TEHRAN, Iran -- When Hassan Bakhtiar couldn't find a job last year, his mother told him to pray and read the Quran.
Instead, the 25-year-old aerospace engineer dropped in on a packed appearance by Alireza Azmandian, Iran's most famous motivational speaker and self-help guru. Now, he meditates by staring at a flickering candle and chants Mr. Azmandian's inspirational catch phrases.
"Religion doesn't offer me answers any more," Mr. Bakhtiar says, after listening to Mr. Azmandian at a public auditorium in a shabby neighborhood of South Tehran. But, he says, "this seminar changed my life."
And:
The self-help craze -- long part of life in the Western world -- is taking the Islamic Republic by storm. Iran is one of the world's youngest nations, with 70% of its 65 million under the age of 30. There's widespread disenchantment among young people with Iran's strict theocratic regime, which requires headscarves for women and bans alcohol. And jobs are scarce.
Emphasis added by me.
As any Iranian will be happy to tell you, they are not Arabs. They are Persian.
The pro-Ayatollah Dark Age pendulum of the 1980s is swinging back to the modern cosmopolitanism of the Shah.
Go read the rest of the article.
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