist of day to day political propaganda. In fact much of it is of cultural nature and constitutes downright social engineering, its target being the cultural and civilizational norms of the Iranian people, in both their Islamic and pre-Islamic dimensions (and that includes of course sustained efforts to subvert the Iranian nuclear family structure, via programs on culture, society, family, sexuality, etc).
In other terms, considering how Iran is a privileged target for cultural aggression by its imperial enemies ('tahajome farhangi'), and considering no matter how successfully Iran resists, it cannot prevent taking some hits here and there given the sheer power and cynicism of its enemies, it is not surprising in the least that some of the statistics discussed at the beginning of this analysis will be comparable for Iran and for other Muslim countries whose legislation unlike Iran does not include the Islamic dress code. Had these countries been targeted with the same vigor as Iran on the cultural level, we can be sure that they would fare far worse than Iran in the examined areas. Likewise, if it wasn't for counter-measures such as the Islamic dress code, Iran in turn would have fared much worse than them, considering that Iran is a bigger target for cultural subversion than they are.
Thus the Islamic dress code is not without effect in containing this cultural aggression. We must take into account the intensity and utter volume of culture-alienating measures implemented against Iran vs those taken against countries such as Turkey, Malaysia et al. (which of course, are far from inexistent, but do not compare with the total cultural war waged on Iran).
Lastly, as we have shown in this study, there are multiple causes to the threats faced by the nuclear family as well as other aspects of tradition in Iran. The Islamic dress code can assist in dampening the destructive effects of cultural aggression in this regard, but we did not argue that it will suffice on its own. It's just that its net effects are a positive contribution in the fight. But naturally, other domains need to be addressed as well in order to put up a more effecient Resistance.
To use an aquatic metaphor, let us suppose that a dam is leaking at three distinct points. It would hardly be logical to consider that since filling one of these holes by itself will not prevent a rupture of the dam, one could as well leave that hole open. Rather, one must try and block the two remaining leakage points, after having secured the first one. That first line of defence is upheld by the Islamic dress code.
) کی حال داره این همه پست رو بخونه آخه؟
