Identifying the Role of Religion in Persepolis

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All religion is flawed, but that is only because all men are flawed. God created an imperfect man; consequently, man created an imperfect religion. In Persepolis, Satrapi highlights the imperfect religions of the world in order to support her theme: man must stay true to God. Religion’s height of belief rests in the hands of the believer; moreover, the strength and sustainability of a religion is solely dependant on the support of followers. Satrapi’s primary message in the book revolves around religion. However, she challenges the belief of an imperfect religion by creating her own perfect religion in order to emphasize the sustainability of life through one God and constant faith in Him.
Religion is based upon prophets, or people who have been sent by God to spread His message. Most notably, Jesus Christ was a prophet from which Christianity began just as Zarathustra was a prophet from which Zoroastrianism began. Satrapi speaks of Zarathustra as “the first prophet in [Iran] before the Arab invasion” (Satrapi 7). She believes him to be a similar prophet of God as his teachings are the “first three rules” in her “holy book,” which is a Bible-like illustration of Satrapi’s perfect religion (Satrapi 7). However, she does not include all of his teachings because she means to point out that Zoroastrianism is an imperfect religion. Moreover, his teachings did not thrive for long because other prophets such as Jesus Christ came after the time of Zarathustra and changed peoples belief systems once again. In fact, many of the teachings of Zarathustra can be found in Christianity because it was just an improvement to a flawed religion. Thus, Satrapi claims that she is the “last prophet” as her new belief system will go unchanged because...

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...e, or perfect religion, depends on the support of the followers.
God created man imperfect and the only perfection is God, so people should follow and have faith in the one perfection of creation. Satrapi emphasizes the core belief of one God through her implications of conflict between government principles among world leaders, which can only be solved by identifying the common ground of their belief in God. Religion is used to find unity among opposing peoples, for the universal belief in God and no other practice will change the world. Moreover, it will start a revolution with Satrapi’s perfect religion that leads the world to harmony. Persepolis embodies peace and unity that can be attained as long as people stay true to God just as Satrapi’s theme states. People are brought here by God peacefully, if they continue to live by God then the peace will remain.

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