The Detroit News. The piles of money, tumbling lottery numbers and breathless announcements that greet Iranian television viewers before the nightly 9 o'clock news might seem untoward for this Muslim society, governed as it is by the rules of a religion that largely forbids gambling.
Players buy tickets to help flood victims, orphans, the poor.
In the West, the image of Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution might seem strict and unyielding, and in the early days of Islamic government here, the reality matched the perception. Immediately after the revolution, for example, religious authorities encouraged citizens to have large families as Iran fought a decadelong war with Iraq. Literacy and education rates are rising, and women account for more than half of the people taking the yearly university entrance exam. In addition to innovative approaches to some social problems, the country is also displaying independent ideas on some economic problems. These and other programs, Iranians say, point up a central misunderstanding of their country in the West, one the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, addressed in a speech to students of the Koran.