Elective Affinity of Religiosity and Perception of Justice (Case study:Iran)

Religion and justice are considered as two important social constructions that their determination and realization are dependent upon society’s perception, and such perception itself is affected by political and religious socialization.

The present study is of the view that elective affinity exists between “perception of justice” and ” religiosity”, and some judicious perception elements are compatible with some religious (Islamic) perception elements, and some are incompatible. For example, the more one is principled to orthodox beliefs and rituals, the more important becomes the procedure-oriented distributions, and the less becomes important the personal eligibility. Moreover, the less one is principled to rituals and doubtful about old beliefs, the more important becomes the meritocracy, government intervention, and consequence-oriented distribution of goods.

The results of a field study regarding affinity based on a random sample of 360 Iranian participants in 2015 show that:

First, justice perception in Iran is a combination of people’s agreement or disagreement with: (1) government agency, (2) Gap between Least Advantaged and Beneficiaries, (3) priority of individual merits in distribution, and (4) consequence/procedure-oriented distribution.

Second, diversity in religiosity among Iranians is a combination of different and sometimes opposing perceptual factors. Such variation in practical level can be related to their strong or weak fidelity to religious rules, and at the level of beliefs can be due to skepticism regarding religious beliefs and consequently, due to coordination of theoretical and practical religious beliefs.

Third, traditional religious beliefs in Iran is mostly based on “nonintervention government” and is opposed to reducing the gap between benefited and non-benefited on modernistic perceptions and reward distributions, putting emphasis on the “eligibility” and “result-orientation” norms.

In sum, it can be said that the distributional justice realization, specifically in Islamic communities, can be related to modern thinking about religion and upgrading social learning processes.