ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to give some understanding of women’s religious activities in the context of Islamic tradition and modernity in Iran. It presents some examples of Iranian women’s religious activity and discusses the way in which local religious life becomes a locus for the reproduction of new Islamic meanings and acquires a political dimension. The chapter provides some information on the customary practices and initiation forms of the Koran meetings, in order to explore further some of the Modern social dimensions of traditional female religious activity. The Islamic Republic imposed a reconstructed national educational system for the Islamization of society, but its popularity and strength are not solely dependent upon that. Demands for higher Islamic knowledge promoted knowing and reciting the Koran from being a traditional interest among neighbourhood housewives and older local women in pre–revolutionary times to being the core of the national school curriculum and university studies today.
