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https://theconversation.com/iran-protests-majority-of-people-reject-compulsory-hijab-and-an-islamic-regime-surveys-find-191448>
"A young woman’s death in custody in Iran on September 16 has sparked
nationwide protests. Mahsa Amini’s fatal injuries resulted from an arrest and
beating by the country’s hijab police, which enforces the mandatory and
“correct” way of wearing the hijab. The protesters have caught the world’s
attention by chanting what sounds like a revolutionary slogan: “zan, zendegi,
azadi” (woman, life, freedom). Other slogans target the regime: “An Islamic
Republic, we don’t want, we don’t want.”
Despite the scale of recurring protests in Iran, some people still cast doubt
on the idea that these events have mass support in this vast and populous
country. So, how extensive is Iranians’ discontent with the mandatory hijab and
the regime that imposed it after the 1979 Islamic Revolution?
Between 2019 and 2022, we at GAMAAN – Group for Analysing and Measuring
Attitudes in Iran – conducted innovative online surveys that ensured anonymity
to potentially fearful respondents. The process has been a cat-and-mouse game,
with the regime blocking a major survey application in Iran and targeting at
least one of our surveys with bots, not to mention the challenge of gathering
data from pro-regime respondents.
Our surveys went viral, resulting in raw samples ranging from 20,000 to more
than 100,000 respondents. After weighting the data for five demographic
variables and one political variable, we could replicate external data such as
employment rates, household income distribution levels, and the languages
people spoke at home.
Moreover, we found a match between our data and other institutes’ data
(gathered through conventional survey methods) for politically non-sensitive
questions, while also finding a large discrepancy on politically sensitive
topics such as religion (see the tables in the 2020 survey report on religion,
the 2021 report on international relations, and the 2022 report on political
systems). The success of these tests indicates, to put it simply, that our
survey results show what Iranians of all social layers, including people who
support the regime, really think."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
