There is currently a presidential election going on in Iran. The buffoon Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is running against a “reformist,” Mir-Hossein Mousavi. There is some controversy because Mousavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, has been active in the campaign, and held hands with him in public! (and I thought that the principal banned PDA?) It is a quirk, though not too significant, that both candidates are from ethnic minorities. Mousavi is an ethnic Azeri Turk (as is the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) while the buffoon is Talysh (the Talysh language is mutually intelligible with standard Persian). But the bigger story is the social fissures in Iranian society between urban and rural, rich and poor, educated and not educated. The standard narrative is that the elites support reformists who wish to liberalize Iranian society, while the poor back populists like the buffoon who promise more bread and religious revival.
This makes me wonder, how polarized is Iranian society? A few years ago Free Inquiry had a piece up, The Next Secular Revolution?, which played up the undercurrent of anti-clericalism extant within Iran. But I was skeptical, and poking through the World Values Surey makes me even more skeptical. Iranians might be tired of Mullahcracy, but they’re no free thinkers. Rather, they’re moderately conservative people who have lost their taste for religious radicalism. Or have they? One of the issues that Westerners have is that the Iranians who are informants for reporters are no doubt going to be sampled from the educated elites. This might selection-bias the sample.
So I broke down various questions by education in the World Values Survey for Iran. The N’s for each class are on the order of 500. Most of the questions have 4 or 10 categories. I present extreme responses. If the questions have a form such as “Very strongly agree,” then there were four options.
| Highest Education Completed | |||
| Elementary | Secondary | University | |
| Politics very important | 19.3 | 20.9 | 19.8 |
| Religion very important | 84.1 | 78 | 65.6 |
| Not a member of political party | 95.2 | 94.5 | 85 |
| Most people can be trusted | 9.6 | 8.4 | 13.6 |
| Great deal of freedom & choice | 16 | 16.5 | 15.6 |
| Protect environment, even if sacrifice economic growth | 47.5 | 50.7 | 50.3 |
| Men have more right to jobs than women | 74.7 | 67.4 | 62.8 |
| Marriage is an outdated institution | 12.7 | 18.5 | 20.9 |
| Strongly disagree that university is more important for men than women | 7.4 | 17.4 | 19.4 |
| Income should be more equal | 24.3 | 31.7 | 22.4 |
| Government ownership of business should be increased | 16.1 | 15.5 | 10 |
| Competition is good | 29.7 | 41.7 | 41.7 |
| Great deal of confidence in organized religion | 50.8 | 40.6 | 33.1 |
| Great deal of confidence in press | 8.1 | 9.1 | 5.6 |
| Great of confidence in government | 19.4 | 16.3 | 8 |
| Confidence of political parties | 7 | 6.4 | 3.2 |
| Confidence in women’s movement | 11.3 | 9.3 | 4.4 |
| Having strong political leader very good | 25.9 | 19.2 | 20.2 |
| Having experts making decisions very good | 11.6 | 9.1 | 9.7 |
| Having democratic system very good | 37.5 | 43.1 | 46.8 |
| There is no respect for individual rights | 9.1 | 12.9 | 13.9 |
| Taxing the rich and subsidizing poor essential characteristic of democracy | 18 | 19 | 19.2 |
| Religious authorities interpreting laws not an essential characteristic of democracy | 10.7 | 14.5 | 20.3 |
| Prospering economy and essential characteristic of democracy | 35 | 37.3 | 41.6 |
| Women having same rights as men essential characteristic of democracy | 30.1 | 39 | 42.5 |
| Democracy absolutely important | 29.4 | 36.7 | 44.1 |
| Received information from newspaper in last week | 36.7 | 60.4 | 69.4 |
| Received information from internet in last week | 3.5 | 20.2 | 40.5 |
| Received information from radio or TV in last week | 83.6 | 88.3 | 89.6 |
| Never attend religious services | 20.9 | 25.6 | 29.7 |
| Not a religious person | 10.9 | 17.4 | 21.5 |
| Organized religion answers moral problems | 72 | 65.4 | 56.5 |
| Organized religion answers social problems | 57.6 | 50.9 | 37.6 |
| God is very important in life | 79.8 | 82.2 | 76.6 |
| Agree strongly that politicians who don’t beliee in God unfit for office | 45.3 | 44.4 | 36.8 |
| Agree strongly that religious leaders should not influence how people vote | 22.6 | 29.7 | 30 |
| Agree strongly if people with strong religious beliefs in office | 33.8 | 31 | 26.1 |
| Agree strongly that religious leaders should not influence government | 16.1 | 17 | 22 |
| Homosexuality never justifiable | 80.8 | 86.8 | 82.7 |
| Prostitution never justifiable | 82.6 | 86.6 | 81.9 |
| Abortion never justifiable | 66.4 | 62 | 55.8 |
| Divorce never justifiable | 52 | 45.7 | 37.8 |
| Man beating his wife never justifiable | 72.1 | 78.1 | 76.1 |
| Very proud of nationality | 70.6 | 66 | 55.2 |
| Strongly agrees that one is citizen of the world | 26.5 | 28 | 37.3 |

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