What is deplorable is that in the recent years in Iran, Muharram ceremonies that are principally supposed to be dedicated to the exaltation of Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, the tragedy of his murder and his role in sustaining Islam have been converted into venues for broadcasting political propaganda and instigating rifts in society that sometimes prove to be irreparable.
The Iranian authorities are certainly aware of the politicization of Muharram ceremonies in mosques, but they have not taken any action to address it, and this is a social epidemic that will further fragment an already divided country, stoke aggression among youth and chip away at the capital of social cohesion and tolerance just as it is desperately needed.
Clerics, eulogists, religious singers and preachers, who mostly lean toward the ultraconservatives and hardliners, are increasingly adding political overtones to their sermons and public lamentations, and exploiting the massive turnout at Muharram ceremonies to proliferate polarizing messages.
They delve directly into foreign-policy issues, including Iran’s nuclear dilemma, address and sometimes deride the country’s elected authorities, occasionally curse foreign leaders, and hurl invectives against pro-reform personalities and causes.
Mansour Arzi, a prominent eulogist and a disciple of the firebrand former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had on different occasions in the Muharram ceremonies of the preceding years launched diatribes against reformist figures and even brazenly wished death for the leaders of the Green Movement, Mirhossein Mouavi and Mehdi Karroubi, now in the ninth year of their house arrest.
In a highly controversial interview with state TV in 2016, Arzi said Imam Hussein used to swear, and that he had learned to stumble into profanity from his master, namely the third Shia Imam.
The same year, in a gathering held on the third day of Muharram, Arzi lashed out at the Iranian authorities for permitting a FIFA World Cup Qualifiers match between Iran and South Korea to be hosted in Tehran one night before the solemn day of Ashura.
He declared that the groundwork was laid for people to cheer during a nationally sensitive soccer game while Ashura was approaching: “They want to drag the youths on the eve of Tasua [ninth day of Muharram] so that they abandon the field of Karbala and come to the [playing field]. If you protest, they will gradually understand. They are looking for confrontation. If the Hezbollah is enraged, it will destroy them all.”
In 2018, during prayers he was reciting for the Day of Arafat, an Islamic holiday falling on the second day of Hajj pilgrimage, Masour Arzi predicted the death of President Hassan Rouhani, forecasting that he would be drowned in a pool.
The response by the Islamic Development Organization, the most powerful religious body in the country, was bizarre, stating that it could not admonish Arzi because he was not a member of the association of eulogists, with which this organization cooperates.
Alireza Panahian, an ultra-conservative cleric and an influential preacher, is one of the other figures who make use of the popularity of Muharram observances to put out partisan, contentious political views.
In a recent speech he made on the evening of Ashura at Imam Ali Officers’ University, Panahian addressed the audience emphatically, venturing, “Do you know what companionship means in political terms? It is what Abbas ibn Ali [Imam Hussein’s brother] did in following and obeying Imam Hussein.
“The president, parliament speaker, chief justice, members of parliament, ministers and provincial governors should do this to the Supreme Leader, otherwise they will go to hell.”
He also mocked the efforts by the late president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to promote social justice, accusing him of proselytizing liberalism. In the Iranian hardliners’ dictionary, “liberal” is an offensive term.
References of this kind are rife in the sermons and eulogies of clerics and religious singers, who sometimes receive gratuities of nearly 600 million rials (US$2,700) per night for speaking or performing at a mourning event.
Disparaging the Iran nuclear deal as the most significant foreign-policy achievement of President Rouhani, pillorying talks with the United States, calling the advocates of détente with the West traitors, denigrating foreign leaders and wishing death for the leaders of the 2009 protest movement, Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, have become a standard in the mourning ceremonies of Muharram.
And the attendees of these ceremonies, which at some larger mosques amount to hundreds, have arrived at a silent agreement that they mandate speeches and eulogies along the same lines.
Sadly, those entities that have the capital and resources to infuse moderation in these ceremonies and prevent preachers and eulogists from creating social splits through inflammatory rhetoric are indifferent to the vicissitude of religious rituals and their dangerous relapse into arenas for defamation, and the proponents of reform and progressivism are too underrepresented to enforce any change.
Muharram ceremonies are occasions that enable the faithful to reflect upon the legacy of Prophet Muhammad and his descendants, and be exposed to useful narratives about ethics and human virtues.
Abusing the observances of Muharram or any other religious occasion to score political points, slander individuals who cannot defend themselves or promote exclusionary ideologies will only allow radicalism to penetrate society and extremism to breed. This should be tackled by the government urgently.
