The People's Islam in Iran: The Ethno-Religious Dimension

The People's Islam in Iran: The Ethno-Religious Dimension offers a bottom-up examination of religious authority in contemporary Iran, exploring how popular religious actors negotiate, reproduce, and challenge the formal structures of the Islamic Republic.Focusing on eulogists (Maddāḥān) and Friday Prayer leaders (Emām-e Jomʿeh), this book examines the relationship between vernacular religious practices, state institutions, and Iran's diverse ethno-cultural landscape. It considers the central role of Maddāḥān in the ʿĀshurāʾ commemorations of Imam Ḥusayn's martyrdom alongside the function of Friday Prayers as an instrument of Islamic propagation under the Islamic Republic. Particular attention is given to the often-overlooked role of ethnicity and the ways religious actors from different backgrounds create new cultural and religious fusions. Drawing on audiovisual material from YouTube and the Iranian platform Aparat, the study also demonstrates how new media document, circulate, and extend popular religious practices beyond their immediate geographical and social settings. In doing so, the book presents religious authority in Iran as a dynamic process of negotiation between popular voices, local identities, and institutional power.This book will appeal to students and scholars of Iranian and Middle Eastern studies, Islamic studies, religious studies, and media studies, as well as readers interested in popular religion, ethnicity, and the changing nature of religious authority in contemporary Iran.

About the Author

Elisheva Machlis holds a PhD in Middle East Studies from the University of Cambridge and is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Bar-Ilan University. Her research focuses on modern trends in Shiʿi Islam, with particular interest in religion-state relations in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon, examining the relationship between contemporary Shiʿi developments and broader religious and social frameworks. Her previous book, published by I.B. Tauris in 2014, exposed a new debate on modern change that called for bridging sectarian divides between Sunnis and Shiʿis.