Wiki-islam
. no more than 1-1½% attend Friday prayers, and lots of those who do are dragooned into being there. Three years ago one cleric said that 73% of Iranians did not even say their daily prayers.[8]Iran’s ‘city of mullahs’ has a surprising side
According to Zohreh Soleimani of the BBC, Iran has the lowest mosque attendance of any Muslim country; only 2% of adults attend Friday services.[9]
Mousavi said it was little surprise that clerics had slipped in popularity and attendance at mosques across the Islamic Republic seems to dip lower and lower.there is hope
“Clergymen have no role in the hearts and minds of people as they did 38 years ago,” he said. “The leaders of the revolution overpromised and under-delivered.”
A coffee shop is one of the only functioning businesses in the building. A mural of a European sidewalk cafe filled one wall and a new, Italian-made espresso machine sat on a counter.
The owner, Ebrahim Mahmoudi, poured espressos, barely flinching when the call to afternoon prayer blared over the mall’s loudspeaker. He had named his shop the Free Speech Cafe, but its decidedly secular vibe did not deter customers in the “city of mullahs.”
On a recent day, a middle-aged mullah in a robe and turban came into the cafe and struck up such an intimate conversation that he left behind a pipe and tobacco flakes as gifts, Mahmoudi said. The man was considering sending his 21-year-old daughter to study in Germany, but had to grapple with leaving her on her own in the dissolute West.
“He knew she would be exposed to things,” Mahmoudi said. “He told her: ‘If you have sex, it does not mean you are a sinner.’ I was surprised. It was a very progressive way for a mullah to talk.”