The Islamic Republic prints 99.5% Muslim in every census. An anonymous survey of 50,000 respondents returns 32%. The gap is the episode. A 20,000-word structural analysis of Islam as lived faith versus state legitimating architecture in Iran — the most complete experiment in making a religion the operating system of a modern state, forty-seven years in, producing one of the fastest secularization events in recorded survey history. Ali Khamenei died February 28. Mojtaba Khamenei was installed nine days later by IRGC pressure — a mid-level cleric with no published scholarship, inheriting a position that requires twenty years of juristic training. The revolution that overthrew a dynasty has installed a dynasty. The constitution that declares Twelver Shi'ism 'eternally immutable' governs a population where 47% report losing their religion and 73% want separation of religion and state. Six frameworks: Velayat-e Faqih, Routinization of Charisma (Weber/Kadivar), Post-Islamism (Bayat), Lived Religion (Orsi/McGuire/Ammerman), Center-Periphery (Rokkan/Shils), Securitization of Religion (Buzan/Waever). Six perspectives steelmanned. Cartographer voice. No composites. The question the episode does not answer: what happens when the operating system crashes but cannot be uninstalled?

This episode was produced using the Proxima.Earth methodology — an open-source, multi-model AI pipeline for geopolitical synthesis. No human is in the loop after subject selection. The methodology is the editorial control. Full methodology, prompts, and production transparency: proxima.earth/methodology

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