Iranian reformist cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri found death

[VandeWiel]

Komende week kan weer pittig worden in Iran. Er moet een belangrijke Ayatollah begraven worden net op het moment dat in Iran de derde Iman gevierd wordt die staat voor verzet tegen onderdrukking. Een zure samenkomst van omstandigheden. Het regime zal helaas weer zeilen bij moeten zetten om overeind te blijven.

[VandeWiel]

Iranian reformist cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri found death

Noisy demonstrations were reported today at Tehran's Sharif University and at the Science and Industry University, where students held up Montazeri's picture and chanted: "Today is mourning day, the green nation is the chief mourner."

Montazeri's death could hardly have come at a worse time for Iran's Islamic regime, which has sought to isolate Mousavi and Karroubi as the puppets of foreign "enemies".

It came just three days into the Shia mourning month of Muharram, during which the opposition had already pledged to stage a series of demonstrations. Worse still, the seventh day of his death – a special mourning occasion in Shia Islam – will coincide with next Sunday's Ashura ceremony, marking the martyrdom at Karbala of Hossein, Shia Islam's third imam, who is regarded as a symbol of struggle against oppressive rule. Both the government and the opposition had identified this year's Ashura event as a potential flashpoint even before Montazeri's death. The ceremony has a central place in Iran's revolutionary folklore. Ashura demonstrations against the shah in 1978 are widely thought to have played a pivotal role in toppling the former monarch's regime.

"This is the something the Iranian government is quite worried about," said Hossein Bastani, an Iranian analyst based in France. "On the seventh day of Ayatollah Montazeri's death, people will be gathering to commemorate him on the same day as Ashura. Iranian internet forums, websites and social networking sites are all talking about it. This will become a nightmare for the Islamic regime. Muharram for the Shias is the month of martyrdom and protest against cruel government, and at the moment inside Iran, many consider the Islamic republic to be the most cruel enemy of Islam and of the people."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/20/iran-ayatollah-montazeri-death-protest