An Investigation of Religious Participants' Awareness of the Goals of the Religious Role Models

Religion is an institution which influences the social political structure of communities. The influence of religion in communities that their social groups and individuals tend to religious norms and beliefs is much wider than other communities. Beliefs and deeds are two main components of a religion. Beliefs are consisting of all teachings, views, thoughts, and ways of action. Religious deeds are the product of religious beliefs. The continuance of religious beliefs depends on rituals and their proper performance. In the light of the variety of religious ceremonies and rituals in our country, the present paper tries to make an assessment of functional state of these ceremonies in relation to religious beliefs and values. It aims firstly at measuring the participants' awareness of the goals of religious role models (Imams) and secondly detecting the possible pathos of participants' ignorance of these goals. The data were collected using a survey method. Statistical population of the study consisted of 74 mourning groups from Tehran which were selected by the simple random method. Some results indicate that participants' awareness of the goals of Imam Hussayn, peace be upon him, was higher than those of other religious role models. It also shows that their awareness of the goals of Imam Ali, peace be upon him, was lower than those of other ones.