This year’s commemoration of Ashura – one of the most important religious ceremonies in Iran – was overshadowed by social and political crises and the impact of the violent protests that have rocked the country since the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody in September 2022.
The protesters’ demands and slogans dominated the chants and speeches during the religious ceremonies that focus on recounting the Karbala battle at the beginning of the month of Muharram every year.
Preachers across the country raised the Iranian people’s living concerns, accusing the authorities of “indifference and neglect.”
In the city of Yazd, the third stronghold of the conservatives in the country after the cities of Qom and Mashhad, a controversial video spread on social media, of a group of young people during a religious demonstration for the Ashura ceremony, chanting a song that begins with the phrase: “Stop it, tyrant, for the blood (...) is boiling.”
Protest chants were heard in a number of conservative Iranian cities. In Isfahan’s Kashan, people repeated religious lamentations criticizing the current situation in the country. In the city of Dezful, in the southwest of the country, a vocalist stood among crowds of participants, reciting poems denouncing economic problems and the authorities’ preoccupation with confronting women because of the veil.
In other cities, videos circulated on social networks showing participants at Ashura ceremonies expressing anger at the officials’ neglect of people’s demands and problems, and the spread of corruption in state agencies, poverty and unemployment.
At the beginning of the Ashura ceremony, which lasted for ten days, a new religious chant spread, by Gholamali Kuwaitipur, a vocalist who was known to be close to the authorities, especially the Revolutionary Guards and influential religious circles, before gradually shifting away from the ranks of supporters of the regime.
The song sharply criticizes the policies of Iranian officials and seems to address the country’s spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei.
Meanwhile, former MP Gholam Ali Jafarzadeh Emenabadi, who represented the northern city of Rasht in the Iranian parliament, said that many mosques were avoiding inviting religious preachers for the Ashura commemoration this year.
“People, especially the young among them, were leaving mosques in protest against clerics giving speeches,” he remarked.
In parallel with the chants, pictures and video clips showed demonstrators raising photos of those who were killed in the recent protests across the country. Women were also seen participating in Ashura ceremonies without wearing a veil.
