Green martyrdom and the Iranian state

Abstract

Iran's history testifies to the way in which mythologies assume heightened significance in moments of social upheaval. Indeed, the Iranian experience closely conforms to the Marxian claim that in periods of revolutionary crisis people ‘conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from them names, battle-cries, and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time-honoured disguise and this borrowed language’ (Marx 2002, 10). Here, I consider the way in which the narrative of the seventh-century Battle of Karbala – crucial to the mobilization of the anti-Shah opposition prior to the 1978/1979 Iranian Revolution and playing a hugely significant role in the Iran-Iraq war – has been reactivated in contemporary Iranian politics. Martyrdom, in the context of Iran's ‘Green Revolution', has emerged as a highly contested concept. Whereas prior studies of the Karbala paradigm have tended to draw attention to its unproblematic utilization by the Islamic government (see Ehsan 1992; Fischer 1980; Kaur 2010; Ram 1996), I attempt to tease-out the nuances of martyrdom by considering the way in which individuals, in concert, have sought to wrest control of its interpretation from the state.