"Pink Islam" is an inquiry into how young Iranians are reshaping religious identity recently and in particular aftermath of Mahsa Amini’s death and the so-called Jina uprising in 2022. It explores a symbolic middle ground or playing in between—neither radical Islam nor secular Islam or non-Islam—where faith is not abandoned but reframed through personal expression, digital media, and cultural resistance.

At the core of this project lies a critical dichotomy: religious culture versus cultural religion. In Iran, religious culture is state-imposed, disciplinary, has a sacred aura and a pedagogical function. Cultural religion, by contrast, is fluid, creative, and lived—it emerges from the bottom up, shaped by art, fashion, humor, and translation among other things.

This transformation is powered by new media and the practice of auto-communication. Iranian youth use platforms to narrate themselves—not just to others, but to themselves. Through memes, selfies, poetry, and remix culture, they reclaim religious symbols and infuse them with new meanings. The hijab becomes a canvas, the prayer becomes a performance, and Islam becomes pink—not just soft, but subversive, at least according to the radicals or the orthodox.

At first sight, Pink Islam is not a theological doctrine. It is a semiotic movement born at the crossroads of religion, youth, culture, and media. This project invites interdisciplinary dialogue across theology, cultural semiotics, and media culture. Under the authority of the collective, the disciplinary and the ideological, the project seeks to understand how inherited faith can be re-authored—and how the self can be reclaimed.

Hossein Sarfaraz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the Faculty of Communication Sciences, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran. He received his Ph.D. in Communication Sciences from the University of Tehran in 2017 with a doctoral thesis entitled "Semiotic Evolutions in the Dialogue between Religion and Iranian Cinema after the Islamic Revolution." His main research interests include Cultural Semiotics, Islamic Studies, Cultural Studies, and Cultural and Communication Changes in Iran.