Islamism led Iranians to not only reject Islam, but to imagine they were never Muslim

Many Iranians — after living for decades under Islamist fascism — have understandably rejected Islam altogether.

But some have gone further and now speak as if pre-Revolution Iran wasn’t even a majority-Muslim society.

That’s simply not true. Reza Shah was Muslim, his dynasty was Muslim, and the vast majority of Iranians were Muslim long before 1979. How Islam first arrived in Iran centuries earlier doesn’t change that historical reality.

And the fact that the Islamic Republic claims the authority to define what “real Islam” is doesn’t make it so. Never let religious fascists define a religion.