Vali Yarahmadi said that a national plan to promote Quran memorization in Iran cannot succeed unless it returns to the country’s mosques and relies on grassroots, popular participation rather than state-run administration.

Yarahmadi, a former head of the Quranic Affairs Center at Iran’s Awqaf and Charity Organization, made the remarks at a consultative meeting of the steering committee for the National Quran Memorization Plan.

The session, held on Thursday, September 10, 2026, in Tehran, was attended by Quran affairs managers, Quran memorizers, experts, and activists from across Iran.

Yarahmadi praised the committee’s secretariat for its dedication and follow-through, but called for a shift in how Quran programs are evaluated. He described three levels of assessment.

The first is a general overview of activities, which he said is useful but incomplete. The second examines project plans, including physical progress, budget challenges, and human resources. The third and most important, he said, is a strategic review that measures actual effectiveness.

“Sometimes a program is carried out in the most beautiful way, but it was fundamentally not the right choice for reaching the ultimate goal and does not have the necessary effectiveness,” he said. “Therefore, the committee must focus on analyzing effectiveness and drawing up a road map.”

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Yarahmadi said high-level documents should not remain display texts and generalities. A conceptual document on Quran memorization, he argued, must answer at least 20 fundamental, operational questions.

The first step, he said, is a precise, tangible, and measurable definition of the terms “memorization” and “memorizer of the Quran”, consistent with the demands of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution and the views of experts.

He also called for an accurate assessment of the current situation, a realistic description of the target community, and a precise diagnosis of the problems facing Quran memorization in Iran.

Yarahmadi pointed to a lack of attention to incentives and the economic conditions of Quran memorizers, saying, “You cannot ask a Quranic elite for years of time and scholarly commitment, but have no plan for their social standing, their field effectiveness, or their minimum livelihood.”

He also called for a candid analysis of why Iran has not reached its goal years after martyred Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei’s call to train 10 million Quran memorizers.

He described an administrative, state-centered mindset as one of the main obstacles to the growth of Quran programs.

“Quranic work is by nature a grassroots, popular movement,” he said. “Wherever government institutions entered in a takeover manner, the authenticity and dynamism of the work were damaged.”

He said management and implementation should be genuinely handed over to the public and to institutions, and warned that umbrella associations should not turn into quasi-governmental bodies.

In his closing remarks, Yarahmadi stressed the central place of the mosque in promoting the Quran.

“No religious movement in the country becomes a general culture unless its origin and main base is the mosque,” he said. “One of the harms of past periods has been the distancing of Quranic activities from the body of mosques. This path needs correction and a serious return to the fortress of mosques, along with smart use of widespread media tools.”

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