by David Patrikarakos
It’s a strange thing repression: you stamp on people enough, you take away their right to vote (or at least to cast ones that count); to gather; to associate; to speak; you take away all means of expressing dissent - especially political dissent – and you create pressure. Eventually it becomes unbearable and it finds a release.
30 years ago the Shah did just this. He banned all meaningful forms of social or political representation. He created a desert in Iranian society in which the only thing free to bloom was religion. It became the only means through which people could express themselves, and eventually they did. Religion has a funny place in Iranian life. With around 3 per cent mosque attendance Iranians are not religious, but they are superstitious. And they love ritual.
As we come to the end of January in 2010 it is worth reflecting on the events of the last two months in Iran. Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s death in December last year dominated headlines, in the West if not in Iran. Tehran long kept Montazeri out of the public eye, placing him under house arrest for the last few years of his life; State media only briefly reported his passing. People rightly surmised that the death of Iran’s arguably most senior cleric - and certainly most prominent dissident - would provide a rallying point for protestors and for the Green Movement. They were right.
Some said the death of such a prominent dissident was a welcome development for the regime. They were wrong. The timing could not have been worse. Since the June presidential elections the regime has faced the greatest show of popular dissent since the founding of the Islamic Republic. Within hours of his death crowds gathered outside his house in Qom; the internet was alive with talk. But the problem for Tehran went beyond this: his death came at a critical time in the religious calendar - just as many of the events leading up to the Islamic Revolution did 30 years ago.
The holy month of Muharram began on 8 December – just over a week before Montazeri’s death. Just a couple of weeks later came Ashura - the tenth day of Muharram - the ‘day of Grief’, when Iranians mourn the massacre of Husayn, the son of ‘Ali and his seventy-two followers at Karbala by the Caliph Yazid in 680 AD. Analogous to Christianity’s emphasis on the Crucifixion, the event animates the Shia imagination. Central to this is ta’ziyya – the passion play annually re-enacted on the ninth of Muharram, the day before Ashura - recounting the story. Each year thousands of Iranians weep and rage because Husayn was martyred 1300 years ago. The collective memory is strong in Iran, and it is this ability to generate spontaneous and intense emotion that is at the centre of ta’ziyya’s power. It is after all a passion play – and one that taps into universal registers of meaning for Shia. But if you are politically-inclined it is more than this: it is a well of collective feeling ripe for plunder.
Iranian politicians have always understood that sacred memory can be harnessed for political purposes. Khomeini used it during the revolution to attack the Shah – repeatedly calling him Yazid – and again during the Iran-Iraq war to mobilize the populace against the Iraqi enemy. The story of Ashura and the traditions of ta’ziyya allowed him to weld the present to an immediately recognisable past, and Iranian soldiers tramped to Iraq to liberate Kerbala for Husayn in their thousands. The martyrdom of Husayn by the tyrant Yazid: the suffering of the just at the hands of the oppressor - the image squats at the fundament of the Shia consciousness. And it’s not difficult to find political parallels if you want to. Iranians are always looking for a Huseyn; and a Yazid.
30 years ago political protest collided with the mass mobilisation of religious feeling during Muharram; each powered the other. On 11 December 1978, on Ashura, more than two million people stood in Tehran’s Shahyad Square and, fuelled by the memory of Husayn, called for the Shah’s downfall. Popular anger that had festered for years ignited and channeled, through the medium of Shia Islam, toward the shah – now Yazid to the Iranian people. Weeks later, on January 16 1979, the Shah fled Iran.
Thus works the unique role of religion in Iranian life. Shiism is founded on the premise of injustice and martyrdom and is, in this sense, acutely political. Today’s protestors are primarily motivated by political grievance, just as they were 30 years ago, but Shiism is the only mode of expression left to them. It was the Shah’s political oppression not his infidelity to the Quran that caused his downfall. The same is true today.
As Ashura climaxed government forces clashed with protestors, fuelled by ta’ziyya and grief at the death of Husayn and Ayatollah Montazeri, sick of despotism. At least 8 people were killed. More deaths followed, including the nephew of defeated Presidential candidate and unofficial Green Movement leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi – arguably the most high profile protestor to date – which only intensified anger at all levels of the opposition movement.
Yesterday was Neda Agha Soltan’s birthday – the young woman killed by the regime in June, her death captured on video and beamed, through the internet, around the world. Her name is now yet another anti-regime rallying cry.
This is not to say that Montazeri’s death and the subsequent unrest is the precursor to revolution. But one thing is clear: once again sacred memory reignited en masse in Iran and threatens the regime. The government is creating more martyrs by the day. It is a sign of the regime’s increasing desperation that those who came to power on the wave of Ashura 30 years ago have repeated the same mistakes.
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