Revolution Songs During Islamic Ceremonies Anger Iran’s Hardliners

This week, Shiite Ashura ceremonies embraced a marked pro-protest theme, which angered hardliners as their own mourning ceremonies seemed to have waned in popularity.

Complaining that some people mourned the slaying of the revered third Shiite imam Hussein in a way that “pleases the enemy”, a pro-regime cleric said in a sermon in Qom that these mourners have chosen a style to be attractive to foreign media. He was referring to independent Persian broadcasters abroad that give coverage to protests and reflect critical views about regime.

Ashura, commemorated on the 10th of the Islamic lunar month of Muharram, is the anniversary of the death of Prophet Muhammed’s grandson and his 72 companions in the battle of Karbala in 680 AD. 

Some of the mourning songs by ordinary people marking the occasion, particularly in the eastern city of Yazd, were ripe with allusions to the protest movement and those who were killed by security forces. Crowds led by maddahs or eulogists also sang verses about poverty and destitution among Iranians who have become poorer in the past five years mainly due to the impact of US sanctions and a failed economic system ripe with corruption. 

In an Instagram post Friday, Ehsan Abedi, director general of Yazd Department of Islamic Culture and Guidance, also criticized the critical style of mourning that troubles the regime and its hardliner supporters, and alleged that the “enemy’s media” is cheering.

Over the years, the government has invested money and energy to make Ashura and other religious occasions a show for its support among ordinary people, but this year’s phenomenon of many people trying to take back their religion has received wide coverage on social media. 

The online Institute for Iranian Civil Society (Tavaana) reported Friday that agents of the Revolutionary Guards Intelligence Organization (SAS) threatened the organizers of Yazd’s famous mourning ceremonies to stop them from singing songs that criticize the regime, but the congregation sang the “Poppies Growing From the Blood of Motherland’s Youth” while leaving the mosque in protest to their interference. 

Social media users have reported that security forces clashed with mourners in the city and arrested some of them. 

In several other cities people also paid homage to young people who were killed by security forces during the Mahsa Movement protests in 2022 and early this year. 

In Amol in the northern Province of Mazandaran, mourners who were clad in white instead of the traditional black of Shia mourners gathered outside the house of Ghazaleh Ghalabi, 33, who was shot in the head on September 21, soon after protests broke out following Mahsa Amini’s death in the custody of the morality police and visited her grave.

Participants sang the well-known “Poppies Growing From the Blood of Motherland’s Youth”, a revolutionary song from the era of Iran’s Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911). Ghalabi’s mother, Fatemeh Mojtabaei, and some other women defiantly attended the ceremony unveiled. 

In Tehran security forces dispersed the mourning youth who were trying to gather outside the house of Hamidreza Rouhi, a university student who was killed by the security forces firing on protesters on November 18, 2022. 

In some cities including Tehran in protest to the regime’s brutality, some mourners tied their own hands and feet to flagpoles to commemorate the death of Khodanour Lojei, a young man shot to death on October 1 in Zahedan, capital of southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan. 

A picture of Lojei with his hands and feet tied to a post with a bottle of water near him, which the thirsty young man could not reach, has turned into one of the icons of the protest movement. The performance alluded to the Shia belief that the Imam’s adversary, Yazid, cut his troops’ access to the waters of Euphrates and killed them after days of thirst in the parched desert.