New Religious Movements in Iran: Determinants of Toleration and Repression by the State

ABSTRACT: New religious movement activism can be perceived as a threat to mainstream order, sometimes resulting in repression by the state. New religions have become popular in Iran, a nation ruled by an absolute theocracy since 1979, yet the state appears to have tolerated the majority of new religious movements while repressing others. Through a comparative examination of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s varying responses to the presence and activities of such movements, I present a model in which state repression is predicated on a movement’s strength as measured by its access to resources vis-à-vis resource mobilization theory. Three characteristics—membership size, expansive geographical presence, and cultural proximity to the mainstream—seem to be the factors that differentiate repressed movements from tolerated ones. In addition, the comparison reveals that protests against state repression of a given movement reduce the severity of the state’s actions against it.