Welcome Back, Dissenters

This week, we take a look at the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran and what it could mean for the future of the Islamic Republic. With reports of shifting public sentiment and rising nationalism, Iran’s trajectory is far from certain. We also examine new findings from Pew Research on global religious demographics from 2010 to 2020—highlighting Islam’s rapid growth and the steady rise of the religiously unaffiliated.

Unbelief Brief

As the bloody conflict between Israel and Iran rages, the future of the Islamic Republic is obscured by shadow. The regime has been deeply unpopular for a very long time, but some reports indicate that sentiments in the country are beginning to turn towards nationalism in response to Israeli bombings. Whether the authoritarian theocracy collapses will be determined by events in the coming days and weeks: whether Iran seeks to back down and whether Israel and the United States are prepared to accept that. 

If the Iranian regime falls, it will be an earth-shaking moment in geopolitics. It will also provide an opportunity for the country to move beyond Islamic theocracy, though that road, too, will be laid with countless challenges. However this ends, there is no guarantee it will be pretty. Still, if the Islamic Republic meets its end, there will be a real opportunity for a new, secular Iran free from the tyranny and repression of its current theocrats.

Stepping back to the global level, Pew has released their report on how the “global religious landscape” changed from 2010 to 2020. The findings are interesting. In this decade, Muslims were actually the fastest growing religious group. For our part, the “nones”—those without any religious affiliation—grew too. 

We now comprise 24.2% of the world’s population, as opposed to 23.3% in 2010. But Islam gained more practitioners than all other world religions combined, thanks largely to high fertility rates in Muslim-majority countries. (Apostasy being a crime in much of the Muslim world is another deterrent preventing followers from leaving the faith.) Today, 25.6% of the world’s population is Muslim, compared with 23.9% a decade earlier. It seems we have more work to do!

Until next week,

The Team at Ex-Muslims of North America

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