A day after the one-year anniversary of the disputed June 12 elections, a series of YouTube clips appeared on the web showing a group of plain-clothed young men with a smattering of young clerics in the crowd calling for the removal of corrupt individuals and “death” to the enemies of Velayat-i Faqih or Guardianship of (Islamic) Jurists. The small group gathered outside the home and offices of Grand Ayatullah Sane’i, kicking at his door and later images on the Ayatullah’s website depicted vandalism done by the crowd. Graffiti reiterating similar chants, including “Death to Sane’i” were seen in these grainy shots sprayed outside of his home in the holy city of Qum.
Similar acts of vandalism were reported at the offices of the late Grand Ayatullah Montazeri, who was often referred to as the spiritual leader of the Green Movement. What had precipitated these attacks on the Grand Ayatullah Sane’i’s home and authority since he is a marja' al-taqlid- a source of emulation for pious Shi'as?
The reform candidate Mehdi Karroubi, one of the leaders in the oppositional movement to the present regime and a presidential candidate in the June elections of 2009, had planned a visit to the Grand Ayatullah that day. Ayatullah Sane’i for his part has been vociferous in his disapproval of the current regime and their actions towards the Green Movement. BBC Persian picked up the YouTube videos and asked Hujjat al-Islam Mohsen Kadivar, a leading opposition figure, now a visiting faculty member at Duke University to comment on the attacks and what it could all mean in terms of the divisiveness that has been so closely watched between rank and file Ayatullahs and politicians (including reform candidate Mir Hossein Musavi) who align themselves with Ayatullah Khomeini and those who fall into the camp of "conservative" Ayatullahs who now are linked to the Supreme leader Ayatullah Khamenei, and the current President Ahmadinejad. Kadivar immediately dismissed the young men and their activism as mere hooligan behavior not representative of the majority of the clerics in the city of Qum.
The knowledgeable and esteemed theoretician of Islamic jurisprudence, claimed these young men were aligned with the Haqqani seminary in Qum which is headed by Ayatullah Mesbah Yazdi who has proven himself to be an ultra-conservative thinker and has been noted to be the spiritual advisor of Ahmadinejad.
Many pundits claim that this circle represents a small yet volatile group of religious students and followers. Members of the same group were linked to attacks on a Sufi house of worship in the city of Qum in 2007. Kadivar and many others familiar with the Qum’s seminarians have remarked that the chants and the slogans displayed in these videos are highly incendiary and have no precedence even in monarchical Iran. The place and authority of Shi’i clerics of such high esteem has never been so disrespected.
Much of what occurs amongst the clerical establishment in Qum is considered crucial and signifies power shifts in the relationship between the ‘ulama (religious authorities) and the state and politics of every day living in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The video clips that appeared were significant for one, very little materializes in the form of films or pictures from Qum. Even before the events of June 2009, filming has been strictly frowned upon in Qum, unless authorized by the regime through state-run television cameras.
The recent events captured on film appear to mimic the Green movements citizen journalism. In one clip, there is a group of people shouting slogans, kicking at the door and pushing at each other, the camera captures others filming with their cell phones. The second clip has a smaller number of students listening to a young man on a loud speaker praising the Supreme leader with small numbers in the audience reacting favorably with chants of Allah Akbar. The young man is asking the citizens of Qum to get rid of “the houses of corruption,” referring to the Grand Ayatullahs’ edifices in the city.
As Kadivar rightly points out in the BBC interview, these young religious scholars do not matter in Qum and are not considered to have any power or influence in changing the attitude of people towards the leading clerics, especially those clerics who have remained silent during the past year and those who are actively aligning themselves with the opposition movement.
The attacks and filming them are significant for they display an open hostility and harassment which did not occur, Kadivar reminds us, even during the Pahlavi regime. So what does this all mean?
This act of disesteem and the subsequent filming of it?
It can be seen as a warning to the clerics and their followers who may harbor attitudes similar to the opposition. It is also a direct response to the disrespect shown by the Green Movement towards the supreme leader and the questioning of his legitimacy, authority and power and the concept of Velayt-i Faqih.
The young hooligans, Kadivar says, were prompted by a pilgrimage visit by the Supreme leader to the city of Qum a day before the attacks. As Kadivar (and others have also) pointed out, these aggressive overtures could have only been ordered by the office of the Supreme leader in conjunction with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The regime has been systematically using force to silence those actively sympathetic towards the Green Movement. Filming the events fashioned similarly to those short, often jumpy YouTube clips that turned the world’s attention to Iran last summer displays power derivatives—a kind of exchange based on immediate perceptions by a global audience which in this sense is an understanding of how significant these clips can be if they are packaged in a way that speaks to the people.
Ahmadinejad and Khamenei have both expressed that the election results are the will of the people. The regime does see power in the people as well as those short clips that enacted horrible scenes of state-sponsored violence. Though the recent attacks may be perceived as underwritten and even encouraged by the Islamic polity—they are not being touted as such. This was an act by the people to uphold the tenets of the Islamic Republic, at least that appears to be the message, clear and present in the videos.
There is value in setting these attacks up as spontaneous acts of Iranian citizens showing distaste for the oppositional leadership. The value in these grainy shots may mean more in saying very little and allowing the barrage of onslaughts to parallel those of the Green Movement, at least in technique. The value does not reap its benefits immediately and possibly it’s a risky move with all together little to gain—but the idea of the YouTube clips are set to encompass a myriad of contradictory messages such as the ultimate disrespect to a source of imitation and emulation that is unprecedented which mirrored those of the Green Movement last summer. But they also depict the power of the people through raw footages, or at least that is the idea behind these shots where the concept may now be mimicked by “people” throughout the Islamic Republic to defend the state.
Narges Erami - Assistant professor of Anthropology at Yale University. Her research is on the relationship between religion and economics in the holy city of Qum.
