The Role of Clergy’s Wingism in Weakening Religious Beliefs

Beliefs are the most important part of the content of religion, and various factors and contexts play a role in strengthening and weakening them. Wingism, that is the dependence on the interests and tendencies of the country's political wings, a phenomenon prevailing in the Islamic Republic system which is due to the tendency to increasingly politicize issues in the society, has affected most sections of the society, especially clerics, and because of the clerics’ role in modeling religious and moral propensities this phenomenon plays a significant role in changing and weakening people's religious beliefs. The present article, with the aim of a pathological study of the wingism of the clerics, has tried to warn about the mechanism with which this phenomenon affects the religious beliefs of the members of the society and its consequences on weakening them with a descriptive-analytical approach and based on religious heritage. The final assessment is that the clerics' wingism can at the very least negatively impact the religious beliefs of various segments of the society, due to its consequences such as declining trust in the clerics, promotion of lenience in religiosity, tendency towards the rival ideas, degradation of religious teachings and reduced tolerance and mutual rejection.