Are there any sunni iranians

Kouhi is the Friday prayer leader for the southeastern Iranian town of Pashamagh, inhabited mostly by Sunnis of the Baluchi ethnic minority. Iran has called that figure exaggerated but refused to release its own figures for those killed. It has shared its findings with the U. Human Rights Council. Kouhi previously had been detained for a week in April after issuing a fatwa, or Islamic religious ruling, against fighting in the Syrian civil war, according to the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran.

CHRI cited a source as saying Kouhi had been arrested also without charge on that occasion. Iran has sent its forces to fight alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shia Islam, in his years-long civil war against Sunni rebel groups.

The U. Although there are ethnic and sectarian cleavages, the source of tension is largely due to religious differences. It is also one of the driest regions in Iran, with little rainfall and consistent drought. Its long mile border with Pakistan and Afghanistan has become a route for smuggling and drug trafficking. The Iranian government has invested little in developing this outer region. The province is plagued by unemployment of over 50 percent , with many turning to crime, banditry, and smuggling to make an income.

Like other Iranian border regions with majority Sunni Muslim populations, Sistan-Baluchistan is also a base for armed insurgent groups, among them Jundallah and Jaish al-Adl.

In October , 14 Iranian border guards were killed and 7 injured in the city of Saravan. The armed Baluchi insurgent group, Jaish al-Adl, claimed responsibility.

Sunni Baluchi leaders, including Molavi AbdolHamid, a popular Sunni religious leader of Baluchistan, condemned the attack on the border guards and warned that violence is harming the interests of the Baluchi population.

In February , another 13 border guards were captured by Jaish al-Adl. They were later released due to mediation efforts by local Sunni leaders, but in April , another eight Iranian border guards were killed in a clash with Sunni rebels.

Typically, Iran has blamed the unrest in the province on foreign powers, particularly the United States and Saudi Arabia. By blaming terrorist acts on foreign-backed Wahhabi-Salafi groups, Shiite-centric hardliners are avoiding their own responsibility in the emergence and sustenance of such local extremist groups through their discriminatory policies. The first indicator, shown in the form of bar graph, is the number of health houses Khaneh Behdashat , which provide medical care in rural areas, per population.

The second indicator, shown in the form of a line, indicates the number of public hospital beds per population.

Sistan and Balochistan, a Sunni-majority province, suffers from the lowest number of public hospital beds. The two Sunni-majority provinces have a higher number of health houses per people than the national average. A more nuanced approach to understanding the dynamics of sectarianism and development is to examine provinces that have a mixed population of Shia and Sunni.

Selecting four Shia-majority and four Sunni-majority counties where at least 80 percent of the population belongs to one of these sects, I examined the literacy rate, a significant index of human development. The Sunni population makes up more than 80 percent of Solas-e Babajani county, and more than 90 percent of Ravansar, Javanrud, and Paveh counties.

A comparison of literacy rate suggests no meaningful difference between Shia and Sunni counties. In fact, the Sunni-majority counties have a slightly higher literacy rate than Shia-majority areas. West Azarbaijan is a province in the northwest of the country with a 42 percent Sunni population. While the southern part of the province is made up of Sunni-majority counties, Shias are the majority in northern counties.

Each of the selected counties has either more than 85 percent Shia population or Sunni population. As Figure 4 suggests, there is no meaningful distinction between Shia-majority and Sunni-majority counties in West Azarbaijan as well.