UPDATED: Moharram & Ashura in Iran – عاشوراء / محرم

UPDATED 7 Jan: We received an enormous set of pictures from an on-the-ground in Iran.

Some may have been circulated around the internet already, but the risk attached to forwarding things like this makes a double post worth it.

See below for a slide show of the pictures.

We will post a PDF of the all the pictures in a bit.

This was an unexpected day in Iran. Clearly there was going to be tension. Large groups of people in Iran looked forward to marking the day with parades as is the norm and using that opportunity to express opposition to the government.

For the current regime to allow security forces free reign to use deadly violence on a day like Ashura when that violence would be symbolically heightened by the story of the death of Hossein and his supporters in battle, was surprising. The current regime has cast itself in the role of Yazid.

After his nephew was killed earlier in the day, Mousavi found himself cast more and more as Hossein.

Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, a former member of Iran’s Parliament, quoted in the New York Times had this to say:

“The clock began to tick for Ayatollah Khameni’s fall from today. Killing people on Ashura shows how far Mr. Khamenei is willing to go to suppress the protests. People are comparing him more with Yazid because they consider him responsible for the order to use violence against people.”

Here’s the context from Nazila Fathi:

The bloodshed today, on the Shiite holiday of Ashura — the day that a grandson of prophet Muhammad, Imam Hussein, was killed in the year 680 — created a parallel to the most significant mourning event in Shiite Islam. Iranian rulers had historically, even before the 1979 revolution, avoided clashes with their opponents on this day to avoid being compared to Yazid, the caliph who killed Imam Hussein in the battle of Karbala.

“Ashura is a very symbolic day in our culture and it revives the notion that the innocent were killed by a villain,” said Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, a former member of Iran’s Parliament, who is currently a visiting scholar at the the University of Massachusetts.

“The clock began to tick for Ayatollah Khameni’s fall from today. Killing people on Ashura shows how far Mr. Khamenei is willing to go to suppress the protests. People are comparing him more with Yazid because they consider him responsible for the order to use violence against people.”

“Today showed how they do not believe in all the religious slogans they have propagated in the past 30 years to rule.”

This year, Moharram (محرم) begins on (approximately) December 17/18, 2009 and ends around January 16, 2010. Moharram  is the first month of the Islamic calendar and one of four during which fighting is forbidden (“haram” means forbidden). Some fast during this time period to replicate the sufferings of Imam Husayn ibn Ali on the 10th day of Moharram,  known as”Ashura” or “day of grief.”

Ashura, which falls approximately December 26-27 , 2009 this year, is a day of mourning for Husayn ibn Ali killed in the Battle of Karbala. Many countries, including Iran, have made the day a national holiday with many different demographics and communities participating.

For more information, history, and background about Moharram & Ashura, read Enduring America‘s “A Beginner’s Guide to Moharram”

Dec 27 Ashura

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