Islamic Medicine and the Biopolitics of Antiscience in Iran

Medical note: This article is for information and analysis, not medical advice. If you’re making health decisions, a licensed clinician beats a Telegram thread every time.

“Islamic medicine” in Iran sits at a complicated crossroads: part faith language, part cultural heritage, part political branding, andsometimespart full-blown
“my uncle’s friend cured everything with this one weird oil” energy. The interesting (and unsettling) story isn’t that people everywhere try folk remedies
(that’s universal). It’s what happens when a state and its power structures start to manage life, health, and legitimacy through competing versions of
“truth”and when “science” becomes a political identity instead of a method.

This is where biopolitics comes in: the idea that modern governing isn’t only about laws and borders, but also about organizing life itself
shaping health systems, deciding which expertise counts, and influencing how populations behave. In Iran, the contest over medicine has often been a contest
over authority: the authority of doctors and researchers versus the authority of religious figures, state media, and ideological narratives about “the West.”

1) What People Mean by “Islamic Medicine” in Iran

In Iranian public debates, “Islamic medicine” can mean very different things depending on who’s talkingand that ambiguity is part of its power.
Some use the phrase loosely to describe Prophetic medicine traditions, pious health practices, or religiously framed wellness advice.
Others use it as a brand label slapped onto herbs, oils, cupping sessions, and “natural” cures.

But in modern Iran, there’s an important distinction that often gets blurred on purpose:
(1) Persian Medicine (sometimes called Iranian traditional medicine), which has a long scholarly history and has been pursued in academic and
clinical settings; versus (2) politicized “Islamic medicine” movements that frame modern biomedicine as foreign, corrupt, colonial,
or spiritually suspect.

Persian Medicine: Heritage, Institutions, and a Policy Track

Iran has spent years debating how (or whether) to integrate Persian Medicine into primary health caretypically through training, protocols, and institutional
pilots rather than viral miracle claims. Recent research on integration efforts describes a real-world policy landscape: pilots, staffing constraints,
physician resistance, public trust problems, and the need for evidence-based protocols and health literacy to make any integration safe and workable.

“Islamic Medicine” as a Populist Counter-Expertise

A different currentoften louder onlinetreats “Islamic medicine” as a counter-expertise: not “medicine alongside medicine,” but
“medicine versus medicine.” In this framing, modern medical institutions aren’t just imperfect; they’re illegitimate.
The pitch becomes emotionally satisfying: you don’t need complicated epidemiologyjust simple, righteous answers and a villain (usually “the West,”
“global elites,” or shadowy conspiracies).

2) Biopolitics 101: When Health Becomes a Tool of Power

Biopolitics is a fancy word for a familiar reality: modern states govern through lifethrough hospitals, public health guidance, vaccination campaigns,
surveillance, insurance rules, and the management of risk. In Foucault’s framing, it’s about “the calculated management of life,” where norms and expertise
become instruments of power.

Iran is not unique in having health become political. But the Islamic Republic has particular fault lines: a revolutionary ideology built on resistance and
self-reliance, long-running sanctions and economic pressure, contested public trust, and parallel institutions (state media, clerical networks,
political factions) that can reward certain narratives and punish others.

In that environment, medicine isn’t only a clinical question. It becomes a stage for:

• Legitimacy: Who gets to speak as “authority” during a crisis?
• Sovereignty: Is modern medicine framed as national strength or foreign dependency?
• Obedience and trust: Do people follow public health measuresor do they treat them as propaganda?
• Identity: Is being “scientific” seen as neutralor as aligning with a political camp?

3) The COVID Stress Test: When Antiscience Becomes a Governance Problem

COVID-19 didn’t create Iran’s medical politics, but it turned the volume knob to maximum. It exposed how misinformation can operate not just as “bad content,”
but as a social system: incentives, protection networks, media megaphones, and moral framing.

Conspiracy Thinking From the Very Top

During the early pandemic, Iran’s Supreme Leader publicly rejected U.S. assistance and repeated conspiracy claims implying the virus could be man-made and
even tailored to Iranian genetics. Whether intended as ideological messaging, geopolitical signaling, or distrust theater, the effect is the same:
it teaches the public to interpret medicine through suspicion rather than evidence.

Vaccine Politics and the Cost of “Resistance” Branding

Iran’s vaccine story became a showcase of biopolitics: decisions about which vaccines to trust, import, or ban weren’t framed purely as public health
logistics, but as ideological choices. Human rights advocates warned that banning certain vaccines on political grounds threatened Iranians’ right to health.
Media coverage later described public outrage, vaccine scarcity, and the growth of black markets as people tried to protect their families when official
pathways were slow, restricted, or distrusted.

Clerical Influencers, Viral Cures, and “Protected” Misinformation

Meanwhile, some clerics and “Islamic medicine” influencers pushed unproven cures and dramatic anti-biomed symbolismlike publicly burning a major medical
textbookto signal hostility to modern medicine. In pandemic conditions, those gestures don’t just express opinion; they shape behavior.

Investigations into Persian-language misinformation documented how certain networks circulated “cures,” discouraged vaccination, and framed modern medical
guidance as spiritually or politically contaminated. In some cases, critics argued that influential figures were insulated by connections and status even when
their claims were widely ridiculed or medically dangerous.

4) Why Antiscience Can Thrive: The Political Economy of “Alternative” Authority

It’s tempting to treat antiscience as a personality flaw“people are gullible”but that’s too easy and not very useful. In Iran (as elsewhere),
antiscience messaging often thrives when it plugs into real grievances and institutional incentives:

A) Trust Is a Resourceand It Can Run Out

Public trust is not infinite. When people believe officials hide bad news, spin statistics, or prioritize ideology over health, they don’t just stop trusting
politicians; they start distrust-shopping across the entire information ecosystem. The result is a market for certainty, where a confident voice offering a
simple cure can feel more “honest” than a cautious doctor explaining probabilities.

B) Sanctions, Scarcity, and the Appeal of “Local” Remedies

Economic pressure and shortages can make “self-reliance” narratives persuasive. When medicines are expensive or hard to access, cheaper herbal alternatives
and home remedies don’t just look traditionalthey look practical. Some reporting noted that sanctions-era conditions coincided with an expanding market for
herbal products and “Islamic” oils and potions, widely marketed online.

C) Status and Media Access

In a normal scientific marketplace, claims are supposed to compete under scrutiny: data, peer review, reproducibility, clinical outcomes. But in political
marketplaces, claims compete through visibility and protection. If an influencer appears on state-linked media or benefits from elite networks,
their medical messaging can travel farther than their evidence ever did.

D) Identity Politics: “Science” as a Side to Pick

Once health behavior becomes a badge“people like us don’t trust those vaccines,” or “people like us don’t listen to Western doctors”medicine turns into
culture war. And culture war is hard to treat with antibiotics.

5) The Biopolitics of “Islamic Medicine”: Competing Ways to Govern Bodies

Here’s the core analytical point: in Iran, “Islamic medicine” controversies are not just medical disputes. They are struggles over who gets to govern
bodies and populations.

Consider the competing governing logics:

• Biomedical governance: risk modeling, clinical trials, vaccination campaigns, public health messaging, hospital protocols.
  It works best with transparency and trustand it looks weak when officials politicize it.
• Ideological governance: resistance narratives, moral framing, suspicion of outsiders, claims of spiritual authenticity.
  It can mobilize solidarity, but it can also punish expertise that contradicts the narrative.
• Populist counter-governance: influencer authority, viral cures, “common sense” medicine, conspiratorial storytelling.
  It spreads fast, demands little evidence, and thrives in uncertainty.

In practice, these logics overlap. Iran has strong doctors, scientists, and public health professionals; it also has politicized messaging and parallel
authority structures that can undercut those professionals. That tension is biopolitical: it shapes which lives are protected by evidence-based systems
and which are left to rumor, charisma, or ideology.

6) “But Isn’t Traditional Medicine Everywhere?” Yesand That’s the Point

Every society has traditional medicine. The question is not “tradition versus science” as a reality-TV cage match. The question is:
How does a society decide what claims are safe to promote at scale?

Iran’s debate is especially intense because it’s tied to sovereignty and identity. But the underlying governance challenge is global:
when political legitimacy is fragile and information is weaponized, antiscience narratives can become a toolnot merely an accident.

7) What Evidence-Based Integration Could Look Like (and Why It’s Hard)

If Persian Medicine is integrated responsibly, it would look boring in the best way: training standards, referral pathways, safety monitoring,
protocols, and clear boundaries about what is supported by evidence versus what is cultural wellness practice. Recent qualitative research on integrating
Persian Medicine into primary health care highlights the practical barriers: workload, training gaps, resistance from clinicians, and public confusion caused
by conflicting informationexactly the conditions that misinformation exploits.

The policy takeaway is not “ban everything traditional.” It’s:

• Keep claims proportional to evidence. (If it’s a comfort ritual, call it that.)
• Make safety non-negotiable. (Sterility, interactions, contraindications, referrals.)
• Protect public trust. (Transparency beats propaganda in the long run.)
• Stop rewarding misinformation. (Visibility and immunity create incentives.)

8) Quick FAQ for Readers (Because Google Loves a Helpful Human)

Is “Islamic medicine” the same as Persian Medicine?

Not necessarily. Persian Medicine has academic and policy tracks in Iran. “Islamic medicine” can be used as a religious framing for wellnessor as a
politicized movement that rejects modern medicine. The label alone tells you very little; the evidence and safety standards tell you everything.

Is cupping (hijama) automatically “antiscience”?

No. Practices like cupping exist across cultures and can be pursued as complementary wellness in some contexts. The problem begins when anyone claims
it replaces proven treatment for serious disease, discourages vaccination, or is performed unsafely.

How do I spot medical misinformation in politicized environments?

• Absolute certainty (“This always works,” “Doctors are lying”) is a red flag.
• Villain stories (“They don’t want you to know”) often substitute for data.
• Single-cause explanations for complex disease are usually marketing.
• Attacks on institutions without providing verifiable evidence is a common playbook.

Conclusion

“Islamic medicine” in Iran is less about whether people drink herbal teas (they do, and so do Americans) and more about how a society decides what counts as
legitimate knowledgeespecially under stress. In the biopolitics of Iran’s health landscape, medicine becomes a venue for governing: bodies, behavior,
trust, and national identity.

The danger isn’t tradition. The danger is politicized certainty: when ideological narratives overrule evidence, when influencers gain
protection instead of scrutiny, and when public trust collapses into a scramble for simple answers. Iran’s experience is a dramatic case, but the lesson is
widely applicable: public health can’t function without trust, and trust can’t survive if truth is treated as a factional weapon.

Experiences (500-word addendum): What This Looks Like in Real Life

The most revealing “experiences” around Islamic medicine and antiscience in Iran are not fairy-tale miracles or cartoon villains; they’re the ordinary,
exhausting decisions people make when institutions feel unreliable. Reporting on the pandemic captured a recurring pattern: families weighing official advice
against alternative authority, not because they hate science, but because they’re trying to survive uncertainty with whatever tools feel available.

Imagine a working parent in Tehran in mid-2021, watching case numbers climb while hearing that certain vaccines are politically restricted and imports are
slow. They see footage of vaccinated crowds abroad and feel a mix of anger and fear. Friends whisper about black-market shotsexpensive, risky, and possibly
fakeyet tempting when the hospital down the street is overwhelmed. That person’s “experience” is biopolitics in street clothes: the state’s vaccine
decisions shape who can access protection, how quickly, and at what social cost. When trust is thin, the market fills the gapsometimes with real help,
sometimes with opportunists.

Now picture a nurse or physician who has spent years training in evidence-based medicine and suddenly has to negotiate not just symptoms but narratives.
A patient arrives convinced that a religious influencer’s remedy will prevent infection, or that hospitals exaggerate the disease. The clinician’s job becomes
partly medical and partly diplomatic: correcting misinformation without humiliating the patient, because humiliation often hardens belief. It’s the same skill
set clinicians everywhere needed during COVIDonly intensified by ideological media environments and the presence of powerful parallel authorities.

Then there are the quieter experiences: families who blend practices. A grandmother insists on a traditional remedy for comfort, while younger relatives
also seek clinical care. This kind of “medical pluralism” can be harmless or even supportiveuntil someone in the family insists that the traditional remedy
should replace treatment for serious disease, or discourages vaccination entirely. Investigations into misinformation ecosystems describe communities where
some followers of prominent “Islamic medicine” figures refuse vaccination or medical advice, turning health choices into loyalty tests. At that point,
the experience stops being personal preference and becomes social pressure: to be a “good” believer, a “resistant” citizen, or a member of the right tribe.

Finally, there’s the online experience: a phone screen full of clips, sermons, and confident voices. Viral content can feel intimatelike advice from a
trusted friendespecially when official messaging is inconsistent. But virality is not verification. The lived experience of many Iranians (and many people
globally) during the pandemic was a daily negotiation with information overload: deciding which voices deserved trust, and paying real consequences when the
wrong voice won.

If this addendum has a moral, it’s simple: people don’t “fall” for antiscience in a vacuum. They adapt to a world where trust, access, and authority are
contested. Fixing the problem requires more than fact-checks; it requires rebuilding the conditions where evidence can win without asking people to surrender
their dignity, identity, or hope.