"None of the welfare benefits and financial packages on display today existed a decade ago. In fact, in earlier times the people in Qom used to equate being a student of religious studies, or talabegi , with poverty and low quality of life. But this image and even self-presentation has been radically overturned in the past decade. Simultaneously, the state has been following neoliberal policies for the vast majority of society by privatizing universities and schools, deregulating labor laws, suppressing unions and cutting public budgets, while it has fashioned a welfare state in Qom for a few would-be its loyal subjects." Protesting Clerical Welfarism in Iran's Pious City
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51