twentieth century.
“Religion is an amazing phenomenon that plays
contradictory roles in people’s lives,” said Ali Shariati,
the charismatic lecturer who helped lay the intellectual
foundation of the Iranian Revolution of 1979. “It can
destroy or revitalize, put to sleep or awaken, enslave or
emancipate, teach docility or teach revolt.”
Khomeini understood him perfectly. Like Shariati, the
Ayatollah grasped that Karbala was an enormously
loaded symbol, a deep well of emotional, social, and
political signiɹcance, seemingly inɹnitely adaptable to
time and circumstance. Under the regime of the Shah,
with political dissent banned under pain of
imprisonment, torture, and execution, religion could
become the umbrella language of protest and resistance.
The Karbala story was the perfect vehicle for this. Its
themes broke through the usual social and economic
dividing lines to resonate with clerics and secular
intellectuals, liberals and conservatives, urban Marxists
and tradition-bound villagers alike.
“Let the blood-stained banners of Ashura be raised
wherever possible as a sign of the coming day when the
oppressed shall avenge themselves on the oppressors,”
Khomeini wrote from exile in France in November 1978,
and on Ashura itself, which fell on December 11 that
year, the traditional processions were transformed into a