UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

GRADUATE COLLEGE

THE REGIME OF MARTYRDOM: THE MECHANISM OF INVENTIING A NEW

SHIA SOVEREIGNTY DURING THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR

A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS IN INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

By
AMIN SOPHIAMEHR
Norman, Oklahoma
2012

THE REGIME OF MARTYRDOM: THE MECHANISMS OF INVENTING A NEW

SHIA SOVEREIGNTY DURING THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR

A THESIS APPROVED FOR THE

COLLEGE OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

BY

______________________________
Dr. Ariel Ahram, Chair

____________________________
Dr. Joshua Landis

______________________________
Dr. Afshin Marashi

___________________________
Dr. Shmuel Shepkaru

 Copyright by AMIN SOPHIAMEHR 2012

All Rights Reserved.

iv

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements .........................................................Error! Bookmark not defined.
List of Tables ...................................................................Error! Bookmark not defined.
List of Figures..................................................................Error! Bookmark not defined.
Abstract............................................................................................................................ ix
Chapter I: Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1
Literature review ........................................................................................................ 5
A Foucauldian approach ........................................................................................... 13
A brief clarification about the concept of the regime of martyrdom ........................ 15
Chapter II: Martyrology of Female Body in the Iran-Iraq War...................................... 17
Shia fundamentalists gender discourse and Pahlavis gender policies ................... 19
The Shia fundamentalists gender discourse ........................................................... 22
The Revolution and its female dilemma ................................................................... 26
The politics of death: martyrdom and women .......................................................... 29
Martyrological hejab ................................................................................................ 39
Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 51
Chapter III: The Public Sphere as the Domain of Martyrological Relations ................. 55
Martyrs mourning rites ............................................................................................ 56
Ashura mourning: using familiar Shia ethos ........................................................... 70
Blood and violence in the urban space ..................................................................... 78
The Mofid high school ............................................................................................. 85
Broadcasting martyrdom .......................................................................................... 87
Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 90

Chapter IV: Conclusion .................................................................................................. 91

vi

vii

viii

Abstract
The Islamic republic of Iran, in its current formation, is rooted in the power
relations that the Iran-Iraq War generated. However, scholarship on the IranIraq War with respect to building a new Shia sovereignty in the postrevolutionary Iran is an underdeveloped area among scholars. This paper
explains the rationale and function of the war, as a state of exception, with
respect to creating a new Shia sovereignty through inventing a brand-new form
of manhood and womanhood. This form of sovereignty building necessitated a
mechanism of inventing a new female and male body. In fact, because during
the war the notion and practice of sacrifice, in the form of martyrdom, was the
central driving force of making a new Shia sovereignty, this thesis attempts to
explain the sacrificial origins of the Islamic republic. In other words, the central
concern of this research is, How did practices and power relations generated by
the war around martyrdom give birth to a new Shia sovereignty?

ix

Chapter I: Introduction
This transformation that has happened in the current Iran is unprecedented.
The nation that is living with malevolence transfers, immediately, within a
short period, volunteers celebrate for war and martyrdom. Some who are not
allowed to the war cry [and ask us] do something to allow us. This is a
miraculous transformation that has happened, and I hope this transformation
will last.
Ayatollah Khomeini (01/06/1981)
The logic of the sociopolitical transformation of the first decade of the
Islamic republic of Iran is unknown to many scholars of Iran.1 One of the
reasons for this unawareness is the failure of the Iranian studies to illuminate
the nature and impact of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) and its vast and deep
sociopolitical ramifications. The Iranian studies have been reluctant to explain
how the war contributed in making a new Shia sovereignty.2 There is an
intuition among scholars that the war, unleashed nineteen months after the
1979 Revolution, consolidated the Islamic republic. Iranian leaders themselves
said frequently that the war was a divine boon. However, there is no satisfactory
explanation for the role of war in founding a new Shia sovereignty through
creating a brand new Shia subject3 as the cornerstone of the Islamic republic.

By logic of war, I mean the way that the war ought to be conceptualize and how it should be
analyzed with respect to other sociopolitical factors, namely crafting a new sovereignty.
2 In Persian language, people who advocate the governments ideology and institutions that are
depended on the governments financial supports monopolize all the Iran-Iraq war studies. It is
hardly possible to find a scholarly work outside the domain of governments ideology in Persian
language. The Iran-Iraq war interpretation is under the authority of the Islamic republic, and
the government does not allow publication of any account of the war if it is not compatible with
the official interpretation of the war. This restriction shows another aspect of the restraining
power of the regime of martyrdom that is still active in todays Iran. For this reason, the
sociopolitical ramifications of the Iran-Iraq War are unknown to many Iranians as well.
3 I use purposefully Islamic subjects rather than Iranian citizens because if we read the Iranian
Constitution in light of the principle of the velayat-e faqih Iranians legal position does not
amount to autonomous citizens. Based on the velayat-e faqihs principle, a valiy-e faqih has
absolute power over its subjects life, property, and namos.

As an attempt to fill this intellectual gap, this thesis objective is to

explain the logic and roles of the Iran-Iraq War in formation and consolidation
of the Islamic republic through creating a new Shia manhood and womanhood.
The formation of a new sovereignty required reinventing new Shia individuals.
In fact, the Islamic republic, as a state4 that arose from the 1979 revolution, like
other revolutionary states, intended to create a utopian society and a new ideal
human being. The war provided ample opportunities for the Iranian leaders to
actualize their ideal model of a new Shia human being built based on sacrifice
in the form of martyrdom. The Islamic republic, by inventing a sophisticated
mechanism of exercising power, implemented practices of subjugation to
produce obedient subjects namely potential martyrs. In this context, martyrdom
is at the heart of creating a new sovereignty that is built on a new model of the
Shia human being.

In this paper, I use the concept of state loosely. Since Iran has had a different historical
process with different sociopolitical formation as well as fundamentally different religion than
Europe, applying state on Iran has not the conceptual clarity and much explanatory power, yet
it might be misleading. As Joseph R. Strayer has shown in his important book, On the Medieval
Origins of the Modern State, modern states have certain characteristics that were/are absent
from political establishment in Iran. Strayer enumerates several characteristics for a modern
state such as persistence in time, fixation in space, permanent, impersonal institutions,
agreement on the need for an authority with power to make final judgments, acceptance of the
idea that subject should give loyalty to that authority. What rulers of Iran since Reza Shah tried
to build as political establishment did not meet the requirement of a modern state. For instance,
the power is viewed personal and loyalty to state is absent and is reduced to loyalty to the ruler.
Personalized loyalty to the ruler has more visible appearance in the principle of velayat-e faqih
on which the loyalty to the ruler is justified based on the Shia notion of velayat. A more indepth scholarly work is Ernst H. Kantrowiczs The Kings Two Bodies discusses the theological
origins of the modern state. Obviously, the theological debates that gave rise to modern states
were absent in Irans history. Therefore, the political theology of the modern state was
nonexistence in Iran. Said Javad Tabatabai, the prominent Iranian political philosopher, has
discussed the lack of formation of a modern state in Iranian history. Although from sociological
point of view, the political establishments that have emerged in Iran can roughly be deemed as
modern states, considering the political establishments have emerged in Iran as modern states
is anachronistic from historical point of view and problematic from political philosophy.

Following Foucaults notion of disciplinary power and the decentralized

and multidirectional nature of power relations in reinventing human bodies, I
argue that the war generated unprecedented forms of power relations and new
strategies for the exercise of power. In the context of war, martyrdom and hejab
were two major forms of strategies of power5 that played a central role in the
fate of the Islamic republic. For this reason, I focus on the intertwining of
martyrdom (shahadat) as a practice of sacrifice and hejab as practice of
modesty that aimed to generate new form of men and women. I call this
relationship the regime of martyrdom, emphasizing how it was a product of
routinized state practices, not the spontaneous and volunteeristic forms of selfabnegating of martyrdom. The ultimate goal of the regime of martyrdom was
producing obedient Shia individuals who were loyal to the principle of velayate faqih. In this way, I emphasize the modernity of the post-revolutionary Shia.
It is true that Shia as a martyrdom religion evolved around the trauma of
Imam Hussiens martyrdom in the plain of Karbala in 680 C.E. However, the
regime of martyrdom is a new phenomenon in Shiism, whereas martyrdom is
not. What makes martyrdom in the context of the regime of martyrdom distinct
from the traditional martyrdom, is its content, relations with a coercive political
ideology, ends, modern technology and capabilities, and more importantly its
contribution to the controlling female body. In this context, martyrdom is not
merely a religious act for personal salvation, as it was in traditional Shiism.
Rather it is an act of ultimate obedience to an Islamic political system and its

Strategies of power is one of the Foucaults notions which means a routineized and systematic
practices of power to create obedient bodies.

ideology. The Islamic republic, in order to actualize its project for statebuilding, needed to transfer the locus of obedience from submission to the
Imams, velayat, which is a central doctrine in traditional Shia, to an Islamic
state. In the wartime, the regime of martyrdom was a vehicle to bring about this
transformation in practical politics. Thus, the notion of the regime of
martyrdom is based on the assumption that the state policy of martyrdom
during the war was a departure from the martyrdom that is practiced in the
tradition of Shia. The regime of martyrdom highlights the novel aspects of Shia
that emerged in Irans post-revolutionary era.
The important issue one should take into account is that the invention of
the mechanism of forming new men and women was only possible during a long
war, which like all wars, generated both destructive and constructive violence. It
was only possible when sacrifice became a daily practice for eight years. The war
was bloody and expensive, and it was the longest war in the twentieth century.
According to Irans governments estimate, 123,220 fighters and nearly 11,000
civilians lost their lives (Hiro, 1991, 250). However, in the absence of an
independent research on the number of casualties, it is believed that the actual
casualties and death tolls are more than the governments figures. Kamran
Mofid, an Iranian economist, estimated the war cost 664.3 billion dollars (1990,
135). At the same time, though, the war afforded the Iranian state an
opportunity to re-shape society. The state exercised its power over Iranian
bodies through bureaucracy, media, education systems, barracks, urban space,
and mosques to re-create a new Shia as the ultimate goal of the practice of
power.
4

However, the process of inventing a new power base within the society
was not possible without partial collaboration of the society. Hence, power was
not exercised top-bottom; it was exercised in multidirectional ways. The regime
of martyrdom would not gain public acceptance if it were totally foreign to the
popular beliefs and practices. For this reason, the Islamic republic not only used
some elements of the Shia tradition, but it modified, reconstructed, and
reinvented the Shia tradition so that it would respond to the newly arrived
demands in a new context. Before moving toward more detail, it is important to
understand the unobserved aspects of the sovereignty-making process with
respect to the Iran-Iraq war in the scholarly works of some scholars of Iran.
Literature review
To explain Irans post-revolutionary developments, it is important to
address the absence of a systematic account on the relationship between the war
and the invention of a new sovereignty in the works of some scholars of Iran. In
fact, many scholars have noted the importance of the war in shaping Iran,
particularly in respect to political economy, party formation, international
relations, and ideological analysis; but they have neglected the issue of the
relation between a new gender construction, namely based on martyrdom, and
forming a new Shia sovereignty. There are two types of scholarly works
regarding Irans post-revolutionary developments. One group of books is
dealing with what the writers have called the state-building process in postrevolutionary Iran, and the second category of works are those that deal with
the gender issues and more specifically womens issues. The political
construction of gender is one of the chief underlying factors of any sociopolitical
5

formations. However, since the impact of war and its enormous ramifications
for political establishment as well as martyrological construction of gender are
unknown to the majority of the writers, the majority of these works fail to
explain the process of state-building, as well as gender issues.
In the first category of books, more importantly, what is not
comprehendible is the majority of the gender scholars reluctance to analyze the
role of war in producing the Islamic republics desirable womanhood. It was in
the context of the war that obedience to the Islamic republic became gendered.
In the wartime, women became protectors of martyrs blood with their hejab. In
this light, poor veiling, as the government called it, was considered as a betrayal
to martyrs. In other words, the gender issues are not understandable unless we
comprehend the impact of the war in gender construction in post-revolutionary
Iran. For this reason, gender scholars negligence to take the war and its
ramifications into account means that the major parts of the gender issues in
Iran are hidden from us. Therefore, understanding the gender issues in Iran
means to understand how the destructive violence of the war was transformed
into a constructive violence of producing a new human.
Many gender studies have not gone further than confirming the fact that
the war had impacts on the gender relation through explaining the historical
facts. Instead, they should have made sense of the historical events. For
instance, Maryam Pouya in her book, Women, work, Islamism (1999), deals
with the impact of the war on womens labor and employment. She maintains,
Following the Iran-Iraq war the Islamic states economic and gender and
employment policies changed In this period, the policy of sex segregation
6

began to adapt (1999, 77). However, she does not examine why the war made
adaption of the policy of sex segregation easier and crucial. In other words, she
does not recognize the martyrological origin of sex segregation provided by the
war.
Indeed, Sanam Vakils book, Women and Politics in the Islamic Republic
of Iran (2011), one of the books in this matter published after the controversial
2009 presidential election, suffers from the same shortcoming. She quotes from
Parvin Paidar, an Iranian gender scholar who acknowledges the centrality of
gender relations in the political ideology of Islam and in the creation of the new
government (57). Surprisingly, she does not discuss the reasons for the
centrality of gender relations and the role of the Iran-Iraq war in formation of a
new gender construction. In addition, it is not clear how a book can be about
women and politics in the Islamic republic without discussing the role of war in
creating a new political establishment and womanhood.6
Additionally, Janet Afary, the prominent Iranian historian, has an
interesting book, Sexual Politics in Modern Iran (2009), on Irans modern
history of sexuality. The book is about the political dimension of sexuality in
Iran in the eve of its modern era as well as under the Islamic republic. Afary in
her book takes a Foucauldian approach. The book provides illuminating insights
about the role of sexuality in Qajars period as well as under the Pahlavis
modernization. She rightly mentions that The 1979 Islamic Revolution was not

What is more surprising is in Hammed Shahidians two-volume book entitled Women in Iran:
Gender Politics in the Islamic Iran, volume one, and Emerging Voices in the Womens
Movement (volume two), he barely mentions Iran-Iraq war once in the entire two-volume book.
The book is supposedly about the Islamic republics gender policies without taking the logic of
the war in the emergence of new gender policies in the post-revolutionary Iran.

a wholesome return to the past; rather, the new state reinvented and expanded
certain retrogressive gender and cultural practices and presented them as what
Foucault has called a regime of truth through modern technologies of power
(2009, 269). However, the book does not discuss the martyrological origins of
the Islamic republics sexual politics. It was exclusively during the war that
martyrdom becomes an essential part of the construction of gender. In fact, as I
mentioned before, through the regime of martyrdom, the destructive violence of
the war was transformed into the constructive violence of producing a new
womanhood. The war gave Iranians a new set of duties exclusively based on
gender, and martyrs sacrifice defined a new obligation for women. Those
obligations were enforced though the Islamic republics bureaucratic apparatus.
Hence, the martyrological dimensions of the sexual politics in the Islamic
republic were only provided by the war. Although the Islamic republics goal
was creating a new Shia human, it implemented a gendered politics of body. In
fact, what linked the female body to the male body was martyrdom. Therefore,
disregarding the logic of the war means that the essential part of the Islamic
republics sexual politics, as well as the martyrological origins of the Islamic
republic itself remains unknown to us.7
On the other hand, the second category of books that are written about
the formation of the Islamic republic are almost silent about the martyrological

Although she dedicates only three pages, 297-300, to the war and women, but she makes good
quotes. She quotes from Sima Nahan, a basijid Sister, The Zainab Sisters became more
aggressive whenever there was a particularly bloody confrontation at the fronts, [perhaps] to
confirm the righteousness of a ubiquitous slogan, a message from the Unknown
Soldiers/Martyr: Sister, your hejab is more devastating to the enemy than shedding my blood
(in Afary 2006, 297). Afary does not explain the logic of a gendered discourse and its
implications for women as well as the Islamic republics sexual policies.

origins of womens and mens obedience in the formation of the Islamic

republic. As we will be seeing in this paper, the womens issues, for example the
regulation of the female body, found a martyrological dimension during the
wartime in the Islamic republics sexual policies. Indeed, it was the
martyrological origins of the Islamic republic that made it able to become the
mere authority to exercise power over Iranian bodies. Practically, it was the war
that situated the Iranian bodies in the domain of the states jurisdiction. The
war, in fact, made the Islamic republic the ultimate arbiter of Iranians life and
death. This understanding is absent from the books dealing with the formation
of the Islamic republic. For example, Vanessa Martin in her book, Creating an
Islamic State (2000), does not make any reference to the eight-year Iran-Iraq
war. Despite the title of the book, it is not about creating an Islamic state; it is
merely about the causes of the revolution and highlighting some of Ayatollah
Khomeinis ideas about an Islamic government.
Although Saskia Gieling in his valuable book Religion and War in
Revolutionary Iran (1999) examines martyrdom exhaustively in the Iranian
leaders rhetoric and its relationship with the tradition of Shia martyrology, he
does not identify the novel aspects of martyrdom that emerged during the war.
Gieling undertakes examining the theological and ideological aspects of the war
and martyrdom or as he puts it, how the Iranian leaders sacralized the war, or,
in other words, gave it a religious dimension (1999, 1). In fact, the books
analysis of ideology and Shia concepts in the rhetoric of Iranian leaders is
invaluable; however, he analyzes the role of martyrdom apart from the power
relations that the war created. He states, A central place in the rhetoric was
9

reserved for the exaltation of shahada (in this context: martyrdom in a jahad
for the cause of God. The leaders sacralized the war by arguing that death for
the cause of Islam was the most noble form of observance to Islam anyone could
attain (Gieling 1999, 54). Understanding the function of martyrdom in the
speeches of Iranian leaders is important, but a more important issue is to
comprehend the mechanism through which the ideology was formed and its
differences with the historical concepts that gave birth to an ideology in a new
context. Indeed, the main question is not merely about the rhetorical and
ideological usage of martyrdom but is about the actual usage of martyrdom for
making a new Shia political order. Gielings research has little to say about the
wartimes role of martyrdom and mechanisms that were used in creating a new
sovereignty.
Among the other books dealing with the process of state-building in
modern Iran is Democracy in Iran (2006) by Ali Gheissari and Vali Nasr. The
book barely discusses the role of the war in the establishment of the Islamic
republic. The book dedicated one and a half pages to discuss the war and its
consequences. It only restrains itself to say, The war became an important
determinant of the ebbs and flows of revolutionary policies, and the pattern of
state-building. It has been generally accepted that the rise of states is directly
correlated with war-making and that societies that experience wars or
significant social dislocation are more prone to producing strong state (2006,
98). More surprisingly, it states, It is not possible to understand the trajectory
of the Islamic Republics development without understanding how the Iran-Iraq
war affected political priorities, attitudes, and power struggles in Iran (2006,
10

98-99). However, although the writers are fully conscious about the role of war
in the trajectory of the Islamic Republics development, they do not pay
enough attention to the fact that whether war, as a state of exception, delayed
the democratic process in Iran or not. Examining the war and its effects on the
public sphere should have been an important subject to scholars who reflect on
the democratic process in Iran as the book intended to explain; however, the
writers skip over this important subject.8
However, Minoo Moallems book, Between Warrior Brother and Veiled
Sister (2005), is exceptional. The book pays more attention to the role of war in
shaping the Islamic republic. She rightly mentions the relation between the
creation of a new political body and its role in forming sovereignty when she
discuses the Pahlavi period. However, she diverges from this crucial point when
she analyzes the Islamic republic period. As a result, she does not explain the
mechanisms through which a new Shia sovereignty was made during the war.
In the case of Iran during the wartime, the power relations that the war
generated played important roles in constructing a new gendered political body
as the foundation of a new sovereignty. These mechanisms of crafting new
sovereignty become visible when one pays carful attention to the constructive
violence of the war as a way of creating a new manhood and womanhood. The
most active part of the constructive violence was martyrological hejab and

The writers accurately state, War fundamentalism in Iran was driven by two goals: first, to
destroy the old order-shatter the state and uproot its cultural and social foundations; and
second to consolidate political domination and create a new order. The two goals were
interrelated, and they unfolded in tandem, although it appeared at the outset that emphasis was
on destroying the Pahlavi state. War fundamentalism was also instrumental in sustaining public
morale during the eight-year-long war with Iraq (Gheissari and Nasr 2006, 79). The writers do
not deal with the war and mechanism that led to consolidation of power.

11

generally all forms of violence that the politics of martyrdom demanded.

Moallen discussion on hejab and martyrs blood is short, and often she
view them mostly as symbols apart from power relations, which does not allow
her to go further in order to articulate the relation between the politics of
martyrdom and creating a new political establishment. Moallem states, While
devotion to a political community of God was essential in the construction of a
will to peoplehood, blood and veil as signifiers9 of subjection assigned radically
different yet complementary positions to men and women (2005, 109). It is
true that blood and veil granted two different sets of duties to Iranians based on
gender; nevertheless, it is exactly for this reason that they were not mere
signifiers or symbols. In fact, blood and hejab were instruments of creating
new obedient political bodies. The government employed extended coercive
power to enforce hejab and internalize the readiness for martyrdom. Therefore,
they did not have only symbolic significance, but they were also instruments of
constructive violence as the continuation of destructive violence of the war.10
Before I go into more details, I shall discuss the approach I have taken and
concepts that I have applied to develop my argument.
However, she is aware that martyrdom influenced the female body. She
states, In the case of martyrdom, two elements are used to domesticate the

Emphasis is mine.
Uncritical application of concepts is neither limited to Moallem, nor is confined to Iranian
studies. It is a widespread issue among some scholars of the Middle East. The concepts and
theories in social sciences are mainly proposed to explain the Western sociopolitical situation.
Sometimes, they do not have any explanatory power outside their original context. Often
uncritical application of these ideas outside their historical context causes confusion since the
Middle East has had different historical process and sociopolitical formation. Hence, the Middle
Eastern studies cannot expand and hone its scope of analysis unless revisit the concepts and
theories that has borrowed form social sciences.
10

12

experience of women. One is the fact that women enter the sphere of
martyrdom as family memberssisters, mothers, or daughtersrather than
independent individuals. The second element that she enumerates is veiling. In
fact, she does not expand her discussion over this important subject, and she
does not link it to attempts of creating a new Shia sovereignty. Indeed, the war
gave a martyrological dimension to the female body as the protector of the
martyrs blood through hejab. Both blood and hejab created a new political
body, which was gendered. This political body was constructed based on
martyrdom and supposed to be in harmony with the nature of the Islamic
republic.
A Foucauldian approach
In this paper, I am inspired by Michel Foucaults microanalysis of power
relations. He scrutinizes the historical formation of power in his books, such as
the first volume of The History of Sexuality, Discipline and Punish, and Order
of things, as well as in his lectures and interviews. Foucaults account that is
relevant to my discussion is mostly his account that analyzes the historical
reconfiguration of power relations intertwined with reinventing human bodies
with respect to emergence of new disciplinary power and discourses.
In the second phase of his scholarship, Foucault looks at the formation of
knowledge from a new perspective. In his book, Discipline and Punish: The
Birth of Prison (1979), he introduces new historical factors to the
reconfiguration of knowledge. According to Foucaults new approach, the roles
of disciplinary technologies as well as power technologies are essential in the
reconfiguration of knowledge. As he explains in the case of medicine, it was
13

disciplinary techniques, documentations, and regulating practices that gave rise

to the modern medicine. He says:
Among the fundamental conditions of a good medical discipline in both
senses of the word, one must include the procedures of writing that made
it possible to integrate individual data into cumulative systems in such a
way that they were not lost; so to arrange things that an individual could
be located in the general register and that, conversely, each datum of the
individual examination affect overall calculation. (Foucault 1979, 190)
These new forms of surveillance created a new body of knowledge; in return,
new forms of knowledge constructed new power formations. As Rouse
articulates in the case of human science, In Discipline and Punish, however,
the eighteenth- to nineteenth-century transformation of human sciences was
explicitly set in the context of practices of discipline, surveillance, and
constraint, which made possible new kinds of knowledge of human beings even
as they created new forms of social control (2006, 97). In other words, the
reorganization of knowledge, according to the later Foucault, is intertwined with
new technologies of power and disciplinary power. According to Foucault, the
ultimate result of new techniques of surveillance and reorganization of time and
space is that disciplinary powers are producing a new human being. He
believes:
The human body was entering a machinery of power that explores it,
breaks it down and rearranges it ... It defined how one may have a hold
over others bodies, not only so that they may do what one wishes, but so
that they may operate as one whishes, with techniques, the speed and the
efficiency that one determines. Thus discipline produces subjected and
practiced bodies, docile bodies. (F0ucault 1979, 138)
Hence, for Foucault the body is the ultimate aim of power and its major object
to be turned to an obedient body.
14

A brief clarification about the concept of the regime of martyrdom

The regime of martyrdom, not martyrdom itself, has received little
attention among scholars of Iran. The regime of martyrdom, as a form of
constructive violence, is a mechanism of controlling, destroying, and recreating
bodies. It consists of ideologies, concepts, symbols, mass visual representations
and rituals, bureaucracy apparatus, and economic networks. Its goal is to create
martyrological relations in the society for reinventing a Shia sovereignty.
However, my inspiring notion to coin the regime of martyrdom is Foucaults
notion of the regime of truth. The notion of the regime of truth is an
outcome of Foucaults critical analysis of the traditional relationship between
truth and power. In the traditional view, there is a tension between truth and
power. Hidden truth is discoverable through individual or collective intellectual
efforts.11 Indeed, based on this view, discovering truth has a liberating effect,
since it challenges the established situation. Foucault, however, casts doubt on
this account of truth. To him, there is a mutual relation between truth and
power. In fact, both power and truth are invented, and truth is an invention of
power relations. Foucault calls the interconnection between truth and power
the regime of truth. As he describes, Truth is to be understood as a system of
ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and
operation of statements. Truth is linked in a circular relation with systems of
power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces
11

The important thing here, I believe, is that truth isn't outside power, or lacking in power
truth isn't the reward of free spirits, the child of protracted solitude, nor the privilege of those
who have succeeded in liberating themselves. Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only
by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it includes regular effects of power (Foucault 131132)

15

and which extend it. A regime of truth (Foucault Power/knowledge, 1980,

133). Since martyrdom is one pillar of the Islamic republic and because of its
vast sociopolitical ramifications, I coined this concept to explain the postrevolutionary developments in Iran.12
However, in chapter two, after explaining Islamists, who assumed power
after the revolution, reaction to Pahlavis gender policies, I discuss the power
relations that war created to reconstruct a female political body and the
martyrological origin of crafting a new female body. Chapter three discusses the
public sphere and the Islamic republics attempts to turn the cities into
martyrological-relations spheres where it could produce more actual and
potential martyrs as well as veiled women. For this reason in chapter three, I
analyze the functions of rituals such as martyrs mourning and Ashura
mourning to show how the Islamic republic wanted to de-secularize urban space
as a necessary step to turn them into martyrological-relations spheres.

12

In this paper, I was selective about the regime of martyrdoms components, and I do not
discuss the regime of martyrdom in its totality. Economic relations are one of the most
important aspects of the regime of martyrdom that I do not discuss in this paper. The Islamic
republic is a rentier state with high sensitivity about Iranians ideas, feelings, and what it
considers as private sphere in a secular democratic system. A rentier state is able to create a
system of bribery to buy public support via a distributive fiscal system.

16

Chapter II: Martyrology of the Female Body in the IranIraq War

The war helped Islamists to marginalize revolutionary oppositions.
Indeed, it brought all aspects of civil society under the Islamic republics
domination. However, this newly acquired power did not satisfy revolutionary
Islamists. The revolutionary Islamists would not be satisfied with the mere
repression of opposition groups and consolidating power. They dreamed to
create a Shia utopia on the earth. This project necessitated crafting a new Shia
human being. The war as a state of exception created a space of agency for the
Islamic republic to develop a sophisticated system of violence to create its
desirable

human

being,

namely

brand-new

womanhood

through

martyrological hejab, i.e., constructed association between martyrdom and

hejab, and manhood through martyrdom. To shed some light on this
mechanism, in this chapter, I will mainly focus on the mechanisms of exercising
power over female bodies.
The essential result of the Iran-Iraq War was the emergence of a state of
exception. The fluidity and uncertainty of the state of exception provided a new
set of power relations for the Islamic republic to refashion its desirable
womanhood and expand its authority over female bodies. The war created a
source of everyday crisis, which was projected constantly into society. This
tensional situation, which is dubbed as the sensitive existing situation in the
Islamic republics rhetoric, maintained society in a state of influx in which the
Islamic republic normalized demanding for sacrifice and absolute obedience. To

17

understand the mechanism of reinventing a political body and its phases in the
context of founding a new political establishment, Gorgio Agambens
interpretation of Carl Schmitts notion of the state of exception, which nicely fits
with Foucaults account of the relation between power and the body, provides
useful conceptual tools to making sense of the martyrological roots of the
Islamic republic. The state of exception suspended all existing sociopolitical
boundaries. As a result, the fluidity of the war situation gave the Islamic
republic maneuverability to produce martyrs and obedient women. The relation
between the state of exception and the Islamic republics expansion of
hegemony over mens bodies in the form of martyrdom and over females bodies
through hejab is what Agamben calls the bare life, which is the ultimate goal
of a totalitarian sovereignty.13 In the wartime, the Islamic republic by promoting
a sense of crisis was not only more capable to mobilize terrified masses; the
crisis helped the state to reinvent a new Shia. The war stimulated a sense of
collective terror in which the demand for martyrdom and the outcry for more
sacrifice became a way out of the crisis. In this context, martyrs blood settles
the crisis, and hejab avoids the recurrence of the crisis. Hejab was the female
13

Gorgio Agamben, in his book The State of Exception, analyzes the relation between the state
of exception and sovereignty. He appeals to Schmitts definition of the sovereign as he who
decides on the state of exception as one of the fundamental features of modern politics.
Agamben admires Foucault for his analysis of biopolitics, i.e. a state in which an individual is
stripped off all of ones social and political characteristics and is transformed into a sole
biological creature. However, he believes Foucaults advice to less attention to sovereignty is not
useful. In fact, according to Agamben the aim of the state of exception is turning politics into
biopolitics, in which people have only biological life or as he calls it bare life (Durantaye, 210).
In fact, the Iran-Iraq War was a state of exception which made the Islamic republic and its then
popular leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, able not only to act beyond the legal boundaries on the
basis of wars necessities, but gave agency to the Islamic republic to access to Iranians bodies
through hejab and martyrdom. As Agamben states, When the state of exception becomes the
rule then the juridico-political system becomes a machine which may at any moment turn
lethal (State of Exception, 2005, 86). The regime of martyrdom was the exemplary of the state
of exception by which making a new sovereignty based on martyrdom came into existence.

18

form of obedience and a dress code that actualized the authority of the Islamic
republic on the female body, a female form of bare life.
Shia fundamentalists gender discourse and Pahlavis gender
policies
The Islamic republics attempt to reinvent a new womanhood and gain
power over women bodies was facing a big obstacle: Westernized, urban middle
class women that Pahlavis (1925-1979) tried to produce in order to found a
modern political system. Therefore, the Islamic republic to overcome this
obstacle needed to alter the Pahlavis secularized model of women. To
understand the process of this alteration, one needs to look at the Islamists
responses to the Pahlavis gender policies. Some of those Islamists played, both
practically and theoretically, vital roles in reinventing a new womanhood and
reversing the process of Pahlavis Westernized women in the post-revolutionary
Iran.
As a process of building a modern state, Reza Shah (1925-1941) wanted
to transfer the traditional authority over women from the domain of the clergy
to the locus of the state. For this reason, Reza Shahs forceful modernization
required refashioning a new womanhood to consolidate its power within
society. As far as womens issues go, clerics, as watchdogs of the traditional
establishment, were against any change in womens situation that might
undermine their authority over women. Traditionally, clerics exercise a great
deal of power over women through the Islamic Law, fiqh, that determines the
condition of divorce, child custody, the age of maturity, inheritance, and

19

marriage.14 Hence, womens issues became the locus of the state-clergy power
struggle. Reforming womens situation was a way of advancing modernization
and at the same time a way of curtailing the clergy authority over womens
bodies. Consequently, Reza Shah limited the authority of clergy where it
conflicted with a centralized government. At the same time, reforming womens
situation, especially forceful unveiling (kashf-e hejab) in 1936, caused a great
deal of dissatisfaction among clerics. Women became the battlefield for power
struggle between a new founded state and clergy. However, because of Reza
Shahs authoritarian ruling, clerics expressed their discontent with Reza Shahs
gender policies in private circles. The clerics criticism on his policies toward
women became harsher and more radical under his son Muhammad Reza Shah
Pahlavi.
The year 1963 was a turning point for Iranian women. As part of what the
second Pahlavi dubbed the White Revolution, he introduced controversial land
reforms and enfranchisement of women, which both caused a great deal of
opposition from clerics. The Tudeh Party advocated some agendas of the White
Revolution such as women suffrage and redistribution of wealth for a long time.
In 1944, the Democratic Union of Women publicly demanded for women
suffrage by gathering 100,000 signatures in favor of women suffrage. The
Tudeh representatives of the Majles, parliament, introduced the proposal.
However, the bill was defeated (Abrahamian 198, 230 and 244). A later attempt
14

However, the demand for change in the women situation was not limited to the political
establishment. The Iranian intellectuals also were more critical about the repressive situation of
women and advocated more liberal gender policies. As Tavakoli-Targhi articulates, The early
twentieth century Iranian modernists tied the progress and moral strength of the nation (melat)
to educating and unveiling of women, and encouraging their participation in the public sphere
(Vakili 20, 31).

20

by Prime Minister Dr. Mossadegh to grant women the right to vote failed in
1951. As a reaction to his proposal, clerics threatened womens rights to vote will
create political disorder, cause religious decline and social crisis (Akhavi
Religion, 63). Finally, two Shia prominent Ayatollahs, Muhammad Hossein
Burujerdi and Behbahani, forced Mossadegh to withdraw the bill (Abrahamian
Iran, 76). One more time, after the downfall of Dr. Mosaddegh, in 1959
womens suffrage was proposed, and it was again defeated (Sedghi 2007, 96).
In general, the years between 1936 and 1967 were essential for improving
Iranian womens situation. In effect, the policy of increasing women public
participation continued after 1967 to 1979 revolution. Women were appointed
to managerial positions and sectors that were traditionally monopolized by
males. The Shia clerics reaction was harsh to female suffrage. Ayatollah
Khomeini assembled a gathering in Qom of senior clerics, who sent a telegram
of protest to the shah:
Womens entry into Parliament breaks all rules of propriety and is
against the sharia. Moreover, it is against article 2 and 27 of the
Supplementary Constitutional Laws. The evils of womens entry into
society and interaction between men and women are well known Islam
has made it clear what ought to be done with people who advocate the
equality of rights for women in inheritance, in divorce, and such matters,
which are essential doctrines of Islam. (Asnad-e Enghlab-e Islami 1995,
66-67 in Afary 2008, 204 Sexual Politics in Modern Iran)
The senior clerics threatening protest expressed the fear of the clergy of losing
their authority over women. Indeed, the Ayatollah expressed his own
condemnation against new reforms. Womens public participation in a Western
style had great impact on shaping Shia fundamentalism.

21

The Shia fundamentalists gender discourse

In the prewar period the connection between martyrdom and hejab is
absent in the discourse of Shia fundamentalist. In fact, it was the war that
constructed a tie between the two. In the prewar period, Shia fundamentalists
had different discourse and socio-religious tools to regulate women bodies. It
was independently to the war that new mechanisms of regulating female and
male bodies came into existence. In this section, I address Shia
fundamentalists gender discourse, as founders of the Islamic republic mainly
on some of Khomeinis speeches and Motaharys literature, its central themes
and focus as well as the absence of martyrological hejab.
The main departure of Islamism from the traditional Islam is its
conviction about the necessity of the formation of an Islamic state to
implement shariah. According to traditional Shia, in the time of occultation of
the Hidden Imam, since governing the community of Muslims exclusively
belongs to him, all existing governments are equally illegitimate. Hence, any
attempt to form an Islamic state in the time of occultation does not bring about
a legitimate state. Ayatollah Khomeini a political cleric who believed in the
formation of an Islamic state was a leading figure to challenge this point of view
soon after the death of Ayatollah Boroujardi in 1961. Ayatollah Boroujardi,
unlike his pupil Ayatollah Khomeini, was an apolitical and quietist cleric whose
main concern was the survival of clergy and maintaining its interests. In
contrast, Khomeini advocated the opposition of Pahlavis modernization,
especially its gender policy. In Khomeinis speeches, reforming women situation
such as suffrage, and their participation in the workplace and the presence 0f
22

unveiled women portrayed as promoting corruption in Iranian society by the

Pahlavis. As he reacted against the 1967 Family Protection Law by saying, Law
that has been recently passed by the illegal Majlis under the name of the Family
Protection Law in order to destroy Muslim family life, is against Islam (Vakil
2011, 38). He maintained that these laws, intended for the break-up of Muslim
families (Sedghi 2007, 128). More importantly, he states that those who were
engaged in making and implementing the laws are condemned by Islam;
women who utilize those laws and divorce are not legally divorced and if they
remarry, they are adulterous and their children are illegitimate and
disinherited (Resalleh Tozihol-Massael prob. No. 2836, 583-584). Ayatollah
Khomeini by these fatwas tried to utilize all authorities that fiqh granted to a
mujtahid in order to restore the authority he felt the clergy had lost over
women. Ayatollah Khomeini was dreaming of a different society in which
women had different sociopolitical roles15.
According to Shia fundamentalists, the formation of an Islamic utopia
is not possible without implementing a restrict gender regulation and
meticulous surveillance on individuals sexuality. Hence, women, more
specifically the female body, are the locus where Shia fundamentalism exercises
its authority. The centrality of womens issues in Shia fundamentalism is
reflected in the works of many Islamists such as Morteza Motahhari since
1950s.

15

It is worth of noting that Ayatollah Ali Akbar BorqeI supported women suffrage. However,
his possision was less popolur among high-ranking Ayatollahs. Almost, all major Ayatollahs
condemned the women suffrage. Ayatollah Boroujerdi, Ayatollah Behbahani, Ayatollah Kashani,
Ayatollah Khomeini denounced womens right to vote (Sedghi 2007, 157).

23

The main theme of the fundamentalist gender policy is segregation

between males and females in the public sphere. To Islamists, as Fatemeh
Sadeghi in her article, Fundamentalism, Gender, and the Discourse of Veiling
(Hejab) in Contemporary Iran explains, men and women must occupy different
social space, and an Islamic state should reconstruct society from top-to-bottom
based on gender segregation. Traditional Islam believes in seclusion of women
from social sphere; however, as Sadeghi states, Islamic fundamentalism
displays a formative if not extensive change in viewing women and gender
issues (211). Islamism accepts and even in some extent promotes women public
participation as long as the segregation principle is met. Motahhari, one of the
most prominent Shia Islamist who tried to provided a coherent account on
women in his books, The System of Womans Right and The Question of Hejab,
published before revolution, criticizes secular and feminists as well as
traditional Shia jurists outlook on women.
In his books, Motahhari takes issue with the International Declaration of
Human Rights and Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against
Women. According to his account, feminist view on women ignores the natural
gender differences. To Motahharis gender account, gender is not socially
constructed, but he believes in natural construction of gender. Males and
females are fixed, innate qualities not socially constructed attributes.
Motahhari, like other Islamists, believes natural differences of gender imply
different gender division of social and political role. Indeed, Mohammad Javad
Bahonar, Iranian Minister of Education and Prime Minister until 1981 holds
similar natural explanation for gender sociopolitical roles. He holds that the
24

male is on an average endowed with stronger nerves, physical structure,

greater weight, height, and brain quantity. This by itself indicates that he is
made for hard and difficult jobs, and it is up to him to maintain and protect his
family (Bahonar 1984, 160). On the other hand, the female with her special
physical features is meant to bring up children and thus has been equipped by
nature with the required emotions and strong feeling of love and affection.
Therefore, the part of the brain which is related to emotions is more in a
female, whereas the portion of the brain dealing with thought and deliberation
is greater in a male (Bahonar 1984, p. 160). Hence, the social order and
political organization should be built based on the natural gender based
differences. However, Islamism, despite traditional Islam, does not advocate
seclusion of women. Islamic gender policy can be known as gender segregation.
This gender segregation had far-reaching implication for womens public
presence and their sexuality.
According to fundamentalists, womans sexuality has a chaotic/anarchic
effect on the society; hence, the ideal order that Islamists envision cannot be
actualized without regulation and controlling women sexuality. Believing in
anarchic effect of female sexuality has reflected in Motahhari as well as
Ayatollah Khomeini. Ayatollah Khomeini in an interview with Oriana Fallaci in
Feb 1979 states,
The women who contributed to the revolution were, and are, women with
the dress, not elegant women all made up like you, who go around all
uncovered, dragging behind them a tail of men. The coquettes who put
make up and go into the street showing off their necks, their hair, their
shapes, did not fight against the Shah And this is so because, by
uncovering themselves, they distract men, and upset them. (Sedghi 2007,
211)
25

In the fundamentalist gender discourse, as reflected in the Ayatollah Khomeinis

interview, the female body has destabilizing effect on society. Hence, this
destabilizing effect of the female body necessitated its controlling. This view on
the female body is widespread among Islamists.
As we saw in the discourse of major ideologues of the revolution, they do
not draw any connection between martyrs blood and hejab. When Motahari
highlights the chaotic effect of the female sexuality, he makes no reference to
martyrdom as a way to control the female body. In prerevolutionary and prewar
fundamentalists accounts of women the connection between the two is absent.
Prior to the war, none of the Shia fundamentalists have used martyrdom as a
justification for hejab. These two are separated and belong to two different
realms before the war started. It is in the wartime that martyrdom was used to
create a new female body. Thus, the martyrology of hejab came into existence in
the wartime when martyrdom became a daily practice for eight years. This will
be the subject of next chapter.
The Revolution and its female dilemma
Revolutionaries who saw themselves in an unequal battle with the
Pahlavi regime needed to encourage women mobilization against the regime,
and they did. The 1979 revolution gave power to Shia fundamentalists to whom
womens issues were an essential problem. In general, womens issues have
political dimensions in the modern world, since it is one of the most important
components of any states grand strategy to run a country and its ideology to
legitimize its power. Under the Islamic republic, as a clerical political system,
26

however, womens issues have specific sociopolitical dimensions that require

more attention. First, it is related to the Islamic exegeses. Second, it is the realm
that clerics exercise their authority as interpreters of the Islamic Law. Most
importantly, the question of women is not separable from the states political
power as well as the sociopolitical authority of clerics. Before the revolution,
clerics had no political power, but the revolution brought many fundamentalist
clerics into power under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini who intended to
bring about an Islamic utopia in Iran. The clergys post-revolution political
power in addition to the religious and social authority that clerics already
possessed before the revolution had extensive ramifications for Iranian women.
An Islamic utopia meant adapting a new gender policy to change the gender
relations fundamentally and altering the state-society relations. Hence, it was
intended to reverse the Pahlavis gender policies, which were considered
western and a major contributing factor to societal corruption.
The Iranian revolutionaries used their newly obtained power to
subordinate revolutionary oppositions to create a new order. For instance,
Mehdi Bazargan, one of Khomeinis supporters during the revolution who
became the head of the Provisional government after the revolution, and his
religious-nationalist followers were the first political group who were expelled
from the political realm. Abdol Hassan Bani-Sadr, who was with Khomeini in
Paris and had a close tie with him became the first president of the Islamic
republic, was ousted from office several months after the war started.
Additionally, the Mujahidin-e Khalq was the next political group that was
eliminated in the beginning of the war. However, before repressing any political
27

group, the regime felt threatened by one of the most influential social groups:
women. The crackdown on women started immediately after the revolution.
Ayatollah Khomeini believed women, as one of the major social groups
due to the Pahlavis alienation of westernization were bearing the Western
standards and can act against his plan for forming a new Shia sovereignty.
Hence, the first social group whom the Islamic republic clashed with was
women.16 In post-revolutionary Iran, women were considered a major group
who could pose a serious threat to the Islamic predomination in the public
sphere. Women with their voluntary dressings would develop an independent
symbolic system from the Islamic republics, a fact that would weaken the
Islamists hegemony. They would ask for the right to divorce their husbands or
outlaw polygamy, claim their right for child custody, and demand equal share of
inheritance. All these demands were not compatible with Khomeinis plan to
form a new sovereignty based on the Shia jurisprudence, as he understood it. In
March 1979, only a month after the revolution, Khomeini expelled all female
judges. Also, he made veiling obligatory for all women. In October, women lost
the right of unilateral divorce. In contrast, men regained the right of polygamy
and the right to prevent their wives from entering into paid employment (Omid
1994, 182). However, many Iranian women who participated in the revolution
through mass street protesting were disenchanted with the Islamists
revolutionaries gender policies. On the contrary, abridging womens rights
caused womens resistance. Women participated in mass demonstrations on

16

By social group, I do not mean political groups that were in the camp of the Islamists during
the revolution.

28

March 8, 10, and 11 of 1979 to protest against recent limitation of their rights. In
October and November 1979, they protested again. Moreover, In July 1980
when the civil service imposed compulsory veiling on its female employees,
again women took to the streets in protest, to no avail (Omid 1994, 183). When
the war started in September 1980, womens protests decreased.
The revolution expanded womens public presence and politicized them.
For this reason, in the post-revolutionary context, Khomeini and his Islamist
followers were facing a dilemma toward womens increasing socio-political
roles. On one hand, revolutionary ideology encouraged political participation of
the masses; on the other hand, the Islamists needed to regulate, control, and
channel womens presence in the social space because regulating womens
bodies and their presence in the social space was part of creating obedient
subjects to reshape and regulate a new society. The strategy that the Islamic
republic employed to produce a new Islamic womanhood was incorporating
women into the regime of martyrdom. The Iran-Iraq War gave Islamists much
handy leverage to tackle this dilemma. One of the solutions that the war
provided for the Islamists to deal with this dilemma was employing the martyrs
blood as a justifier for enforcing hejab. Although the repression of women
started soon after the triumph of the revolution, the Islamist revolutionaries
used the state of war to create a new Islamic womanhood distinct from the
womanhood that Pahlavis propagated.
The politics of death: martyrdom and women
As we have seen, the female body has destabilizing impacts on the
sociopolitical order in the Shia fundamentalisms mindset. Therefore, creating a
29

new political order necessitated regulation and a new construction of female

bodies. The power relations that war created, in fact, provided a very powerful
tool of constructing a new female body: power technologies such as bureaucratic
apparatus and martyrological hejab in a state of exception. The war gave a
martyrological dimension to the regulation of the female body and gave space to
the Islamic republic to develop the technique of surveillance of the female body.
With starting the war, a new period of Shia Islamism began in Iran.
The bureaucratic apparatus of the martyrology of the female body
The bureaucratic apparatus that was exercising power its over the female
body during the war was extensive and sophisticated. During the war, some of
the organizations and institutions that administrated directly or indirectly
female bodies were basijid women, the Martyrs Foundation, parliaments
legislations, Sharia laws such as temporary marriage, siqeh, and child custody.
However, the most coercive method of regulating female bodies was basijid
women, which was founded in 1984 after Khomeini commanded women to
participate in the warfront. Khomeini justifies, With [female] presence at the
war front, women not only bring extra human power, but they also create
special sensitivity in men to fight even harder. So, if you participate in the
defense of Islam in military and non-military ways, you will create great
strength in our soldiers (Etellat March 3, 1986 in Vakil 2011, 58). Many
governmental women organizations supported Khomeinis fatwa. The Society
of Al-Zahra, a government women organization in Qom, called for a rally to
support Khomeinis edict. Following Khomeinis fatwa, four thousand women

30

were recruited by basijid women for information gathering and security

activities (Poya 1999, 86 in Vakil 2011, 58).
In the beginning of the war, basij was founded by volunteers who wanted
to receive intensive military training to deploy to the warfront. The basijids
considered themselves as protector of revolution and ears and eyes of the
Islamic republic, who defended the revolution ideologically and practically.
Hence, they were involved to suppress those whom they called antirevolutionaries. By the same token, the basijid women forces were the regime of
martyrdoms operational arms to enforce the Islamic republics gender policies.
The major task of basijid women was to control women who did not represent
the states model of womanhood. The basijid women were mostly recruited
from the south and poor segments of cities (Afary 2009, 256). Hence, their
motivations to join the basijid women organizations were a combination of
social resentment, ideological zeal, and the benefits that the government
provided for the members. Basijid women were granted authority to exercise
their power over other women. They were provided police vans, cordless
devices, and armed male supporters to keep women and youth in check and
enforce the Islamic republics gender policies many times in a coercive way
(Sedghi 2007, 218). For instance, Marziyeh Dabbagh, who joined the Islamists
movement before the revolution, represents one of the women who belonged to
the low segment of society with little formal education. In 1979, she was one of
the Khomeinis bodyguards when he was in Paris. During the war, she ascended
to a military commander. Indeed, she served as the head of Womens Society, a
governmental Islamist organization, during the war and after. She was also
31

elected four times as an Islamic Republic Parliaments deputy in the 1980s and
1990s.
In fact, using women who advocated states ideology to suppress women
opposition to the governments restrictive gender policies such as compulsory
hejab, expelling female judges, banning the Family Law Protection, and
segregation of educational institutions by sex started soon after revolution as a
way to advance its objectives. For instance, on March 16, 1979, pro-government
Islamists, in response to the womens demonstrations, organized some
100,000 demonstrators, many of the women clad in black chadors, rallied in
Tehran to defend Khomeini and denounced the womens demonstration of the
previous week. While the crowd was larger, the Islamists womens
demonstration were enjoyed the full support of the regime, including free
transportation, and freedom from harassment on the street (Afary 2009, 274).
Afarys account captures important intuitions about Iranian society at that time.
Meanwhile, the significant parts of Iranian society cooperated with the Islamic
republic to implement its programs, including its repressive gender policies.
Actually, one of the reasons for the success of the Islamic republic to consolidate
its gender policies was the acceptance and collaboration of the significance of
women due to ideological and material reasons. Hence, the Islamic republic was
able to deepen its roots in the society through taking proactive measures.
However, founding the basijid women during the war was a proactive attempt
to institutionalize its female supporters to enforce its gender policies.

32

The basijid women represented the popular dimension of the regime of

martyrdoms gender outlook.17 In the wartime, the regime to legitimize its
crackdown on women exploited women who represented its ideology and goals
to suppress women who did not abide by the Islamic republics gender policies.
By making alliance with part of the social groups, the Islamic republic uses them
to suppress other rivalry groups. These polarizations of society made it easier
for the Islamic republic to expand its power within the society. To suppress
opposition women, the regime used the same methods of marginalizing during
the war. It used this strategy of marginalization to assist the oppositions to
women who resisted the regimes gender policies for neutralizing womens
resistance and subjugate they who did not subscribe to the states model of
womanhood. The government organized many female militias who enforced the
hejab and the governments approved dress code often in aggressive ways.
The intensity of basijid womens coercion highlights how the destructive
violence of the war was transformed into the constructive violence of recreating
obedient female bodies. Whenever the number of martyrs was bigger, the
basijid women became more aggressive in enforcing the Islamic republics
gender policies. As Hamidian states In the spring of 1985, for instance, after a
heavy loss of Iranian troops, enforcement of hejab was so sever that the police,
in search of violators, even checked waiting rooms of medical and dental clinics
(Hamidian 2002, 209). In reality, the Islamic republic as the possessor of

17

The relation between the martyrs and restriction on women is captured in Sima Nahans
words. As Sima Nahan recalls, the Zainab Sisters [basijid] became more aggressive whenever
there was a particularly bloody confrontation at the fronts [perhaps] to confirm the
righteousness of a ubiquitous slogan, a massage from the Unknown Soldier/Martyr: Sister your
hejab is more devastating to the enemy than the shedding of my blood (Afary 2009, 297).

33

martyrs sacrifices expanded its access to the women bodies as the number of
victims increased. More precisely, martyrdom gave more maneuverability to the
Islamic republic to expand its capacity of exercising power over female bodies.
Associating regulating female bodies to martyrdom expanded the Islamic
republics legitimacy of coercive gender policies. The Islamic republic used
Shias values, concepts, narrations, and figures to recruit women to implement
its gender policies. As Janet Afary articulates in her book, Sexual Politics in
Modern Iran, Many citizens accepted the regimes ideology, based on the
imagined community of early Islam, as a utopian ideal that would cleanse Iran
of a century of Western spiritual pollution. They assumed that the gender
hierarchies of the new regime constituted an important step in that direction
(2009, 269). Hence, the Islamic republic used part of the society where it
enjoyed deeper popularity as a stronghold from which it was more able to attack
those who pose a threat to its survival. This polarization of society made the
regime of martyrdom more capable to expand the states hegemony over society
and specifically on women.
Moreover, the war helped the Islamic republic to expand its authority
over womens bodies through labor. The demand for more labor and more male
soldiers for participating in the war gave the Islamic republic another space of
agency to exercise its power on womens bodies. However, the demand for labor
in the wartime, forced clerics to relax some of their rigid stands against womens
public presence. For instance, ideology of segregation has unintended
consequences. Paidar believes No other aspects of womens social involvement
presented so much difficulty for the Islamic Republics policy makers as women
34

employment [which] different and often conflicting ideological, political and

economic pressures caused extended changes (1995, 322). The government to
enforce segregation needed female teachers to teach girls in only female schools.
It needed doctors and nurses to cure female patients. Consequently, the
government was forced to provide educational and material opportunities for
women to train them in demanded areas. Receiving more education and gaining
higher jobs made women to demand more social and political egalitarian
policies. The result, as Parvin Paidar suggests, was a total reversal of the
history of clerical opposition to womens participation in the economy, politics
and society (Women and Political Process 1995, 167).
Indeed, to gain womens support for war, the Islamic republics leaders
were compelled to listen to womens demand to enter workforce. The same
Islamists who criticized Pahlavis for their encouragement for female
employment now needed to encourage women to join public employment both
due to the shortage of labor during the war or to gain women support for the
war. Khomeini in 1984 states,
Of course, there is no objection to women taking up employment, sound
employment, but we do not want a repeat of the way it was during the
Pahlavi era. Then they did not have employment in mind for women,
rather their aim was to degrade both men and women, pulling them
down from that from that position they occupy. They did not want a
natural growth for either sex. (Shaw and Arezoo 2001, 40)
Ayatollah Khomeini was well aware to maintain women support for war, he
could not hold on to rigid ideological dogma against womens public presence.
Moreover, during the war, government encouraged more reproduction.
To encourage women to bear more children, the government employed a wide
35

range of techniques. It provided welfare program for families with more

children, and it subsidized newborn childrens necessities. Furthermore, the
government used its propaganda apparatus and education system to encourage
reproduction. The propaganda emphasized that women by giving birth to more
children are going to increase the members of Islams army.18 As a result, in
1976-1986, Iran faced a four percent population growth (Sedghi 2007, 230).
War also gave more power to the Islamic republic to control womens
sexuality through the institution of marriage and siqeh, temporary marriage.
One of the first gender policies of the Islamists in the post-revolution Iran was
relaxing the polygamy laws. However, in the wartime with the increase of death
toll, widowed and unmarried women became a source of worrisome for the
government. According to states estimates, there were 56,000 war widows
(Afary 2009, 284). Hence, temporary marriage found a practical justification in
the wartime. Government encouraged martyrs widows to remarry, and it
sponsored marriage of unmarried women. The government through its cultural
industry such as radio, newspaper, television, and mosques did pursue this
objective. For instance, in an issue of Zan-e Rouz, Todays Women, (8 June
1985), an unmarried woman is advised that she should consider marrying a
suitable man. The state provided also material assistance such as loans for lowincome couples that wanted to remarry.

In 1982, Irans population estimated, estimated at 41.2 million, was growing at a rate of 3.1
percent per year(Mossavar-Rahmani 1983, 257).
18

36

More importantly, the burden of taking care of disabled veterans of the

war on the government forced it to encourage young women to marry the
victims. In this regard, Ayatollah Khomeini maintains,
The marriage of a young girl [to] a Guard who lost both of his arms
an [suffered injury to] both eyes That brave girl said, Since I could
not go to the front, let me offer my faith to this Revolution with this
marriage. The greatness of this act, its human value and Divine
greatness blessing cannot be expressed (cited in Women in the
Islamic Republic of Iran, Sedghi, 215)
By encouraging its female supports to marry victims of the war, the Islamic
republic exploited marriage and specifically womens sexuality for its war
efforts. Women sexuality in this respect is a political matter regulated by the
Islamic republic war objective. Hence, the war and martyrdom through
institution of marriage provided new networks of power relations for the Islamic
republic to expand its domination over women sexuality and their bodies in
general.
Another tool that the Islamic republic used to regulate female bodies in
the war was legal regulation. During the war, legal regulations of the female
body found martyrological dimension.19 One of the important bills that the first
Parliament (Majlas), 1980-1984, considered was a bill about temporal duration
of womens public service. The bill only allowed women to work part-time in the
public sector. In fact, the shortage of labor in the wartime made female labor
19

It does not mean that other tecniques or justifications for regulating women body was not
used. Zahra Rahnavard, a spoke person on womens issues, to defend Islamic republics labor
policies toward women against Pahlavis, uses womens houshold argument. In 1981, she states,
Women under the previous system entered employment for a number of reasons: the hatared
of family life; to be independent; to help the family budget as the mans earnings were not
enough; a few because of their specialization, but generally insecurityin relation to the family.
The Shas objective was therefore to disturb family life, to increase bureacracy. To create sexual
chaos, and generally to create pro-western family life (Poya 1999, 79).

37

crucial to run the economy. The government, at the same time, could not agree
with unconditional presence of women in the workforce and in general in the
public. For example, Zahra Rahnavard20, a government spoke person challenges
the idea of women employment in 1980 by saying,
Women priority is to bring up children and perform domestic duties.
Only under certain circumstances could women go out to work. If their
domestic duties are not neglected and if this work is to promote Islamic
values. Under present economic difficulties, where women are forced to
go out work, the government must promote mens employment enabling
them to maintain their families. (Poya 1999, 79-80)
Zahra Rahnavard appeals to one of the central Islamists gender principle, i.e. is
the priority of womens household duties and their conditional public presence.
The public, according to Islamist gender vision, is essentially masculine space
and must remain male-dominated unless there is a critical demand for womens
public participation. The war was one of those crucial moments that
necessitated womens public participation.
In the first Majlas, womens part-time employment in the public service
caused controversial debates between deputies. Opponents and proponents of
the bill used two sets of argument against womens public service. First group of
arguments highlighted the incompatibility between womens household duties
with their public employment tasks. Deputy Akhtari as an opponent to the bill
stated, If women start working. We will no longer have mother who will raise a
man like the great leader of the revolution [Khomeini], or Beheshti and

20 Mir Hussein Mousavi and

his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, one of the major Islamist women, both
practically and theoretically defended the wartime Islamic republics desirable womanhood.
However, now they are under the house arrest since February 2011.

38

Motahari, and other great men in the world (Majles Proceeding, 3 Esfand,
1361).
However, the second category of arguments for and against the bill was
martyrological. For instance, Deputy Kiavash who supported the bill believed
that women should do their households duties first since, according to him,
womens major duty was to marry and give birth to martyrs (Esfandiary 1994,
72). In the case of Deputy Kiavash, womens labor is acceptable to the extent
that it is not at odd with their major task as producers of martyrs. In other
words, martyrdom designates womens private and public tasks. It determinates
how many hours women are allowed to be engaged in workforce and how many
hours they must dedicate to nurturing potential martyrs. Finally, one year after
the bill was introduced, it enacted in November 1983.
Another bill in the first Majles, which dealt with martyrs widows right of
child custody. According to Shia fiqh, custody of children belongs to paternal
relatives. Indeed, Shariah stipulates that if a widow remarried, she will lose all
her paternal rights. In the case of martyrs widows, their paternal family took
many children. In 1981, female deputies of the Majles tried to end this
discriminatory law. The bill was sent to the Guardian Council to consider the
bill. However, the Guardian rejected the bill on the ground that it is
incompatible with Shariah (Vakil 2011, 59).
Martyrological hejab
One of the most potent power technologies that the Islamic republic
forged during the war was associating martyrs blood to hejab, martyrological
hejab. In the war, the obedience to the Islamic republic became gendered i.e.,
39

the war allotted different but complementary duties to men and women
exclusively based on their gender. The duty of male Shias was sacrificing their
blood for the state, and women had a duty to protect martyrs blood by wearing
hejab. However, martyrdom was not gendered during the revolution. Both men
and women were called to shed their blood for the victory of the revolution. As
Moallem mentions, during the revolutionary period, the will to die for the
revolution was neither uniquely gendered nor based on adherence to Islamic
religion (2005, 108). It was due to the war that martyrdom became gendered.
The Islamic republic designated certain duties to women, i.e., guardians
of martyrs blood by martyrs blood. Associating martyrs blood to hejab and
producing beliefs and practices that the latter has capacity, and in fact must
guard the former, was a forged connection based on the Islamic republics
fundamental need, i.e., absolute submission. Martyrdom was the absolute form
of masculine submission as hejab was the female form of absolute obedience.
When a state has produced absolute obedient subjects, it has acquired absolute
domination. In reality, the total outcome of martyrological hejab was creating a
new ummathood, a community of Shia based on martyrdom, who were loyal to
the Islamic republic and more precisely to Ayatollah Khomeini. Compulsory
hejab, as a form of power strategy, grew more effective while the regime of
martyrdom associated it with martyrs blood. For these reasons, martyrological
hejab became a potent power instrument to construct obedient female bodies.
The Islamic republic used its cultural industry such as state television,
magazines, schools, universities, textbooks, street walls, billboards, stories,
slogans, and posthumous messages that were attributed to martyrs to fabricate
40

a female body based on martyrological hejab. Association between martyrs

blood and hejab is reflected in martyrs posthumous messages that the
government promoted widely during the war. In the wartime, one of the tools of
reinventing a new womanhood was published and mass reproduced martyrs
posthumous messages in the governments magazines and newspapers, or they
were broadcasted by state-run television. In the martyrs posthumous messages,
the effects of their message run deeper on their audiences because the speakers
are martyrs who sacrifice their lives. When a martyr talks about his sacrifice, its
purpose, and implications, opposing them is opposing the most sacred
members of society. In fact, opposing the sacredness of martyrs place the
opponents in the margin of society where punishing the marginalized members
is easier and justifiable by the ultimate possessor of the martyrs blood, i.e. the
Islamic republic. The Islamic republic made martyrs speak in order to acquire
new technologies of subjugation. For this reason, the martyrs wills are
important to understand the mechanism of subjugation that emerged during
the war.
In his will, martyr Ahmad Ahmad-nejad explains, I request my sisters to
strike a strong blow on the mouth of imperialism and internal antirevolutionaries with their hejab. Your hejab has a higher place before God than
the martyrs blood that has been shed on the ground. I ask you to convey my
message to all of my sisters (Site-e Jama Defa Moqadas, SAJED). In the
martyr Ahmad-nejads account, hejab is a political tool. Hejab not only
represents a new form of womanhood that is obedient to the Islamic republic, it
is also a way of denouncing the Islamic republics rivals, namely imperialism
41

and internal anti-revolutionaries. According to Ahmad-nejads will, Hejab

should determine the direction of rage. It also should be used by women to
marginalize the Islamic republics rivals in a violent way. The second part of his
advice is a comparison between the dignity of his own blood and hejab before
God. In the mentality of his religious audiences, he as a martyr belongs to the
realm of afterlife where he has a shorter distance to God; therefore, he is able to
assess the higher dignity of his blood as a martyr and hejab. Through this
mentality, his advice became more compelling and plausible for his female
religious audience. In the case of abandoning martyrs advices about hejab, not
only was there a symbolic punishment for women, it was also actual
punishment.
Additionally, martyr Abdollah Mahmoodi makes the same comparison
between his blood and chador, a form of all-enveloping veiling, often black, that
covers a womans body from head to toe, in his will. He maintains, My religious
sister! The black chador that covers you is more profound than my blood
(Shahid News). Martyr Mahmoodi not only gives a higher place to hejab than
his blood, but he suggests his preferable hejab, black chador, which was
considered as complete hejab in the Islamic republic rank of covering. Indeed,
martyr Mohammad Ali Farzaneh believes that womens hejab is more potent
than his blood. He advises women, My sisters! Like Zaynab preserve your
hejab, which is more profound than my blood (Shahid News). Martyr
Farzanehs advice is multifold. He gives hejab a symbolic meaning, which
contains a religious message. Same as Zaynab, who defended the martyrdom of
Imam Hussien, his brother, hejab has the same representational connotation,
42

i.e., defending the act of sacrifice. Because sacrifice will go in vain if it has no
defender, the martyrs blood will go in vain without chador as the defender and
messenger of sacrifice. In the Shia Imam Hussein martyrologies, Zaynab is the
person who defended her brothers innocence and sacrifice in the face of the
Omayyad tyrant, Yazid. Hence, womens chador in the wartimes discourse is
considered as a Zaynabid act, to defend the martyrs sacrifices in the face of
global arrogance and their internal puppets. By the same rationale, martyr
Abyaran advises women to protect martyrs blo0d by their hejab. He states, My
advice to my sister is that if they would not waste martyrs blood, they should
preserve their hejab (SAJED) Martyr Abyaran highlights the protective
function of hejab. Women hejab is not only a symbol, but it is a lifestyle like
Zaynabs to defend martyrs blood. The blood gives woman a protective duty.
Another martyr, Mehdi Qasemi, advises that, I request my dear wife and sisters
to live a life like Zaynabs. People like me protect the revolution with our blood
and you with your hejab, which are more profound than the martyrs blood;
defend Islam and revolution! (SAJED). In his account, hejab is not a kind of
female dress, it is a tool of protecting the Islamic republics authority, or as he
puts it, revolution. Indeed, Ahmad Reza Javadi, who became a martyr later,
mentions in his testimony:
Oh my sisters! Protect your hejab, and you know that womens hejab is
more dignified than the martyrs blood. And my brothers! Dont forget
the battlefield and guide brothers who act against Islamic laws through,
amr be maroof va nahy az monkar, commanding good behavior and
preventing evil behavior. (SAJED)

43

The division of duties explicitly based on gender in the testimony of martyr

Javadi is telling. He identifies martyrdom as a masculine act, and as a recurrent
theme he gives a higher place to hejab than his blood.
The regime of martyrdom draws a clear connection between martyrdom
as the ultimate act of obedience for men, and womens hejab as the female form
of obedience to the Islamic government. In this respect, obedience is gendered.
Based on this ideology of gender differences, what protects the martyrs blood is
womens hejab. The underlying message of martyrs advices signifies the
political nature of womens hejab and the urgency of regulating female bodies
for the survival of the Islamic republic. In this light, the meticulous imposition
of hejab on Iranian women becomes comprehendible. Martyrological hejab
alongside the bureaucratic apparatus of the Islamic republic intended to force
women to internalize obedience.
Moreover, as it has appeared in the advice of Ahmad Ahmad-nejad, the
gendered construction of obedience is excluding and repressive in nature. Both
males

and

females

obedience

was

intended

to

repress

the

anti-

revolutionaries and marginalize oppositions who criticized the Islamic

republic. Not only should martyrs sacrifices compel women to protect the
Islamic republic as a sacred authority since it is the ultimate guardian of
martyrs blood by their hejab, it must drive out oppositions that reject its
absolute authority. Hence, to protect the Islamic ummat, as an imagined and

44

constructed community, the martyrological hejab regulates the female body to

transform it ultimately into the object of absolute domination.21
The Revayat-e Fath, the Story of Conquer, was a series of documentaries
about the war and martyrs and broadcasted since 1986 to cover the Al-Fajr
Operation, and it also shed more light on the martyrological hejabs mechanism.
The Ravayat-e Fath, which aired every night during the war from the Channel
One as a state-run television, is, in fact, a visual-narrative martyrology that
glorifies sacrificing life through mystical as well as religious symbols and
narration. In one of the Revayat-e Faths episodes, which deals with the Mersad
Operation 1988 to block Mujahedin-e Khalqs advancement supported by Iraqi
forces, shows a demonstration of women in black chadors in the street. While
walking their children in a demonstration, women chant Khomeini! We obey
you. The narrator mentions the famous slogan that has a focal point in the
regime of martyrdom, The blackness of womens chador is more profound than
the redness of martyrs blood. Hejab, as the narrator of the Revayat-e Fath
frames it, is the actualization of womens submission to the Islamic republic,
which is justified and enforced on the ground of martyrs sacrifices.
The episode uses one of the oldest tools of regulating womens
femininity: women as chaste mothers. However, mothers chastity has a
martyrological

dimension

in

this

discourse.

The

episode

shows

the

martyrological significance of women as mothers who give birth and raise

21

I borrowed the notion of imagined community from Benedict Anderson in his book with the
same title. Anderson refers to nations as imagined communities. According to him, a nation is
imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellowmembers, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their
communion (6).

45

martyrs. The narrator recites, The future belongs to our children who were
raised with chastity of their Muslim mothers, the true followers of Fatima [the
daughter of Prophet Muhammad] and Zaynab [the sister of Imam Husain].
Their chastity is the growing place of the mujahidins faith who will write the
destiny of the globe with their capable hands. The narration gives a
martyrological role to women. Their role is to raise potential martyrs, or as the
narrator calls it, mujahidin.
The martyrological hejab is captured masterfully in Kazem Chalipas
painting Certitude of Belief, Yaqin, which is created in 1981. Chalipa was one
of the committed, moteahed, according to the Islamic republics authorities.
The committed artists were supported by the Bureau of Art, Hozh-e Honari,
that operated under the Organization of Islamic Propaganda, one of the
organizations that was part of the Islamic republics cultural industries. Many of
the artworks that artists of the Bureau of Art created were mass-produced to
posters or wall paintings throughout urban space. This painting was also massproduced in the Week of War. The painting is full of symbolism; however, since
I discuss martyrological hejab in this section, I will mainly focus on its gender
issues and martyrological dimensions.

46

The central theme of the painting is making a union between martyrdom

and a womans body, which is covered with a black hejab. The woman is holding
the corpse of a martyr whose blood is metamorphosed to a tulip, which
epitomizes martyrdom in Iranian culture. The centrality of womans place in the
painting shows the significant of veiling women to protect martyrdom. The
duties were gendered. Men are mere sacrificial objects and an ideal woman is a
protector the martyrs sacrifice. The sacrifice of martyrs and womens bodies
47

need mutual protection, since preserving the foundation of society necessitates

protecting female and male bodies.
In fact, the painting represents the recurring theme in the Islamic
republics cultural industry about the superiority of veiling to the martyrs
blood. The womans black veiling not only makes the redness of blood stands
out, it is also the protector of the martyrs blood. To defamiliarize the painting
and the themes that it represents, one can replace a naked woman with the
veiling woman who is holding the martyr. In this replacement, the entire
dynamic of the scene alters. In fact, a naked woman would profane the
sacredness of the martyr. She would not be either a loyal protector of martyrs
blood. More importantly, the presence of a naked woman shows the
ineffectiveness of the martyrological hejab and all mechanisms of controlling
womens bodies that the Islamic republic has been developed during the war. A
naked woman could challenge the entire system.
Womens responsibility to protect martyrs sacrifice entered their bodies
into networks of repressive forces. As we see in the left side of the painting,
there are womb-shaped tulips that hold fetuses, which represents one of the
womens major duties, i.e. giving birth to martyrs. The journey that the painting
draws for infants is to raise them as martyrs through women as protectors of
martyrs. As the down right of the painting shows, the end of fetuses destiny
turns to potential martyrs who are marching toward the front.
On the other hand, the painting shows the ultimate goal of the regime of
martyrdom, i.e. absolute obedience. The bare corpse of the martyr and veiling
womans piety convey a sense of submission. The bare body of the martyr is a
48

product of the Islamic republics naked power, while there were no buffer
between atomized individuals and states expanding authority. The Islamic
republic exercised its authority in its fullest when it was able to turn an
individual into a sacrificial object. However, a sacrificial object gave leverage to
the Islamic republic to expand its power over womens bodies through
martyrological hejab.
Enforcing martyrological hejab was also a recurring theme in the Islamic
republics magazines and newspapers. For instance, Zan-e Rouz, Todays
Woman, one of the state-published magazines that dealt with women issues
played an important role to enforce and articulate aspects of regulating the
female body. The necessity of employing power technologies to regulate
womens bodies, comes from a basijid womans article appeared in Zan-e Rouz
in the wartime. Her speech-like article is published in Zan-e Rouz, a
governmental magazine that advocated the Islamic republics gender policies.
The article is published in 1985 after a clash between bassijid women and
hejabless women has happened. In her account, employing martyrological
constrain on women bodies is central. The unknown writer as a defender of
martyrs, with an angry tone threatens women,
We, the hezbullah ummat, families of martyrs and prisoners of war,
relatives of the missing and militants [of the war], are present here. So
far, we have only talked; this is our last talk with monafeqin [hypocrite]
and hejabless women. We all know that not having hejab in our country
does not mean only not wearing the veil; it is a political issue. We
demand the minister of Interior and other dignified authorities to
approach this problem with firmness As a member of a martyrs
family, I tell you that as long as these actions are not completely weeded
out of our society, we will come to the streets everyday and shout so
strongly that we shake the world. We will tell authorities to continue
with the war with determination until injustice is uprooted in the world
49

 We shall not allow hejabless women to appear in public and make

mockery of us. We tell hejabless women that the problem is not that
they do not wear the veil, but do not cover themselves properly. This
anarchy22 must come to an end In schools, universities, or offices, we
will deal with this dross, these U.S. puppets. Well erase them from the
face of the earth. (Zan-e Rouz 17 April 1985: 7)
In the passage of unknown writer, the defender is a female who act within and
through the regime of martyrdom. As she identifies herself, she is related to the
war efforts. The important aspect of the unknown writers passage, which is the
regime of martyrdoms essential nature, is hiding the origin and direction of
exercising power. On the surface, it seems that she and her group is acting
independently from the state; however, many women organizations that
enforced the Islamic republics gender policies were either designed by the
government, or they were supported by the government, and independent
women organizations were not allowed to operate during the war. Nevertheless,
because of acting through the bureaucratic apparatus of administrating female
bodies and belonging to the regime of martyrdom, the state permits her to be a
defender of martyrs. Furthermore, defending martyrs aims at womens sexuality
and bodies by hejab. Not everybody was allowed or had authority to make his or
her narration of martyrs and above this to become a defender of them. It is the
Islamic republic that had absolute authority to determine who is allowed to be
the defender of the martyrs, how they should be defended, and for what
purposes they should be defended. In fact, the Islamic republic by monopolizing
the narrative and possessing martyrs expanded its authority over living
people, especially women.

22

Emphisis is mine.

50

Her appealing to the higher authorities to deal with what she calls
hejabless women indicates the multilevel structure of the Islamic republics
bureaucratic apparatus that exercised power over women bodies. More
importantly, the regime of martyrdom exercised power in multidirectional ways.
The power was not exercised merely form the above of society to bottom. As the
unknown writers account on imposing the state power suggests, the power was
exercised both horizontally within the society and vertically top-bottom. The
unknown writer indeed does not acknowledge any space in society where
women can decide over the bodies independently from the authority of state
since its authority must be comprehensive there is no space that can exist free
from the authority of the state.
However, what is striking about the unknown writers account is her
demand of authority to continue with the war with determination. This
demand is expressed immediately after she asks reacting with hejabless women
with firmness. Consciously or intuitively, it seems that she knew that the state
of war would give the state more space to access female bodies. Indeed, the war
efforts would legitimize this access.
Conclusion
The war as a state of exception made martyrdom a daily demand and
practice. Through martyrdom, the Islamic republic gained absolute power over
male bodies. Moreover, martyrs sacrifice expanded the Islamic republics access
to the female bodies. through bureaucratic apparatus and associating martyrs
blood to hejab. In return, the martyrological hejab politicized the female body
and placed it in the domain of the Islamic republic jurisdiction and entered it
51

into bureaucratic apparatus for destruction and reinvention. The Islamic

republic employed mobilization techniques, and bureaucratic apparatus like
militant groups and militias to implement/build a new womanhood. The
Islamic republic was more ambitious than limiting itself to eliminating
westernized version of womanhood. It took active measures and coercive
strategies of power to give life to an obedient female body.
In the light of the regime of martyrdom the Islamic nation (ummat in its
modern version) is constructed based on a gendered political body through
which women and men have complementary roles to preserve the Islamic
republic.23

Thus,

the

Islamic

republic

will

survive

if

women

are

controlled/protected. The martyrs blood will control womens bodies, and the
womens hejab will protect the Islamic nation. The survival of the Islamic
republic is contingent on this dialectical relationship between the martyrs blood
and womens hejab. The regime of martyrdom to control bodies and to create a
new Islamic nation, as we have seen, meticulously keeps the martyrs blood and
womens hejab together. Hejab was a means to regulate female bodies through
internalization of obedience. Islamists, who would allow womens public
presence only within the boundaries of Islamic ideology, found martyrological
hejab an effective gender policy. By enforcing hejab on women, Islamists
transformed women into objects of Islamic republics power in the public space.
In this way, veiled women became the visual representation of power, which
signified Islamists domination on Iranian civil society. Hejab was actualization
23

Indeed, Ernest Gellner in his book, Thought and Change, defined nationalism as an invented
community. To him, Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it is
invents nations where they do not exist (169).

52

of female submission to the Islamic republic. Each submission indicates a

dominating authority, and hejab as a form of submission indicated the
domination of the state over female bodies. It was not only rejecting the western
model of womanhood, rather, it had a positive dimension. It was a strategy
power to create a new womanhood in which assured the survival and
establishment of the Islamic republic. To impose its gender policies, the Islamic
republic created several women groups.
The Islamic republic made the female body as a site of exercising power
where the regime of martyrdom acts on women to turn them into obedient
individuals through martyrs blood as a power strategy. Blood as constructive
violence subjugates the female body as a site that the Islamic republic gains its
hegemonic power. Indeed, martyrs blood objectifies the female body through
hejab as another form of constructive power to bring it under the jurisdiction of
the Islamic republic as the ultimate possessor of martyrs blood. In fact, the
Islamic republic as an institution that has exclusive authority over martyrs
blood, it becomes sacred itself. Therefore, the Islamic republic, like martyrs
blood, which is the manifestation of the sacred violence, is the embodiment of
sacred violence as well. For his reason, protesting or rising against the Islamic
republic is an act of violence against martyrs blood that entails revenge. In this
context, the Islamic republic has equipped itself with a gigantic apparatus of
repression such as security forces, Revolutionary Guard, basijid forces, and
basijid Sisters to protect itself and expand its domination through martyrs
blood and hejab in the face of threats. Repeating the famous slogan, The
blackness of chador is more profound than martyrs blood, in all the Islamic
53

republics

communications

tools

signifies

its

attempt

to

construct

martyrological hejab as a normal reality not a constructed social advent based

on certain political objectives. In fact, the regime of martyrdom tries to cover
the real function of hejab by covering it by martyrs blood. By doing this, the
Islamic republic transformed both the female body and martyrs to objects of
domination and pure political phenomenon. It was the way that the regime of
martyrdom tried to invent a new ummathood by refashioning new Shia women.

54

Chapter III: The Public Sphere as the Domain of

Martyrological Relations
From each drop of the martyr, which sheds on the ground, more determinate
and militant people generate.
Ayatollah Khomeini
The martyr-producing nation
Iranians in the Islamic republics officials rhetoric
The Iran-Iraq War provided a fertile ground for the Islamic republic to
reinvent its subjects by altering the nature of the public sphere. The aim was to
transform public space into the site of martyrological relations by regulating
time, space, performing governmental designed events and rituals, and
employing a network of power technologies. Hence, employing hejab, ashura
mourning, weekly Friday sermons, and the cyclical martyrs mourning rites,
meticulous regulation of Iranians sexuality and attempts to refashion the urban
space were to transform the public space into a martyrological-relations sphere.
The martyrological relations in the public sphere were supposed to create a new
Shia as the foundation of a firm Islamic political establishment. The new Shia
was individuals who had internalized the readiness for martyrdom.
However, the Islamic republics encouragement of sacrifice put it in a
paradoxical situation: on the one hand, it received vital support from its most
loyal devotees in the form of martyrdom, which assured its survival; on the
other hand, with the growth in the number of martyrs it deprived itself from the
most loyal supporters. The regime of martyrdom was the product of this
dilemma and, in effect, was to address the sacrifice dilemma by producing more

55

devotees who are ready to sacrifice their lives for the Islamic republic. It worth
of asking, How did the regime of martyrdom use martyrs self-sacrifice to
produce loyal devotees?
With respect to the public sphere, the regime of martyrdom used two
major related techniques to overcome the sacrifice dilemma and produce more
potential martyrs: the first was an exclusion/inclusion technique, and the
second was redirecting martyrological violence, i.e. the necessity to kill or to be
killed exclusively due to the war, toward its intended object. The state needed to
exclude its devotees in the form of martyrdom from the society to exercise its
power in its fullest. At the same time, it had to include martyrs in society to
regenerate more martyrs. Another technique that was at work to tackle the
sacrifice dilemma was redirecting violence toward the states intended aim. The
product of employing the two techniques was reinvention of a new nationstate. Martyrs mourning rites were an essential in the wartime to create the
Islamic desirable Shia.
Martyrs mourning rites
The government-designed martyrs funerals were performed almost
every Thursday and Friday in all villages and cities during the war and even
after the war.24 Often the martyrs funerals were conducted after Friday
sermons. The organizations that arranged funerals were The Islamic

24

Homas description is helpful to have an impression of the psyche of the rites. She says,
Every town and every village had public mourning ceremonies. Every Thursday there was a
procession of martyrs coffins wending its way through the main thoroughfares. Where the
parents of the martyr did not have a whole body to bury, they paraded the parts they had. An
arm or leg would be placed on the coffin and mourning and the burial completed It was a
weekly demonstration of devotion, of willingness to suffer, of showing solidarity with the
government. The larger urban areas had to have two mourning days each week (1999, 122-123).

56

Propaganda Organization and The Martyrs Foundation. The Organizations

employed a wide range of institutions and tools such as mosques, media,
religious sermons, specifically Friday sermons, and urban space to perform the
weekly martyrs funerals. During the martyrs mourning rites, the entire urban
space was turned into a site for mourning. The coffins of martyrs were wrapped
in the Islamic republics flag, covered with flowers, and accompanied by victims
families and mourners, occupying the streets. The sorrowful songs and the smell
of burning incense filled the air. The participants cried for martyrs, and clerics
with their fiery speeches tried to mobilize people.
The martyrs funerals conducted within the urban space were effective
tools by which the Islamic Republic employed the two techniques efficiently to
tackle the sacrifice dilemma. Martyrdom as the ultimate form of obedience to
the Islamic republic signified the states highest level of control over its subjects
bodies to the extent that it could exclude some devotees from the society.
Martyrs were no longer among living people. However, there was always the
risk of forgetting excluded members of the community as the most loyal
devotees to the political establishment. Forgetting martyrs or absolute exclusion
is the worse thing that can happen to a political system that needs sacrifice.
Therefore, the state needed to include martyrs to the community again to
expand its power over its subjects bodies, namely to produce more potential
martyrs to strengthen its bases. Hence, governmental designed martyrs
funerals were attempts to include martyrs within the society. Using an
economical expression, martyrs were the surplus of devotees that would
increase the capacity of the future investments by adding them to the initial
57

capital. By the same logic, the regime of martyrdom excluded devotees in the
form of martyrs to include them later in the hope that by including martyrs, it
could produce more devotees. The regime of martyrdom did not encourage
sacrificing for the sake of sacrifice. In effect, sacrifice was a purposeful act with a
certain objective, which was producing more devotees and expanding political
loyalty among its subjects. At the same time, the martyrs funerals were the
frameworks through which the Islamic republic was able to redirect violence
toward the objects it desired. The funerals were indeed tools of stimulating
violence against the enemy.
Martyrs funerals were a battle between forgetting and remembering, a
tool of including martyred devotees within the society. The funerals of martyrs
were to implant the memory of martyrdom in the minds of individuals. The
funerals were intended to stir public sorrow and grief. The sorrowful aspect of
martyrs funerals was highly important for the regime of martyrdom. During the
martyrs funerals, a very emotional atmosphere preoccupied the cities. To
increase its dramatic effects, religious chanting, music, and symbols always
accommodated the mourning. Many participants of mourning became full of
grief to the extent that they cried deeply. The significance was that the
government had such a great influence on its subjects to make participants cry
in the public. This effect signifies the authority of the regime of martyrdom to
affect its subjects on the deepest emotional level. In fact, engaging the audiences
in the mass funerals was intended to create beliefs among the participants. As
Roxanne Varzi explains eloquently, The subject is formed in the reproduction
of social relations and skills. Learning and reproducing rules in the form of
58

ritual actions, through performance, supposedly spurns belief. Therefore, the

states potential successfully to form Islamic subjects is greatest in the complex
maze of rules and regulations (and less so in the visual aesthetics of Islamic
space) (2006, 133). To redirect revenge and include martyrs in the society, the
Islamic republic employed power technologies like martyrs mourning rites.
The sentiment of revenge is the central driving force of martyrs
mourning rites. Martyrs as innocent sacrificial victims stimulate revenge against
the enemy, in the case of the war Iraqi forces, among the community members.
In the martyrs funerals, innocent martyrs, who were killed by tyrannical
enemies, exacerbate public resentment and desire for revenge. The enemy is
revengeable for the crimes it committed against innocent martyrs. Thus, the
enemy is in fact the embodiment of profane violence. Demonizing the enemy is
the attempt to epitomize the enemy as a profane violence. The enemy is the
force of destruction and corruption. Hence, employing legitimate violence is a
necessary tool to deter the profane violence of the enemy from destroying the
society. The themes of many Friday sermons, which were assigned by the
governments organization, The Council of Policymaking for the Friday Imams,
were the necessity of revenge and highlighting the innocence of martyrs. In the
Friday sermons, cleric rhetoricians, who were appointed by the council, referred
to Khomeini and Islamic sources to justify revenge against the enemy. In fact,
Khomeinis speeches set the agenda for public debates, which was completely
under the Islamic republics control. Khomeinis account of the necessity for
employing violence is revealing. Khomeini, in a meeting with a group of the
Parliaments deputies and the Commander of Revolutionary Guard, Mohsen
59

Rezayi, who visited him at his residential place, Huseiniy-e Jamaran, in 30

August 1982, tried to rationalize the urgency of using violence under all
circumstances. According to his account, the highest duty of all Muslims is
defending the border of Islam, and an enemy that encroaches what he calls
the border of Islam deserves harshest revenge (Dar Jostejooy-e Rah 1984, 13).
He continues, I have declared to some gentlemen who were present [here] that
although killing a Muslim is a bigger sin than any other sins, and even bigger sin
than polytheism, Islam that has advised about [life of] Muslims and to avoid
killing Muslims, one of its jihads rules is that if infidels (kufar) put front and
used some of these Muslims, these jurists, and these scholars as human shield
to advance [militarily], this Islam commanded to kill them all (Dar Jostejooy-e
Rah 1984, 13). In effect, Khomeini introduces a universal and absolute principle
about the urgency of revenge against whom he categorizes as infidels and even
against Muslims who have been used as human shields. If the enemy attacks
Muslims, an unconditional revenge is mandatory. Even if the enemy uses some
Muslims as human shields, and there is the risk of killing innocent Muslims,
revenge is legitimate and should not be disregarded.
By the same token, Khaminei justified using violence against enemies by
demonizing them in one of his Friday sermons in 1984. He introduces the
object of revenge as fitna, which in Quranic terminology means disintegration
or sedition against a Muslim community. In his account, the Iraqi invasion was
merely an instrument of a global plot against the Islamic republic implemented
by Saddam Hussein. He declared with respect to fitna, God had made clear in
al-Anfal VIII: 39 what the duty of Iranian was: Fighting until fitna, which had
60

been caused by colonialism and arrogance, was eradicated from the entire
world. Irans struggle would continue until this goal was achieved (quoted in
Gieling 1999, 58). In fact, Khamenei not only justified the necessity of revenge,
but he expanded the object of revenge. The revenge should not be limited to
Iraqi forces, it should also aim at what he called colonialism and arrogance since
according to his assessment, those forces had used Iraq to actualize their plan to
destroy the Islamic republic. Therefore, venting violence against the enemy is
not only justifiable but a duty of Iranians. For this reason, despite Rene Girards
account on the role of rites to avoid reciprocal violence, the role of the rite of
martyrs mourning in the context of the Iran-Iraq War was stimulating violence
and redirecting it against certain enemies here and now.

The above painting, Ya Thar Allah, which was mass-produced by The

Center of Islamic Thought and Art in 1980 in the occasion of the Week of War,
captures the revengeful nature of martyrdom and the direction that it should be
vented. In the painting from the disintegrated leg of the martyr, the banner of
Ya Thar Allah is held upright. In Arabic, Thar means vengeance, and Thar
61

Allah is one of Imam Husseins epithets that Shia has attributed to him
throughout its history. The slogan, as Shias understand, suggests the necessity
of taking Husseins blood revenge. The poster represents the Islamic republics
approach toward the violence that the war generated. The first approach was by
associating its martyrs to Shia theology; it tried to represent the violence of the
war as a continuation in the Shia history for taking Husseins revenge. By
representing the war as divine and sacred, while the Islamic republic is
redirecting violence, the state hides the nature of violence and its purpose. The
second is shifting the locus of authority from Shia Imams to a political
establishment here and now by stimulating revenge and redirecting it toward its
desired object since the violence that the Islamic republic employed, channeled,
and stimulated was sacred. In fact, as the presence of Shia figures and symbols
in general and Hussein in particular is to represent the Islamic republic as the
possessor and conductor of Hussiens revenge. The Islamic republic by claiming
Husseins revenge, in fact, claimed the authority of Shia Imams. Indeed, it is
the main function of the regime of martyrdom to present the violence as sacred
and present it as divine ordained act. In the painting, the innocent, fallen
martyr is bleeding on crusty soil while his head is on the lap of an angry
teenager who looks revengefully toward the direction to which the Ya Thar
Allah banner points. In effect, by employing the martyrs funeral the Islamic
republic first stimulated revenge at the same time it redirected violence against
its wanted object. A martyr as an innocent victim shows the direction and the
target that revenge should be vented. The regime of martyrdom utilized this

62

form of violence to create obedient individuals by redirecting and channeling it

toward its intended aims.
Meantime, the fact that a state utilized and directed the collective
revenge against the enemy is very important from political point of view. Rene
Girard in his magnificent book, Violence and the Sacred, discusses the role of
sacrifice rituals in avoiding reciprocal violence among members of the
community. According to his account, sacrifice victims were selected from
marginal group members of society as non-revengable sacrificial victims.25
The function of sacrificial rites, according to Girard, was to project violence
outside the community to satisfy the appetite of the community members for
violence as well as avoiding reciprocal violence. In this way, the community
was able to maintain its order and unity (Girard 1972, 23-68). However, in the
historical context of the Iran-Iraq War, the fear of evoking a reciprocal
violence among community members was not worrisome for the state. The
regime succeeded to repress the major opposition groups prior to the war, and
with the beginning of the war, political skirmishes reduced significantly. The
risk of returning an organized opposition to be able to pose serious security
threats against the state was not high. The Islamic Republic was able to crush
any opposition intended to arise against it. Hence, since the balance of power
was in favor of the Islamic republic, the return of reciprocal violence was not
the main concern of the state. In fact, the superiority of the state enabled it to

25

In the case of martyrdom, despite in sacrifice rites, the victim is not killed by the collective
violence of his own community; however, in the context of the regime of martyrdom, the state
encourages people to become martyrs in the frontlines. In fact, it is the main function of the
regime of martyrdom. The variable of state as the major perpetuator of the regime of
martyrdom gives a new meaning to the meaning of sacrifice.

63

repress any resistance through employing a self-contained violence. Hence, the

rites of martyrs mourning were not intended to protect society against its own
violence, as Gerard believes. It was a device of stimulating violence against the
enemy. In addition to the martyrs mourning rites ability to conceal the true
nature of martyrdom, it determines the direction and the object of the violence.
The Woman, Soldier, and Cleric poster represents the practice of
redirecting violence toward the Islamic republics desirable direction. Although
the object of the violence is absent from the frame, due to the historical context,
the viewer will visualize the object of violence. Hussein Khusrawjirdi painted
the artwork in 1981, and it was mass reproduced by the Center for Islamic
Thought and Art on the occasion of the Week of War. The thematic component
and the form of the painting clearly represent the direction toward which the
violence should be directed. Again the violence is represented as divinely
commanded. The soldier in the Revolutionary Guards uniform holds the Quran
with his left hand while he is holding his weapon with another hand. Indeed, the
clerics extended hands that drag all the paintings protagonists forward signify
a religious fatwa of encouraging participation in the war. Actually, The Islamic
republic became the sole and final arbiter of the individuals bodies by
monopolizing the use of violence and mobilizing the agents of violence.

64

In this light, the state is the sole legitimate authority to determine the violences
direction and the object on which it should be vented. In effect, not only the
monopoly of employing legitimate violence is transferred to the domain of state,
but also the body of Iranians became the subject of the states jurisdiction when
the ultimate goal of the regime of martyrdom was to create obedient bodies.
Indeed, the cyclical martyrs funerals expanded the Islamic republics
power over its subjects by creating a state of anomie. During the martyrs
mourning rites, the entire urban space was turned into a site for mourning. The
anomie of mourning loosened all existing social and familial bounds. All social
bounds, natural fear of death, and rational calculation for self-preservation
dissolved among the participants in the magnitude of collective sorrow and
anger. At the same time, participants internalized death or readiness for
martyrdom by creating emotional bonds with martyrs. More precisely, the mass
mourning created a transcendental realm within the social reality in which
65

martyrs, and volunteers for martyrdom, as well as martyrs relatives formed a

new unity and association. Hence, the line between death and life blurred for
the participants of martyrs funerals. The sense of unity with martyrs in heaven
made the sense of loss bearable and even cheerful. As a result of the anomie of
martyrs funeral, where participants social and familial bonds loosened, the
departure from this world became smoother and easier for participants. In
effect, the participants of martyrs funerals, by forming new bonds with the
excluded members of society, internalized martyrdom. Hence, the martyrdom
became more desirable while the regime of martyrdom romanticized
martyrdom by associating it to Shia sacred symbols (what are the symbols?).
The sorrowful atmosphere of mourning weakened the familial ties
through glorifying death. It was in the anomie atmosphere that Iranian leaders
demanded martyrs relatives to be glad rather than be miserable. As Rafsanjani
asked his listeners in a Friday sermon in 22 April, 1983, What better future
parents could wish for their children than a fortunate eternal life, a life beside
the Messenger of God, where they would guard the actions of Iranians? (Dar
Maktab-e JomI vol.6 2/2/62) (translation). The loss of martyrs is no longer
painful, but it is a pleasant experience. Khaminei in his Friday sermon in
October 1980 told a story connected with the battle of Uhud (one of Prophet
Muhammads wars) according to which a mother did not weep on hearing the
news of the death of her son but said that she was happy. The same happens in
this war. Thus he believes Mothers want to be congratulated instead of
receiving condolences (Gieling, 1999, 56). A deep sympathizing with martyrs
who withdrew from the worldly attachments and terminated their lives
66

voluntarily was to make the worldly life anomalous.26 In the states propaganda,
the worldly life was demonized, and demanding for betterment of life was
shown egocentric. The authentic life was afterlife not the temporary worldly life.
The wartime economic hardships also helped to enforce the ascetic
lifestyle. During the war, the state had to adapt portioning food system to
provide the necessity 0f daily life. The shortage of food was a source of public
dissatisfaction and a threat to the ascetic heroism that the Islamic republic was
propagating. As martyr Qolam Reza Naderian mentions in his posthumous
message, I suffer when I see people complain about material shortcomings and
ask for prosperity; Swear to God! One becomes embarrassed [about what they
demand] (quoted in Rahro-e Shuhada). The regime of martyrdom to produce
more potential martyrs needed to loose all ties that attached one to this world.
Hence, the sorrowful atmosphere of martyrs mourning rites had two significant
functions: first, it loosened the participants attachments to life. Second, it
strengthened the participants emotional bonds with death through reunion
with martyrs. In the martyrs mourning rites, the connection of participants
became stronger to death than their tie to life. Consequently, yearning for
martyrdom became common among participants of the martyrs mourning rites.
Topic sentence: Transition from life to death. The state of liminality
between life and martyrdom as the major immediate product of martyrs rites is
26

Omid gives a vivid and dramatic picture of the martyrs mourning rites. She explains, Blackclad women hurled the traditional moans, shivan, at the crowd, tore their hair out and offered
their younger sons. Young boys aged 4 or 5 walked besides them wearing the red armband
which indicated that they were preparing for the fronts. Women had become the guardians of
the coffins and the cradles, the symbols of suffering and endurance. Widows gave long
interviews about the wondrous state of martyrdom and the heavenly experience of bereavement
for Islam. Many declared their absolute faith in the paradise that is specially made for direct
entry by Iranian martyrs to which all should aspire to go (1999, 123).

67

represented in Habib Sadeghis painting (1980) entitled The Funeral of Hearts.

In his painting, men in a martyrs funeral bear a coffin full of hearts. The
background of the rite is black. The setting of the painting is in fact hidden from
the viewer. All coffin carriers who represent the liminal state from life to death
are similarly injured, and cracks on their bodies are visible. At the same time,
they are enough alive to carry what keep them alive, which are their hearts. The
striking point of the painting is that what united the carriers is their tie to death.

As any type of artwork, this piece is open to diverse ranges of

interpretations. However, as I mentioned because of its content and its
distributor, it is highly suspicious that the organization wanted to send an antiwar message in the first year of the war, when the nationalist sentiments among
Iranians was at its climax to drive out Iraqis from Iranian soil. However, one
counter-argument would be that although the Islamic republic employed a wellorganized, rational system of repression, it does not mean that it never made
mistakes, and the opponent to my interpretation might argue that this artwork
68

was one of the states mistakes. However, I think that the organization would
not mass-produce an artwork if it were not compatible with its ideological
imperatives.
In fact, at the first glace, the painting appears as an anti-war piece of art
that represent individuals who are cracked under the heavy burden of the war.
However, a deeper look reveals that what united the carriers of hearts is the
transitional state from life to death. It is the common grieving that gives the
carriers a shared identity. The identity is constructed around the sorrow that the
Islamic republic has caused, but in the painting the prime cause is invisible.
However, as the artwork represents, the Islamic republic is so potent that it is
able to penetrate into the deepest emotional level of its subjects. It is able, as the
artwork shows, to normalize death to the extent that its border is not
distinguishable from life. Furthermore, what gives a new dimension to the
painting is the organization that has mass-produced the painting. The
organization is The Art Bureau of the Islamic Propagation Organization, as a
branch of Islamic Propagation Organization, which was a governmental
organization active in organizing governmental events, especially martyrs
funerals.
Indeed, the martyrs mourning rites suspended all social and cultural
differences temporarily; therefore, it made the mass mobilization easier for the
Islamic republic. In the rituals, the differences are undermined as a preparation
for mass mobilization. The sorrowful atmosphere of martyrs mourning rites
incited the desire for dissolving peoples individuality in the crowd. The crowd
created a secure place in the time of crisis and deep insecurity. The crowd that
69

was created based on the grief for martyrs gave people a sense of belonging to a
group and communal identity. For this reason, the martyrs mourning rites was
of magnitude to mobilize potential martyrs.
The martyrs mourning rites showed the mimetic nature of obedience to
the authority among participants. The mechanism of mimetic obedience is
implemented through a combination of collective revenge against the enemy,
collective guilt, and therefore collective responsibilities for martyrs sacrifice. As
a martyr has sacrificed his blood for the Islamic republic, other Iranian
individuals were responsible to sacrifice their own share to the state. The most
immediate result the anomie caused by martyrs funerals was mobilizing people
in the form of recruiting potential martyrs that were produced by the regime of
martyrdom. As a result, as the funerals were continuing in the streets, many
mosques and governmental offices welcomed volunteers who wanted to deploy
to the warfront.
Ashura mourning: redirecting violence and shift in authority
The Ashura mourning, as an important component of the regime of
martyrdom, had two major functions in the wartime: The first was concealing
the nature of war-related violence through using familiar symbols, practices,
and concepts. The second was shifting the locus of authority from Shia Imams
to the grip of the Islamic republic by monopolizing the authority over Husseins
blood revenge. To meet these two objectives, the state needed to metamorphose
the city into a site of martyrological relations. The technique that the Islamic
republic used was again excluding/including and redirecting and regulating
violence. However, in the context of Ashura, drawing a parallel between
70

wartime demand for martyrdom and Imam Husseins sacrifice was more
prominent. Furthermore, the ritual itself underwent major transformation in
the wartime. One of the main transformations in the rituals during the war was
that, by utilizing the regime of martyrdom, the rituals no longer intended to
maintain the status quo, but they were intended to create a new order.27 To
understand the importance of Ashura mourning during the war, it is essential to
understand the place of Ashura and Imam Husseins martyrdom.
After the death of second Shia Imam, Hassan, in 49/669 C.E., who
abandoned his political claim and accepted Muaviyahs caliphate, Hussein
became the third Shia Imam. Hussein did not revolt against Muaviyah when he
ascended to Imam. However, after the death of Muaviyah in 60/680 and
Yazids ascension to caliphate, Hussein was under pressure to revolt against the
new Caliph. The first source of pressure came from Kufans, a city in todays
Iraq. Kufans did not recognize Yazids legitimacy. The second pressure was
Yazids ruling that was considered non-Islamic according to Imam Hussein.
Thus, Hussein rejected Yazids demand to make a concession of allegiance.
Before moving to Kufa, Hussein sent his agent, Muslim Ibn Aqil, to Kufa to
assess the situation of Kufa. However, after Aqil was killed, he set out for Kufa
with his family and a small number of followers. When Hussein reached near
the city, he and his followers were prevented from entering it by the army of
27

According to Girard, the function of sacrifice ritual in the pre-modern societies was appeasing
the public desire for revenge and maintaining the current social harmony. He states,
Nevertheless, there is a common denominator that determinates the efficacy of all sacrifices
and that becomes increasingly apparent as the institution grows in vigor. This common
denominator is internal violence-all the dissensions, rivalries, jealousies, and quarrels within
the community that the sacrifices are designed to suppress. The purpose of the sacrifice is to
restore harmony to the community, to reinforce the social fabric. Everything else derives from
that (Girard, 1972, 8).

71

Kufas governor, Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad. In 2 muharram 61/680, in the plain of
Karbala, present-day Iraq, Hussein and his followers were cut off from accessing
water. They were given two options: either pledge allegiance to Yazid or die of
thirst. Finally in the 10 muharram, which is named Ashura, in an unequal
military confrontation all of Husseins followers except women and children,
who were taken as prisoners, were slaughtered. Since then, the martyrdom of
Hussein has captured Shia imagination throughout history.
As Kamran Aghaie has shown in his book The Martyrs of Karbala: Shii
Symbols and Rituals in Modern Iran (200), Shia rituals has always has been
part of political authorities general policy toward society since Safavid period.
As he mentions, the political authorities exploited the Shia rituals, especially
muharam to legitimize their political establishments or certain policies. Safavid
invented, expanded, and enforced a variety of rituals to convert the
predominant Sunni Iran into Shiism. The promotion of Shia rituals and
notions helped the Safavid kings to create a distinct political identity against
Ottomans (Abbisaab 2004, 11-18). The Qajars to exploited the Shia rituals and
symbols for political purposes mostly to gain the popularity of masses and
ulamas endorsement (Aghaie 2004, 19-32). Similarly, muharam mourning
played essential roles in mobilizing people against Pahlavis during the 1979
revolution. The Pahlavis Islamist oppositions used Karbala rituals as a tool to
delegitimize Pahlavis by equating them by Yazid. As he maintains, The shah,
the United States, Israel, and Iraq (and sometimes other nations) were equated
with Yazid, and the Islamic revolutionary regime and its supporters with
Hoseyn and his followers (Aqaie 2004, 163).
72

Indeed, they were used to encourage people to sacrifice themselves

against the Pahlavi regime. As Michael Fischer has illustrated in his book, Iran:
From Religious Dispute to Revolution (1980), muharam rituals were potent
tools to promote martyrdom among supporter of the revolution. The theme of
martyrdom was of course central to the revolution. Husain is the martyr par
excellence (214). The revolutionaries according to Fischer did not view
Husseins martyrdom as an active version of Karbala. In a more active
interpretation, his martyrdom is the model for others to emulate (Fischer
2004, 214). However, war gave Shia rituals new dimensions. They were used as
vehicles to redirect the violence that martyrdom generated. Indeed, they were to
shift the locus of authority from Shia Imams to a Shia sovereignty or more
accurately to valiy-e faqih.28
The Hussein mourning ritual, Ashura, is a reminder for revenge. It is a
call for violence that should vent on the killers of Imam Hussein. However, in
the traditional Shia, the Hidden Imam with Hussein himself will seek Husseins
blood revenge in his return in the end of time. In the traditional Shia, revenge is
postponed to the time of Hidden Imams return, which is unknown to people
(Majlesi, Bahar al-Anvar 1160-1178). For this reason, even the appetite for
revenge is not appeased now. But since the revenge is projected into the future,
it will give hope to the followers that the revenge will be taken in the return of
Hidden Imam. In fact, projecting the revenge into future in traditional Shia is a
mechanism of controlling violence and channeling desire for revenge to the end
28

Aghaies discussion on the Shia rituals in the wartime is very brief. He believes that the
Karbala rituals were used both to legitimize the Islamic republic and demonize its enemy,
Saddam Husseins regime. Both claims are true, but since they are very broad, his analysis does
not go very deep to dissect the less unknown aspects of the Islamic republic.

73

of time by making a semi-God figure responsible for the revenge. In contrast, in

the Islamic republics Shia fundamentalism, the revenge should be taken now
and here against the object that the Islamic republic determines. 29 The Shia
traditionalism found that revenge was sought by a semi-God figure like Hidden
Imam in the end of the time.
However, in the regime of martyrdom, the revenge is monopolized and
redirected by the Islamic republic against a specific enemy, in a particular
historical time, and through explicit political calculations. Consequently, in the
context of the Iran-Iraq War, the apocalyptic violence, in the form of quietist
waiting for appearance of Mahdi, enshrined in the traditional Shia, is
transformed to a worldly rational form of violence, while it was relocated to the
domain of the Islamic republics jurisdiction.30 In the wartime, the major
objective of the Ashura mourning was shifting the authority over apocalyptic
violence from the Hidden Imam to the realm of the Islamic republic. Through
this transformation, the agent of revenging Husseins blood is the Islamic
republic and the object and direction of the violence is determined by its regime
of martyrdom.
The blindfolded martyrs poster represents a transformation of authority
over violence from Shia Imam to a martyr of the Islamic republic. In this
representation, the agent of revenge is the Islamic republic, which is supported
by the Imam behind the falling martyr in his Revolutionary Guards uniform.

29

Sabine Schmidtke in her article Modern Modification in the Shia Doctrine of Expectation of
Mahdi (Intizar al-Mahdi): The Case of Khumaini argues that Khomeini claimed many power
that Shias traditionallly asign to Mahdi.
30 The ashura rituals had generally the same function as martyrs mourning rites.

74

However, what makes this transformation possible is the connection that the
Islamic republic martyrs blood made with the Shia Imam, since the blood of
the Islamic republics martyrs is linked to the blood of a Shia Imam. The
Islamic republic monopolizes the divine apocalyptic violence through
constructing this connection. Hence, by monopolizing the divine apocalyptic
violence, the authority of the Shia Imams transfered to the Islamic republic.
During the wartime, the government tried to conduct martyrs public
ceremonies during the month of Muharam to maximize their emotional
effects.31 During the Taziyehs, passion plays representing the martyrdom of
Imam Hussein, the martyrs of the war were associated with the Imam Hussiens
martyrdom. As President Khamenei said in a Friday sermon in September 1985,

31

after 1985 as a result of a shortage in manpower, the leadership had to urge people to
keep supporting the war or to go to the front and during the ashura of the following year,
newspapers emphasized in their headings that ashura motivated large numbers of people to go
to front (Gieling 119).

75

This anniversary [of war] coincides with the anniversary of the

martyrdom of the most noble martyr Husayn ibn Ali, Gods
peace be upon him. He taught us to be neither subservient nor
obsequious to those who perpetrate injustice. He recorded in his
pure blood, and in the blood of his scion and compassions in
Karbala, the lessons of resistance, steadfastness, and sacrifice.
These lessons map out, for the generations to come, the road of
dignity, freedom, and pride. Our defensive resistance to the unjust
war which is being imposed on us receives its profundity from the
blood of martyrs for Islam, foremost of whom is the most noble
martyr, Husayn ibn Ali, Gods peace be upon him.
During the Muharam mournings, many urban Iranians, who did not
necessarily subscribe to the ideology of the government, participated in the
mourning. Hence, it was a great opportunity for the government to reach out to
a larger audience during the Muharams mourning. In this atmosphere, the
government was striving to associate its power with the deepest layer of citizens
emotions.
Alongside the routine martyrs public funerals, Taziyehs, as familiar
rituals to Iranians, played an important role in institutionalizing sorrow in the
public sphere. The function of Taziyeh during the war was to visualize the
connection between the Imam Husseins martyrdom and the wars martyrs. In
this context, the audiences of the Taziyehs were crying both for Imam Hussein
and the martyrs of the war, and the image of the government was boosted to the
level of Shia Imams. Khomeini in February 1987 said,
Think about the fact that the best of the people at his own time, His
Holiness the Lord of the Martyrs [Imam Husayn], peace upon him, and
the best youths of Bani-Hashim [the tribe of the Prophet and Imam
Husayn], and his best followers were martyred, leaving this world
through martyrdom. Yet when the family of Imam Husayn was taken to
the evil presence of Yazid [the Ummayid ruler in whose time Imam
Husayn was killed], Her Holiness Zeynab peace be upon her, swore
saying: What we experienced was nothing but beautiful. The departure
76

of a perfect person is beautiful in the eyes of the saints of God-not

because they have fought and been killed, but because their war has been
for the sake of God. (Workman 124)
The mechanism of drawing parallels between the war efforts and Shia history
helped the government to portray the war as a cosmic war between Islam and
infidels. The rite of martyrs mourning hides the true nature of martyrdom as an
act of violence, and its success was grounded on its ability to conceal the true
nature and function of martyrdom in a post-revolutionary country at war with
its Muslim neighbor. Indeed, by using this mechanism, the government could
successfully silence many critics of the continuation of war and its consequences
by blurring the line between the internal oppositions and the enemies of
Islam. As Dilip Hiro has written, With a war raging along 300 miles of its
border with Iraq, the government convincingly labeled those creating disorder
at home as unpatriotic agents of Iraq(220). The war was an effective tool to
silence critics through objectifying the martyrs blood and suffering.
To minimize the everyday problems of living individuals, the regime of
martyrdom needed to glorify the martyrs sacrifices and sufferings. The
economic hardship of the wartime after the liberation of Khoramshahr
increased the citizens discontent and cast doubt on the merit of continuing war
after 1982. What demonized the critics and ordinary people was emphasizing
the martyrs ultimate act of obedience.
In light of martyrs sacrifices, the demand for material goods of everyday
life appeared more banal. As Khomeini stated, In each Friday and in each
gathering and religious assembly and in each meeting for assisting Allah, we are
waiting for sacrifice and martyrdom. Sacrifice for a great revolution is a mark of
77

victory and getting close to the goal. The end is belief and struggling (jihad) on
its way and the victory of revolution, not life, world and its stinky smell (
Kalam-e Imam 13). The Islamic republic through implementing the regime of
martyrdom devalued the citizens demands of daily economic necessities. Where
martyrs sacrificed their lives and the followers of Khomeini yearned for death,
complaining about economic hardship appeared to be selfish. Despite the fact
that the Islamic republic leaders, as we know today, had many chances to end
the war after forcing the Iraqi army out of Khoramshahr in 1982, they insisted
on the continuation of war.
Blood and violence in the urban space
During the wartime, the Islamic republic utilized all its capacities and
tools to alter the appearance of cities. By doing this, it indeed tried to transform
social relations to martyrdom-based relations. The presence of martyrs
occupied all corner of cities. The martyrs names on streets, their pictures on
walls and billboards turned cities into stories that were written with martyrs
lives. The cities were metamorphosed into martyrological texts. Martyrs were
alive and were living with the living cities residents. As Dabashi and Chelkowski
state,
Between the years 1979 and 1987, 302 avenues, forty-0ne squares,
thirteen freeways, and seventeen parks had their names changed. The
streets in Tehran that bear the name of shohada or martyrs of the Islamic
revolution and the war against Iraq number more 1400. Often, before
their death, the martyrs used to live on the streets or in the in the
quarters of the city named after them (Dabashi and Chelkowski 1999,
121).
However, the changes were not limited to streets names changes.

78

To shed more light on the nature of martyrological relations that the

regime of martyrdom reproduced in the public sphere, one needs to analyze the
presence of martyrs blood in the urban space. Alongside martyrs pictures and
billboards that filled the urban space, one of the manifestations of martyrs
presence was fountains in some squares of the cities that poured out blood-like
fluid. The blood fountains existed in many cities. As Homa Omid describes
those in Tehran, In the meantime the burial-ground of Tehran was given a red
fountain, symbolically pouring out the blood of the martyrs to show that Iran
was willing to go on offering its dead to the war (Omid 1994, 123). In addition,
Chelkowski and Dabashi describe blood fountains as such During the war with
Iraq, the martyrs fountains were the regular features of Iranian towns. The reddyed water in the fountain symbolised the blood of martyrs (1999, 302). These
martyrological constructions showed the practical function of the blood in the
cities.32 Essentially, the presence of martyrs blood in the city signified the
prevalence of the state of exception. It reinforces the anomie in the urban space
within which made the state able to expand the access to its subjects bodies.
Modern urbanization is one the fundamental dimensions of modernity.
The city is not the invention of Western civilization, but modern cities have
emerged in the West, and it represents the major characteristics of Western
culture. The modern city is the physical manifestation of the abstract notion of
the public sphere distinct from the private sphere. It is the locus of social
interactions and, more importantly, the place where a government exercises its

32

I remember from my childhood the blood fountain of Imam Hussein Square in Shiraz. Even
after the war, the fountain had blood-like fluid occasionally.

79

power and fabricates new practices of regulation. The Islamic republic created
wide networks of power to regulate bodies in the urban space by utilizing its
police and security forces, revolutionary committees, basijid militias,
governmental organizations such as schools, universities, hospitals, walls,
streets addresses, and mosques. The Islamic republic was fully aware that
controlling its subjects was not possible without controlling the city. Modern
Iranian cities were the embodiment of Pahlavis Westernization after the
revolution. The intention of the Islamic republic was not only to eliminate the
Western characteristics of Iranian cities, it was to change the social relation
within society and more importantly alter the state-society relation.
According to the Islamic republic, a desirable society was a society that
was filled with atomized individuals without individuality who were ready to
sacrifice their blood for the Islamic republic. Hence to reinvent Shias, i.e.
potential martyrs who are ready to sacrifice themselves for the Islamic republic,
the walls of buildings were covered with martyrs pictures, the street names
changed to the martyrs, mass reproduction of martyrs and Khomeinis pictures
intensified. Furthermore, the presence of Khomeinis pictures in all classes,
shops, and government offices, alongside veiled women, all transformed
fundamentally

the

nature

of

already

Westernized

Iranian

cities

to

martyrological sites. These technologies of power meant to make the Iranianswho were the subjects of the Pahlavis forceful Westernization before the
revolution-to internalize the Islamic republics ideology and power to become
potential martyrs through transforming the city into the domain of
martyrological relations. The city was turned into the site of departure from the
80

world and uniting with the world of martyrs. The city is not a place to live; it is a
scene to be prepared for martyrdom. Martyrs blood fountains were a
component of the urban space, a scene of preparation for martyrdom.
To analyze the function of martyrs blood fountains in the urban space, I
will analyze Shirazs blood fountain, which poured out blood-like fluid, in the
Imam Hussein Square, located in the eastern part of the city. The Imam
Hussein Square was an important mark of social stratification. The Revolution
Boulevard that intersected the Imam Hussein Square connected the southern
part of Shiraz to the northern. Southward of the square was considered the
southern part of Shiraz where the lower classes resided while the more
wealthy people lived on the northern part of the square. Since eastern, western,
and northern parts of the square were filled with clothes shops, restaurants,
shopping centers, movie theaters, and entertainment centers, people could not
miss seeing the Imam Hussein Squares blood fountain while crossing the
Revolution and Imam Hussein intersection. Because of the westernized lifestyle
of northern residents, they were perceived as potential threats to the
governments martyrdom policies or, as it was called in the Islamic republics
rhetoric, the culture of martyrdom. They dressed differently, had more
connection to the outside world, had higher income, and nostalgia about
Pahlavis good old days. Indeed, they benefited more from the Pahlavi regime,
and the Islamic republic not only did not provide them more material comfort,
but it systematically limited their social and political freedom. All of these could
motivate the upper class people to interrupt the martyr-generating process.
Hence, the regime of martyrdoms heavy presence in the Imam Hussein square
81

and the Revolution Boulevard intersection was a mechanism for regulating the
more westernized part of the city while the regime of martyrdom was trying to
project the culture of martyrdom onto the entire city.
The Imam Hussein Squares blood fountain was located close to
numerous governmental organizations that monopolized enforcing violence. On
the northeastern sidewalk of the square was the office/residence of Shirazs
Friday Imam, appointed by the Supreme Leader. The wall of Friday Imams
office/residence was covered with martyrs pictures and governments
martyrological slogans. On the north side of the Friday Imams office was the
Center for Fighting Social Crimes and Corruption, which was an organization
that enforced governments morals and dress code. The center, which operated
under the bassij chain of command, was in fact a moral police station equipped
with arresting vans and armed bassijid forces to arrest anybody whose dress
deviated from the governments dress code. On the eastern part of the Friday
Imam office was a governmental bookstore and publication that supplied
governments ideological books, pamphlets, newspapers, and Khomeinis as well
as other religious figures speeches on cassette. Next to the building was a
Revolutionary Guard Corps barrack while across the street was a security
center, which was a SAVAK station in the Pahlavi period. The SAVAK was an
intelligence organization created under the second Pahlavi. East to the security
services building up to the Shuhada Square, Martyrs Square, were movie
theaters, groceries stores, banks, shopping centers, and a religious seminary.
The enforcement apparatus, close to the blood fountain, was embodiment of the
regime of martyrdom that tried meticulously to transform the urban space into
82

the domain of martyrological relations. Their main function was producing

devotees who were ready for martyrdom. The blood of the martyr defines a new
set of duties for Iranian people. It tells them what they should wear, how to
appear in public sphere, with who they need to make distance, their gender
relationships, and what they need to believe or disbelieve. During the war, all
government organizations close to the Imam Hussein Square recruited
volunteers to deploy to the front. Indeed, the Imam Hussein Square was the
place where martyrs funeral rites took place. The martyrs funeral mourners
filled the intersection. In the setting, the normal current of events were
interrupted in the intersection and streets close to it. Many schools had to
cancel their classes during the martyrs funerals since their students were
required to participate in martyrs funerals. It was the same for the
governments employees.
Since the Islamic republic had a hegemonic domination over the public
sphere, the presence of martyrs blood secured its authority expansion. For this
reason, the Islamic republic used martyrs blood to regulate and reshape the
public sphere. As Moallem states, Martyrs blood does resacralized public
space. The presence of martyrs blood is an attempt to turn the worldly nature
of the public sphere into martyrological relations. Martyrs blood discredits
worldly life as vice and unauthentic. The true life is a death through martyrdom.
Hence, Moallems explanation, The blood of martyrs was a sign that life was
worth living, since martyrs altruism could only benefit those who were alive, is
not satisfactory, since the main purpose of the regime of martyrdom to portray
blood in the public space is promoting the worthlessness of life.
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The nature of blood makes it the most provocative remaining of martyrs.

Its fluidity and red color give raise to the violent nature of martyrdom and
indicate the epidemic nature of violence. The martyrs blood is the reminder of
revenge. Hence, it generated the will for the agent that martyred devotees. The
martyrs blood, indeed, polarized the violence itself; it divided violence into two
conflicting poles: a sacred violence that was used against the enemies, and the
profane violence that was the embodied in enemies. The martyrs blood did not
only signifies his self-sacrifice, it was the embodiment of violence itself, since it
is the result of the enemys crime. Hence, martyrs blood entails revenge. The
martyrs blood is pure and since the martyrs blood is embodiment of violence,
violence is pure too. In this light, martyrs blood purifies violence, and it gives
birth to a sacred violence as a tool to stop impure, criminal violence of the
enemy. Therefore, the blood shows the direction that violence should be vented
and designates its object.
The presence of blood epitomizes the existence of death in urban space as
a factor to dispatch an atomized person from his worldly attachments. The
result of its public display was stimulating sacred revenge as a form of selfpropagating violence. The blood of martyrs was a reminder of death, and the
death was portrayed as a form of self-sacrifice not a promotion of violence by an
Islamic state. Hence, blood manipulates the true nature of violence. The blood
makes an association with death and with the fact that an Islamic imagined
community must be built based on martyrdom. Since the presence of blood in
the urban space was a call for sacred violence, it eases people from terrifying the
nature of death. The omnipresent martyrs pictures and their blood was the
84

presence of violence. The redness of blood symbolized a noble death blurred the
line between living citizens as potential martyrs and martyrs. The state, through
displaying blood in urban space, created an atmosphere of internalizing
martyrdom as a daily practice.
Indeed, the omnipresence of martyrs blood epitomized the Islamic
republics perception of the crisis of the time. The calm periods do not require
sacrifice and martyrdom. If a state feels secure, it does not need to display blood
at every corner of cities. The presence of blood represents a deep sense of
insecurity, threat perception, and demand for sacrifice to protect itself against
all perceived threats. Whenever an imminent security threat is perceived, blood
appeared everywhere. Blood was security. More importantly, the martyrs blood
kept the sense of crisis and abnormality alive since the state of exception
suspended the natural flow of orders, therefore gaving opportunity to the
leaders to act beyond the legal system. As a result, the state of exception
extended the actual power of authorities. In addition, the collective sense of
crisis drove terrified individuals seeking a secure shelter to the Islamic
republics side. The state of exception that the war created increased the
Islamists power to the extent that they found the war, despite its material and
human cost, a divine blessing.
The Mofid High School
To show how the regime of martyrdom operated in an urban educational
system, I analyze briefly the Mofid High School in Tehran during the war. This
example is not an isolated incident. It is a sample of a broader politics of death.

85

The Mofid High School is a good example how education was used to enforced
martyrdom among youths and view them as potential martyrs.
The school, which was founded by Ayatollah Musavi Ardebili and Dr.
Bahonar, the former became the head of judiciary and latter the minister of
education after the revolution, in 1975 in the city of Tehran, was one of the bases
of the Islamic republic. Sixty-six students of the school lost their lives during
the war. In the schools website, a postwar reflection on the wartime by one of
the students, it reads:
In the wartime, the culture of war and front had a special influence on
the mental atmosphere of the school. All together, this school has had
sixty-six martyrs among its students or graduates, who cooperated with
the school. The corpses of the Mofidis students, who were martyred by
monafiqin, were brought to the school for mourning. The years between
the 1985 to 1987 was the climax of these events. The funeral of each
martyr influenced the school atmosphere for days and weeks and
imparted a unique impression there.
Bring the martyrs corpses is the manifestation of including martyrs to the city.
However, this kind of inclusion targets a specific gender and age group who
were male high school students. The interesting part of the description is the
occurrence of funerals in the school and the unique impression they
generated. The inclusion of martyrs that was through funerals reinforced the
sentiment that education was not only students obligation. The government, by
holding martyrs funerals in schools, injected what it called the culture of
martyrdom among students. The purpose of in was to turn male students to
potential martyrs or war sacrifices. This was not an isolated instance during the
war. Alongside the governments intention for recruiting more soldiers from
schools, its goal was to bring the desire for death, the culture of martyrdom,
among youths. In this light, the distance between the public sphere and
battlefield vanishes. And youths would experience closeness to the martyrs. This
immediate experience with the martyrs planted memories of martyrs in the
minds of youths. It was, in fact, an effective way to keep students under the
86

tenet of the Islamic republic by meticulously internalizing power. The regime of

martyrdom, by highlighting the sacrifices of martyrs through mourning
ceremonies and commemoration of martyrs as a sorrowful ritual was intended
to expand its power among students.
Broadcasting martyrdom
The Islamic republic, to control civil society, needed to connect the
warfront with the society. To bring the warfront and society close together, mass
imagery production was essential for creating a picture of war in the image of
the governments ideology. The mass imagery reproduction was employed to
overcome the distance between people in the cities and villages on one hand and
warfronts on the other hand through the lens of ideology. Moreover, televised
martyrological programs created a sense of identity among the viewers of those
programs. What the televised martyrological programs did, in fact, was to create
a form of horizontal networks among the audiences who were connected
together through grief and impression of martyrdom. For instance,
broadcasting martyrs funerals with the moving narrations intensified the
sorrowfulness of the funerals due to the power of televised pictures. The
televised martyrs funerals were the visual representation of power. It was
aimed at the internalization of power and intended to expand the hegemony of
the government within the private sphere.
The Revayat-e Fath was one of the televised martyrological programs
that were broadcasted in the war. In one episode of the Revayat-e Fath that
depicts the Mersad Operation (July 1988), it shows the youths in military
uniforms rush to warfronts from cities and villages. Sadiq Ahangran, the famous
religious singer, recites in the background: Oh! Husain! Still your voice reaches
87

ears from Karbala; Husain, we will sacrifice our lives for you while soldiers say
farewell to their families. After this scene, the camera turns to the warfront
where soldiers are fighting to block Iraqis advancement through Ilam
provinces borders.33 The narrator of the serials explains the purpose of the
Iraqis to invade Iran from the west, southwest, and northwest borders is to
uproot this goodly tree34, that is the only legitimate government in the world,
but it was the enemies delusion. Then the scene shows groups of people who
are voluntarily joining the basijid and Revolutionary Guards centers for
deploying to the warfront. The narrator says, Nobody has known these people.
One more time, they have shown that they are subordinate to the velayat. Then
one of the narrators turns to Morteza Alviri, a Majlis deputy. The deputy, in his
interview, mentions that, People are facing two fates; one is the fate of Safayn
War and the fate of Hodaybe Peace. In the Safayn War, Muslims were not
obedient to the velayat, and they were defeated, whereas in the Hodaybe Peace,
Muslims were subordinated to the Prophets orders, and they eventually
conquered Mecca. Indeed, he wishes that people, by obeying the Imam of
Umma, referring to Ayatollah Khomeini, would find the fate of Hodaybe
Peace.35
In the Mersad Operations episode, while the narrator interviews several
basijid who are deploying to the battlefield, a singer, by chanting religious
33

Ilam is a province located in western Iran.

Goodly tree (shajara tayeba) refers to a Quranic phrase where the Quran says, See you not
how Allah sets forth a parable? - A goodly word as a goodly tree, whose root is firmly fixed, and
its branches (reach) to the sky (i.e. very high) (14: 24).
35 The Mersad Operation was a counterattack to block Iraqi and Mujahidin Khalq army after
Iran accepted the terms of the UN 598 resolution. The government was trying to prepare public
opinion for declaring the end the war.
34

88

songs, creates a highly emotional atmosphere. One basijid student who is asked
about his feelings about Ayatollah Khomeini, replies, Im committed to obeying
the Imams orders, and Im glad to be here to do my duty. While the
interviewer asks him, Since our fighting is doing our duties and religion not for
border and soil, what is your message for people who watch this film? He
responds, They should be thankful to the martyrs blood, and they should not
think that the Islamic republic has been obtained easily, and they, if God will,
will obey the leader completely.
The climax of the episode is when the narrator talks about a great
transformation that has happened in Iran, while it is showing the enthusiasm
and passion of soldiers who are chanting religious songs together. He refers to
the audience while he mentions that, Maybe, ten years after the revolution, we
have become accustomed to these scenes and pass by these transformations
carelessly; however, this signifies a great inward (anfusi) transformation that
has happened among our umma, especially inside our youth. He continues,
Take a look at the West and the East and us in the middle way (Tarighat-e alvustah); it is astonishing that all of these happen under the same sky. Can we
forget this great transformation?36 The radical transformation that the narrator
is talking about is the internalization of the Islamic republics power and
ideology by youths who are ready to shed their blood for the sake of the Imam.
Internalizing this power was the primary goal of the regime of martyrdom. In

36

The narrator refers to the famous 1979 revolutions slogan, neither the West, nor the East:
Islamic republic. In this respect, the Islamic republic is illustrated as the middle way between
the West and East.

89

fact, the Revayat-e Fath as a form of mass visual reproduction intended to

project this power on the viewers in the cities and villages.
Conclusion
The regime of martyrdom was the continuation of war by other means
within the public sphere. The Islamic republic tried systematically to transform
the public sphere into the site of martyrological relations. The war was essential
to transform urban space into martyrological sites where people could
experience departing from this world by making bonds with martyrs. The
desirable society for the Islamic republic was filled with individuals who had
internalized readiness for martyrdom. The eight-year war, as a state of
exception, was essential to help the Islamic republic to create potential martyrs.
The state of exception expanded the Islamic republics access to its subjects
bodies to metamorphose them into sacrificial objects. Without the war the
Islamic republic was not able to expand its authority over its subjects to the
extent to make sacrifice a daily demand and practice.
As we saw, rituals such as weekly martyrs funerals, Ashura mourning,
and Taziyeh alongside imagery mass-production played important roles in
prevailing martyrological relations in the public sphere. Through the rituals, the
Islamic republic could include martyrs and redirect violence toward its desirable
objects. Indeed, the rituals reinforced anomie within the urban space when the
departure from this world became easier for the participants, a fact that made it
easier for the Islamic republic to internalize the readiness of martyrdom within
its subjects.

90

Chapter IV: Conclusion

We are the victors of the war, and there is no doubt in it.
Ayatolah Khomeini (10/10/1980)
The months leading to the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988 are marked
with four major historical events that represent the relationship between the the
war on the one hand and formation and expansion of the sovereignty on the
other hand. In those months, Khomeini reformulated (velayat-e Faqih), ruling
of jurist, in order to elevate it to a type of absolute ruling (velayat-e motlaqa
faqih), mass execution of political prisoners took place, Khomeini dismissed the
prominent Shia jurist Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri from his position as his
successor, and the Constitution was amended to expand the authority of valiy-e
faqih.37 All the four major developments in the end of the war signify the
expansion of valayat-e faqihs authority over Iranians. In reality, the eight-year
war, by generating a lengthy state of exception, helped the Islamic republic to
extend its authority and form a new sovereignty. The war made the state of
exception a rule in which developing the tools of subjugation became an
everyday practice. The war not only expanded the Islamic republics legal
authority, it also enhanced its leaders real power.
Khomeinis major attempt in the months leading to the end of the war
was legalizing the state of exception. Through Khomeinis latest modification of
Sharia in January 1988, the political ruling is granted to the Prophet from
37

One can mention the excommunication of Salman Rushdi, the British writer in 1988 as another
significant result of the end of the war. Khomeini who was forced to end the war due to the hard
facts on the ground, needed to distract the publics attention from his major failure in the Iran-Iraq
War through creating a new enemy in order to galvanizing unity between Muslims against the
western countries.

91

Allah, and retaining the God-given political authority is superior to all other
Shia Laws. According to later Khomeini, preserving the political ruling is prior
to implementing Shia Laws. In his new modification, the religious rules are
subordinated to raison dtre. He states, The state can unilaterally withdraw
from all its religious contracts that it has struck with people when those
contracts are against the interest of Islam and the country. The state is
permitted to ban any matter, whether religious or non-religious, if it is
considered against Islam (Sahif-e Nour 6 Jan, 1988 Vol. 2o, p. 170). The
person who has authority to decide when and what religious or non-religious
matters are against the interest of Islam and state is valiy-e faqih enjoys an
absolute power.38 In fact, by means of the state of exception, Khomeini elevated
velayat-e faqih to the position that a valiy-e faqih can act beyond the legal and
Shia judicial boundaries. According to Schmitts definition of a sovereign as a
person who decides in the state of exception, valiy-e faqih in Khomeinis latest
reformulation is an absolute sovereign who has authority to suspend all laws
and religious rulings if he recognizes them contradictory to the Islamic states
interests.
Another significant extrajudicial development in the end of the war was
mass execution of political prisoners initiated on 29 July 1988, the day that the
Foroq-e Javidan Operation ended. The operation, which was conducted by
Mujahidin-e Khalq, a militant opposition group residing in Iraq under Saddam
Husseins support, invaded Irans western borders on 25 July 1988. After
Mujahidins invasion, in a secret letter written to judiciary officials and top
38

By Islam, Khomeini means the Islamic state and the interest of the Islamic republic.

92

security authorities in July 1988, Khomeini ordered for elimination of all

already convicted political prisoners who had organizational tie to Mujahidin
and Leftist opposition groups. In his edict, Khomeini orders, Those in all
prisons of the country who insisted and still insist on their hypocritical positions
are mohareb [enemy of Allah] and are convicted to capital punishment. Those
prisoners, who had no involvement in the Foroq-e Javidan Operation, were
already convicted for their political activities against the Islamic republic before
Mujahedins operation. In his secret letter after excommunicating Mujahidins,
as muharebs, traitors and enemies of Allah, Khomeini commands for their
execution. He states:
Pity on muharebs is nave. Assertiveness of Islam against the enemies of
God is one of the unquestionable principles of Islam. I hope gentlemen
who are responsible for verifying the subject [apostate of the political
prisoners] act upon their revolutionary rage and revulsion against the
enemies of Islam for acquiring Almightys content. Those, who are
responsible for the task, should not hesitate [or] doubt, and try to be
harsh on the kufar, [infidels].
However, the striking part of his excommunication is his appealing to the
martyrs blood. He insists, Hesitation on judicial matters of revolutionary
Islam is disregarding the martyrs plain and pure blood. In the end of the war,
the absolute sovereign in his extrajudicial edict appears as the protector of
martyrs blood. The absolute valiy-e faqih is in the position of actualizing the
potential violence of the martyrs blood toward his intended object. As we saw in
previous chapters, martyrs blood entails revenge, and the sole protector of the
martyrs blood is the Islamic republic that redirects the martyrological violence
and determines its object. In reality, by regulating the revenge that martyrs

93

blood entails, the Islamic republic monopolized violence. The war provided one
of the firmest pillars of the Islamic republic, which was martyrological violence.
However, according to the mass execution survivors accounts,
interrogators prisoners several questions to determine the heresy of political
prisoners asked them, which are important to understand the martyrological
origin of the Islamic republic. In fact, to clarify the implications of Khomeinis
edict on political prisoners, his son, Ahmad Khomeini, in a letter written in the
same moth, asked him whether Khomeinis edict affects prisoners who were
already convicted or were about to be released. Indeed, he wanted to know
about the condition of political prisoners in the cities other than Tehran.
Khomeini responses, In all above mentioned cases, [prisoners] in any stage of
sentence if they are on the position of nefaq (hypocrisy) they are convicted to
execution. Destroy the enemies of Islam rapidly. In the situation of reviewing
cases, the rapid way of delivering sentences is the desirable approach. As a
result, interrogators asked a series of question to determine the heresy of
political prisoners. The questions that were asked of political prisoners had
martyrological origins. The interrogators wanted to know whether political
prisoners were potential sacrifices or not. Interrogators asked political
prisoners, Are you ready to condemn monafiqin in a television show? Are
you ready to put a hanging rope around the neck of an active member of
monafiqin? Are you ready to sweep a minefield for the Army of Islam?
referring to the act of bassijid forces during the operations who swept the
minefield by simply walking through it. Those questions not only meant to test
the prisoners political loyalty to the Islamic republic and the prisoners tie to
94

the group with which they were affiliated. A negative answer to any of those
questions would cause prisoners execution. However, the last question is
martyrological in nature. It tested the political prisoners readiness for
sacrificing their lives for the Islamic republic. It was a litmus test to know
whether the political prisoners were potential martyrs, which was the ultimate
goal of the regime of martyrdom.
However, Ayatollah Montazeri, who was elevated to the successor of
Ayatollah Khomeini, through the Assembly of Experts, expressed his protest
against the mass executions in two following letters, which caused his dismissal
from the succession. Khomeinis response to Montazeris criticism was harsh. In
a letter, Khomeini dismissed Montazeri from being the next valiy-e faqih.
Similar to political prisoners mass execution, dismissing Montazeri was
another significant extrajudicial act that Khomeini conducted in 1988, since
according to the Islamic republics Constitution it was the Assembly of Experts
that had authority to dismiss or appoint a valiy-e faqih.
The fourth major decision that Khomeini made to expand valayat-e
faqihs power was his order to amend the Constitution. Although his order was
not unconstitutional per se, his suggestion to remove marjat, as one of the
necessary conditions of valiyat-e faqih, was unconstitutional. The previous
Constitution gave valiy-e faqih authority to ask for amending the Constitution
by creating a committee for revision, but it did not give a valiy-e faqih authority
to determine the content of amending. However, Khomeini ordered the
Constitutional Reform Council to eliminate the condition of being a marja in
order to becoming a valiy-e faqih. The result of amending the Constitution was
95

an enormous increase in the power of valiy-e faqih. According to the new

amendments, the position of velayat-e faqih was changed to absolute velayat-e
faqih, and he was granted new authorities such as determining the general
policies of the Islamic republic, declaring war and peace, confirming the
presidents credibility after election, supervision on the well-conducting of
general policies of the Islamic republic, and more importantly, solving the
problems that cannot be solved through ordinary means via the Council of
Expediency. The last amendment is important because it allowed valiy-e faqih
to act beyond the Constitution when it is necessary. In fact, granting absolute
authority to valiy-e faqih and permission to act beyond the legal boundaries is
nothing but legalizing the state of exception where valiy-e faqih can impose its
will without being bothered by constitutional constrains.
The expansion of velayat-e faqihs authority was a result of war, as a
state of exception, in which the sovereign power could expand its authority over
the Iranian bodies through martyrdom and hejab. As we saw in the previous
chapters, the war had vital roles in creating new Shia sovereignty, which led to
the expansion of the Islamic republics authority over Iranians and elevated
valiy-e faqih as an absolute sovereign who stands above the legal, secular, or
religious boundaries.
The state of war, when the crisis was more tangible and the threat was
perceived imminent, made sacrificing for the Islamic republic a daily practice.
Sacrifice, as a form of absolute obedience, is a result of the states absolute
domination over Iranians. The absolute velayat-e faqih is representation of his
unlimited authority over his subjects. In fact, the war located the Iranians
96

bodies not only in the jurisdiction of the Islamic republic, but it entered their
bodies in to the regime of martyrdoms apparatus. For the leaders of the Islamic
republic, constructing a new gender was crucial to establish a new political
system where the bodies of Iranians were under its absolute jurisdiction. This
new gender construction, as we have seen, has martyrological origins rooted in
war relations. Reshaping politics and society was inseparable from the creation
of a new gender construction. In other words, a new gender construction was
necessary for creating an Islamic republic, and creating a new gender
construction necessitated martyrological relations.
The focal concern of the regime of martyrdom was creating a new Islamic
subject who views the martyrdom as the ultimate act of obedience to vali-e
faqih. Hence, the regime of martyrdom tried to create a new womanhood, which
was in a sharp distinction to the womanhood that the Pahlavis tried to create.
The regime of martyrdom employed the martyrs blood to control womens
bodies, since the survival of the regime was impossible without bringing
womens bodies under meticulous surveillance. Indeed, the regime of
martyrdom constructed a new Islamic manhood. The ideal model of this
manhood was an ascetic hero who yearned for death and was ready to sacrifice
his life for Khomeini, while looking down on all earthly pleasures. As we have
seen, the Islamic republics cultural industry such as visual media, rituals, urban
space, and Friday sermons were essential for internalizing readiness for
martyrdom as embodiment of states absolute domination. The Islamic republic
employed all the Shia traditions resources such as martyrology, concepts, and
symbols as well as modern technologies to strengthen its power within Irans
97

society. In fact, the regime of martyrdom, although using the traditional Shia
concepts and symbols, transformed the Shia martyrology fundamentally. The
Iran-Iraq War confirmed the fact that the war was in fact the war of a state
against its own society, to destroy it and reinvent it.
On the other hand, the Islamic republics failure to win the war shook its
martyrological bases within society. The extensive casualties and the economic
cost of the war made many people, even individuals who sympathized with the
Islamic republic, assess the merits of the war and martyrdom in general. The
demands for reconstructing the country in the post-war era expanded the
business mentality, which was in a sharp contraction with the culture of
martyrdom the Islamic republic tried vigorously to project into society. As we
saw, the yearning for martyrdom necessitated loosening the individuals
attachments to worldly affairs.
However, necessities of the postwar period gave birth to a model of homo
economicus, who acted based upon cost-benefit analysis. This self-interested
human being, as one of the unintended consequences of a long war, valued life
above sacrifice. The highest value in the eye of a self-interested individual was
mostly attaching with worldly affairs rather than martyrs. The highest value of
life became life itself. Ironically, the sorrows that the Islamic republic projected
into society as part of its politics of death made people value happiness and joy
even more than in the pre-revolutionary era. The consumption of narcotic
substances increased among youth. After the fall of the Soviet Unions, criticism
against the Islamic ideology increased. The fall of the Soviet Union was
perceived as the end of ideological thinking and the beginning of the era of
98

individualism and pragmatism. Many moderate Islamists, like Dr. Soroush,

started to criticize the Islamic ideology and denounced its tendency to
sacralizing violence. Both Islamists and secular intellectuals questioned the
legitimacy of absolute obedience to the Islamic republic. To avoid the brutality
of the regime, many critics found indirect ways to criticize political repression.
They criticized the Islamic republic through highlighting the collapse of the
Soviet regime. The focal point of the critiques was analyzing the causes that led
to the Soviets disintegration. Secular intellectuals translated the Western
philosophers books such as Friedrich Nietzsche, the German atheist
philosopher, who criticizes Christianity and God. Karl Poppers famous book
The Open Society and its Enemies caused wide spread discussions between
intellectual groups. Their books attracted many youth who were disenchanted
with either Islam or the Islamic ideology that the Islamic republic promoted.
Hence, the twilight of readiness for martyrdom in the postwar period entered
the Islamic republic into a sacrificial crisis. The end of the war was the end of a
period and the beginning of a new era when self-sacrifice has lost its appeal. In
the post-martyrdom Iran, men were neither ready for martyrdom, nor women
eager to bear the burden of martyrs sacrifices that the Islamic republic tried to
put on their shoulder. In the post-war Iran, a normal life, apart from political
crisis, is the ideal state for Iranians to live a joyful and prosperous life. The long
war taught Iranians what they need to sacrifice is sacrifice itself. A

99

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