One age group that perhaps has been affected considerably by the Islamic Republic of Iran and its laws is the youth, especially those between the ages of twenty and thirty years old. This population has grown up under the Islamic Republic of Iran and has grappled with issues of forced religiosity within a society of many social and political restrictions. Within at least some of the twenty- to thirty-year old demographic group, despite the official religious state and its prescriptions, there appears to be a trend in shifting religious attitudes and behaviors away from Islamic ideology, which is consistent with prevailing research conducted by Moaddel, Norris and Inglehart. By utilizing in-depth interviews of young, urban, middle- and upper-middle class Iranian adults from Tehran and Mashhad, their reasons for abandoning Islam fall within five categories: 1) unanswered questions about the Islamic religion; 2) friends and family verbalizing their personal issues with Islamic ideology; 3) perceived hypocrisy within Iranian society and among Islamic authority figures; 4) perceived political suppression and the use of religion by the polity to instill fear; and, 5) awareness of the existence of other belief systems. Additionally, the participants identified with these philosophies/religious ideologies: 1) Buddhism; 2) atheism; 3) New Age spirituality/the self-help movement; and, 4) a combination of these mentioned.