An Ashoura Thing

A place to watch over the next week, for reasons laid out by the LA Times’ invaluable Borzou Daragahi, is Iran.

Ashura, the most emotionally charged religious holiday on the Iranian calendar, is almost here. Wearing green and black, the Shiite faithful will beat themselves in ritual self-flagellation Sunday and perform elaborate passion plays reenacting the doomed 7th century battle of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the prophet Muhammad, to retain the throne of Islam. “Ya Hussein!” the faithful will chant. And this year, the chant will have an echo: “Ya Hossein! Mir-Hossein!”

The next few days could be tempestuous, explosive, historical. Could be none of the above, but the elements are all in place, apparently the planning as well, for something big. The preamble is already underway:

Police officers and militia forces clashed with demonstrators in central Tehran all day Saturday and then again in northern Tehran in the evening, where the government forces shut down a speech by former President Mohammad Khatami, a reformist leader. The demonstrators, who defied an official ban and turned a Shiite mourning ceremony into a protest, underlined the government’s inability to suppress the opposition despite the use of violence. Protests have continued since a disputed presidential election in June, and one of the largest was expected on Sunday.

Back to Daragahi:

“We are planning to protest on Ashura,” a twenty-something blacksmith said, his hands and face covered with soot outside his shop in Narmak, the east Tehran neighborhood were Ahmadinejad grew up. “They will try to stop us and arrest us,” he said. “But we’re not just one or two people they can pull out. We’re many.”