Iran International
Friday imams across Iran excessively eulogized Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and demanded tighter hijab control and enforcement of the Ramadhan restrictions.
“His highness the Supreme Leader is the best personality [created] after the Imam of the Age,” Kazem Sadighi, Friday imam of Tehran told his congregation Friday in his first sermon of the new Iranian year.
In Shiite eschatology, the twelfth imam, Mahdi, is a messianic figure thought to have been in occultation by divine will since 941 CE. He is referred to as the Imam of Ages who will appear at the end of time to cleanse the world of sin and evil. Khamenei’s devotees often refer to him as the representative of the Imam of Ages, with absolute power to rule.
Sadighi also promised that Iranians will make the world a better place under Khamenei’s banner who he said is the commander-in-chief of all of the world’s oppressed people and “the resistance front” against the world powers and “an example [for mankind], an imam, a leader and divine executive.”
“The esteemed Leader has waged war on Satan and named this year as the year bridling inflation and boosting production,” another imam in the southern city of Shiraz, Ayatollah Lotfollah Dozhakam said in his sermon while exhorting his congregation to obey Khamenei.
“We can’t claim we are Muslims and awaiting the appearance of the Imam of Ages but do not obey his representative (Khamenei),” Dozhakam said.
Another Khamenei appointed Friday imam, Hojjat ol-Eslam Mahmoud Noorpour who also represents him in the northern Golestan Province told his congregation that hijab is “the most important institution of the Islamic Republic” and urged the authorities to enforce it at government offices, public places, hospitals and pharmacies, shops, and schools and universities.
Many women have been refusing to wear the compulsory hijab since September when anti-government protests engulfed the country in reaction to the death of the 22-year-old Mahsa (Jina) Aamini in the custody of the morality police. The young woman was arrested and taken to a detention center because the morality police patrols deemed her hijab not appropriate enough.
Photos and videos posted on social media these days show many women stepping into shops and banks and riding on public transport with no headscarf. To the religious and hardline political establishment, refusal to wear the hijab is nothing short of open defiance of the regime and its ideology.
But it is not only the hijab that they are worried about these days. The month of Ramadhan has arrived. For decades, the regime has banned all eating, drinking, and smoking in public including at workplace and schools before dusk when those who fast can begin eat and drink.
Clerics have even coined a term for the acts of eating, drinking, or smoking in public during the fasting hours which could very loosely be translated into “showing off in public that one is not fasting”. This ‘crime’ is punishable by ten to sixty days of prison or up to 74 lashes.
Even girls as young as nine are required to abide by the fasting rules at school because it is the age they are believed to be mature enough to wear the hijab and to fast. For boys the age of maturity comes much later, at fifteen.
“Respecting the holiness of the month of Ramadhan is a must for all. Showing off that one is not fasting is even worse than not fasting,” Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi, the Friday imam of the city of Arak said while his peer in Gonbad, Noorpour, urged the police and state-sponsored vigilantes who are mainly responsible for warning those who do not abide by the hijab to “take decisive action against those who break the law.”
The article by journalist Davoud Heshmati in Shargh said Raisi was too optimistic toward the loose coalition among conservative groups that formed his government and took over the parliament. In fact, popular protests may have delayed the activation of fault-lines within the government and preserved its unity. "The coalition was too fragile," Heshmati wrote.
"Despite the delay, in its emergence, the political deadlock is quite visible. The government is incapable of making decisions and this makes next year's developments interesting," he said.
According to the author, "the Iranian society is alive, but Iranian politics is in coma." The Iranian society is anything but "indifferent." Everyone thought the youth were apolitical, but they managed to create a great movement in the streets even without a leadership and organization. What brought them together was the demands for freedom in choosing their lifestyle.
The protests that erupted last September after the death of a young woman in police custody over her ‘inadequate hijab’, was led by teenagers and young people, especially women.
Another issue Heshmati pointed out was that the Iranians had already lost hope in elections after former president Hassan Rouhani refused to or was unable to address the issue of democracy and representation and instead dedicated his efforts to resolving the nuclear issue with the West, only to be blocked by hardliners.
Heshmati wrote that part of the reason hardliners took over the parliament in 2020 and the presidency in 2021, was the people's disillusionment about the possibility of change and reform after eight years of a centrist president. The majority simply did not turn out to vote, giving hardliners the victory.
As a result, Heshmati argued, political action that should have happened during elections spilled to the streets where activists with little or no political background took the lead. Now, they have returned to their homes, tired and battered. The government in Iran is adamant not to recognize their movement and the opposition outside the country can only radicalize the movement and work hard to advocate the demand for regime change.
This has led to a situation in which the society is in an unpleasant political state and the government has lost its capacity to handle the economic crisis because of the impact of the protests and rivalries that are tearing apart the political system.
As a way out of this situation, Heshmati suggested that the regime needs to restore the people's trust in the political system by attaching importance to the ballot box in the parliamentary elections in 2024 and by encouraging everyone to take part by promising representation and allowing political parties to become active.
Meanwhile, both the protesters who took to the streets for months and politicians in Iran maintain that"Iranians no longer believe in the reformist-conservative dichotomy," and they are unlikely to settle for stage-managed elections that would bring the same old useless politicians to the parliament.
In the absence of rigorous street protests, people who chant slogans from their rooftops or out of their windows every night make it known that their demands are beyond what reformists and conservatives tolerated by the regime can claim to meet.
Meanwhile, like many other politicians and analysts during the past months, an article in Donya-e Eqtesad (Economic World) pointed out that Iran's domestic problems are unlikely to be solved without addressing key foreign policy issues most markedly the nuclear issue.