From The Great Empire to The Islamic Republic Minorities in Iran: Assimilated Identities, & Denied Rights

As the current modern state system is composed of nearly two hundred states that encompass more than five thousand ethnic groups, these groups speak more than three thousand languages. This form of diversity has become a real element within any modern society. Moreover, recognition and respect for these dissimilarities are assumed to be vital for stabilizing domestic affairs and ensure peace and prosperity within a state. In fact, the development of minorities concept came along with/as a result of many factors, one of these factors was the development of other concepts such as nation, citizenship, and superior identity/macro-identity, especially with the rise of remarkable philosophical and intellectual movements during and after the French revolution such as J. J. Rousseau and his social contract. The real development of the minority rights, however, came along with the development of the human rights universalism, which came as a result of the horrifying human losses and the wide-scale of human rights abuses, during the Second World War. Iran, on the other hand, had witnessed enormous historical development; these developments had resulted in creating a widely diversified society in terms of religious views, ethnicities, and linguistic communities. The first national project, however, had failed to emulate the Western model of the modern state and thus was unable to complete its national project, especially after the rise of the Islamic Revolution. On the other hand, the post-revolution Iranian constitution is based on religious interpretations of Islam (Jaafari / Twelfth Shi'a), thus some of the existed minorities are recognized and many others are denied. Although Iran's policy towards minorities varies according to the differences in the political wings in office