download the pdf - St.Francis Magazine

St Francis Magazine Vol 8, No 4 | August 2012
report their anti-Islamic activities, while parents were told
that their religious duty required them to denounce their
offspring if they engaged in anti-regime schemes.
Ashura, which commemorates the slaughter of Imam
Hussein, is an important day in the life of Shi’ites everywhere.
In Iran, this cult of death is not limited to Ashura.
The ninth day of the month of Rabi al-Awwal on the Arab
lunar calendar is consider by Shi'ites the “Sweetest Day” for
Omar (Umar), the second rightly guided caliph according to
Sunni Muslims (634-644 A.D.). He was murdered by an
Iranian war prisoner near the central Iranian city of Kashan
(Taheri 2008, 28). An article in The United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees states,
It is important to note that while the Islamic Republic's propaganda
is rooted in death rather than life, it is death itself that is
idealised, not the act of killing.
Key dates on the Iranian calendar commemorate the deaths of
religious figures centuries ago, and also of people who have
died since the 1979 revolution. Reminders of those killed in the
eight-year war with Iraq are everywhere.
The general impression all this creates is that death, not life, is
the main event – so you'd better make it count. 10
Ebadi’s testimony is,
How to begin describing the gradual infusion of martyrdom
into our lives How to convey the slow process by which everything—public
space, rituals, resumes, newspapers, television—became
dominated by death, mourning, and grief At
the time, it didn’t feel alien or excessive, this engorged enthusiasm
for martyrdom and the aesthetic of death (Ebadi 2006,
62).
9. Fear and hatred of freedom. Taheri quotes Tabatabai saying
that Islam relies on “nothing but monotheism, prophecy,
and resurrection. If there is freedom, it is within that circle.
10 http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4d4a5285c.html accessed 2 May 2012
St Francis Magazine is a publication of Interserve and Arab Vision 410