Sociological Study of Social Life of Zoroastrian in City of Tehran as a Religious Minority

The religious minorities problems have become the common controversial issues of western societies by factors such as immigration, pluralism, and interconnectivity from the 1970s. One of these issues of religious minorities has been their social life. Meanwhile, the question arises as to how the social life of minorities is in the Iranian society, which has an Islamic state. This paper is to study the Zoroastrian social life status in Tehran using observation, participation, in-depth interviews and documentary studies methods. Zoroastrian social life were examined among the four categories of “causes of Zoroastrian population decline”, “differentiation between oneself and another”, “marginalization” and “actions for social recognition”. Results show that Zoroastrians try to increase the sense of belonging and solidarity among themselves through the non-acceptance of non-Zoroastrians in their communities, the avoidance of marriage with non-Zoroastrians, the efforts to live in their particular regions and the education of their kids in special Zoroastrian schools. Zoroastrians also try to live in a totally peaceful way among the Iranian Muslim community to maintain their religion and to be recognized in society, and not to lose their legal rights. Therefore, it seems that they have a special status in their social life environment, and are not subject to any of the two patterns of assimilation and multiculturalism.