Ayatollah Rafsanjani, the Iranian clerical strongman, delivered Friday prayers as scheduled. There was a sense leading up to these prayers that everything was hanging on what he was going to say. Was he going to impose his solution on the crisis, effectively selling it out for his benefit? Was he going to stand against his political rivals and use his power and prestige as one of the few surviving early leaders of the revolution to drive them out of the political arena? We’ll return to these questions later.
From eight in the morning, according to my relatives who were on the scene and other observers, the route to the Friday prayers was blocked, and bus after bus full of Ahmadinejad supporters was ushered in to fill the site of the prayers. According to one eyewitness, some four to five thousand basijis were packing the pavilion where the prayers were to be read. The ordinary people were only able to convene outside this site. He was not able to give the prayers for a long time because Ahmadinejad supporters kept sending “salavat,” praises to the Prophet and his pure family. He was only able to lead the prayers after one of these supporters told his comrades that Rafsanjani had been allowed to lead the prayers because he had been delegated to do this by Ayatollah Khamene’i, who occupies the position of Leader and had used this position to come down on Ahmadinejad’s side.
Mir Hosein Musavi, the supposedly defeated candidate whose followers flooded the streets after the elections in protest over widespread fraud, had promised to attend the prayers to be with the people, as had Hojjatoleslam Mehdi Karubi.
Hojjatoleslam Mehdi Karubi roughed up by plainclothesmen.
It was unclear if Sayyed Mohammad Khatami was going to appear or not. In the event, only Karubi appeared. Indeed, Karubi appeared quite late, having been detained and roughed up by members of the security forces, who knocked his turban to the ground.
Musavi’s supporters demonstrated outside the prayer site. They chanted slogans such as, “Ma ahl-e Kufa nistim/Hosein tanha bemanad!”, “We are not the people of Kufa, who would abandon Imam Hosein.” (According to the Shiite epic, the people of Kufa had invited the Imam to their city, promising to rise up against the usurping caliphate of Yazid. In the event, while he was traveling towards the city, he received the news that the people of Kufa had abandoned his cause, leaving him to his fate against the massive forces of the usurper caliph. Since then, someone who supports a cause and then abandons it to its fate is called “Kufi.”) Another slogan chanted was “Rusiah haya kon, keshvar ra raha kon.” Rusiah literally means “black-faced”, but is an idiom for someone who is disgraced. It is a reference to the Leader and plays on an older slogan from the 1999 student revolt, “Khamene’i haya kon, rahbari ra raha kon,” “Khamene’i, have some shame, leave the post of Leader.” Here it says, “Disgraced one, have some shame, leave the country.” There are some who believe that it refers to Russia, which had famously agreed to have the newly-”elected” Ahmadinejad meet its own newly-elected president Medvedev. They also cried out “Allah-o Akbar” and demanded the release of the political prisoners, both of these harkening back to the slogans of the 1979 revolution.
All streets were shut down and transportation was not running and the prayer service was not being broadcast, according to a telephone call from Tehran posted on Facebook. According to Twitter, by 10 a.m. local time, there were very big crowds in Ferdawsi, Amirabad, Valiasr, and Enghelab Square, all sites of previous demonstrations. Here is a video of the demonstration:
and in front of Tehran University:
The slogans being chanted are “Allah-o Akbar”, “Free political prisoners,” “An Iranian will die, but does not submit to tyranny,” “Death to the disgraced one [Khamene'i],” “Martyred brother, I will get back your vote,” “Government of the coup, resign, resign,” “Victory is God’s and help is nigh,” (a Koranic verse), “Death to this government of demagogues.”
Meanwhile, here is a link to what was going on in the Friday prayers pavilion, courtesy of Pedestrian. This blogger points out the irony that while the monarchist radio stations all over the world are broadcasting the Friday Prayers, the Islamic Republic’s electronic media is broadcasting everything but same. This station has been broadcasting the prayers and providing commentary. The notables in attendance in the front rows reserved for the VIPs, according to a report posted on Facebook by Siyavush Randjbar-Daemi, an Iranian journalist who writes for a number of newspapers in Italy, were “Emami Kashani, Mahmoud Doai, Hassan Rowhani, Mehdi Karroubi, Mohsen Rezai, Majid Ansari, Mohammad Reza Aref, Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri, Said Mortazavi, Mohammad Reza Bahonar.”
A tear-gas attack on a crowd gathered alongside Tehran University
The arrival of Karubi. People in the crowd are commenting that Karubi had arrived late.
Demonstrators chanting “Death to the dictator” before the Friday prayers got underway.
“Hashemi, Hashemi, if you keep quite you’re a traitor.”
More protests before Friday prayers.
“Death to oppression!”
“Death to the dictator!” In front of the Tehran Interior Ministry. “Mahsuli, Mahsuli, give us back our votes!” Mahsuli was a crony of Ahmadinejad who became a multi-millionaire and a political powerhouse thanks to Ahmadinejad. Finally, they call on the security forces for support.
Here are some chronologies of the prayer service, in both English and Persian:
Here is a series of videos covering the Friday prayer service inside the pavilion.
Conclusion
The speech was neither a call for revolution nor submission. But it should be said that the overwhelming majority of his talk was directed at the Ahmadinejad government. He called for an end to the persecution of the press, an end to silencing the grumbling clergy in Qom, the freedom of prisoners arrested in the confrontations which followed the elections, and a general opening of society. It was done in the classical language of sage counsel, with plenty of references to the Koran and the lives of the Prophet and the Shiite Imams. For example, he referred to how Imam Ja`far os-Sadeq, who can be considered the first Shiite scholar, did most of his writing either in prison or having been censored by the Ummayads. This comparison of the reformists to the persecuted Shiite imam and the government to the Ummayads is pretty strong stuff.
What the practical effects of this sermon will be is hard to tell. We will have to leave that to a future post. But on the whole, it has strengthened the hand of the reformists and shown the usurping government its limitations.
This blog's proprietor is Evan Siegel. He is a professor of mathematics. He has been a student of Iranian history, culture, and politics since the seventies. Click here to see his resume.
