Decoding Iranian Politics: Friday Prayers and Protests

This is the second article in IranWire’s series Decoding Iranian Politics. The series examines the building rift between Iran’s various political factions, goes behind the scenes of the country’s fiercest political scandals, and looks at how citizens are responding to the country's political climate, as well as taking stock of some of the most defining moments in recent history.

 

Friday Prayers Ceremonies: A Platform for Protest

Since January 2018, when citizens staged protests in many cities across Iran, others have begun protesting at Friday Prayers ceremonies, making their voices heard on both local and national issues. During several of these innovative acts of protest, people have chanted radical slogans railing against the authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The most recent case of such protest took place last Friday, April 20 in the city of Kazerun in southwest Iran. Similar demonstrations have taken place in Isfahan, Iran’s third largest city, Ahwaz, the capital of Khuzestan province, and in Bandar Abbas, the capital of Hormozgan province.

 

So why Does it Matter that Friday Prayers Venues Have Become Sites for Protest?

Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic, Friday prayers ceremonies have always been considered to be the most important weekly gatherings for the regime’s supporters.

In every city of Iran, the Friday Prayers leader is also the appointee and representative of the Supreme Leader in that city. At a higher level, there is also a representative of the Leader in every province, who is directly appointed by him. The Leader’s provincial representative is usually the Friday Prayers preacher of the province’s capital too.

Friday Prayer leaders are the most powerful local authorities in cities and provinces. Governors and governor generals, who are the representatives of the executive branch, have in practice fewer powers than the Leader’s local representatives.   

Friday Prayer ceremonies are always held under the strict protection of security forces, thus making it very difficult to disrupt them. But if ceremonies are disrupted, authorities may punish those responsible by bringing legal cases against them or by prompting the involvement of security officials.

Given these realities, the fact that protesters have essentially invaded Friday Prayers venues, making them sites of protest, is significant. Protesters have not only disrupted prayers and sermons, they have recreated how these spaces are being used.

 

Is there a Pattern to the new Protests?

The recent Friday Prayers protests have been quite bold and innovative — as with the protests in January, people have attacked government failures in a more direct way than they had in the past.

For instance, during the April 20 protest, hundreds of protesters stormed Kazerun's Friday Prayers, so that the ceremony was totally overshadowed by radical anti-government slogans. Protesters — men and women — clapped and chanted: “Our enemy is right here; they [the state officials] lie by saying it is America!”, and even: “We will kill whoever commits treason,” pointing the finger at officials.

The Kazerun protests were against new plans to change the city’s boundaries, which would mean certain historically-important parts of Kazerun would actually sit outside the official city limits. Local officials, who were either viewed as being responsible for these plans or being indifferent about it, were accused of “treachery” by protesting masses.    

On March 16, another act of protest, this time at Isfahan’s Friday Prayers, made headlines. In an unprecedented move, a group of farmers, sitting close to the podium, turned their backs to the Friday Prayers preacher to express their dissatisfaction. Implicitly describing the Leader’s representative in Isfahan as the “enemy”, they chanted: “Turning our backs to the enemy, our faces to the motherland.” The farmers were suffering from the fallout of a severe draught and criticized the government’s mismanagement of water resources.

On April 13, Isfahan Friday Prayers preacher criticized the protesting farmers during his sermon, accusing them of committing “sedition” and “disruption.” On the same day, video footage was published showing women wearing black chador in one of Isfahan’s streets, chanting: “Our enemy is right here; they [the state officials] lie by saying it is America!” This was the same slogan protesters chanted a few weeks later at Kazerun’s Friday Prayers.

Yet another prominent case of people using Friday Prayers to protest against the authorities took place in Ahwaz on February 23. This protest was especially significant because it happened just a few weeks after the January protests in different cities in Iran, including Ahwaz. This time, protesting workers who had not been paid their salaries for a long period of time made their anger known. One of their sarcastic slogans was: “Death to workers, long live oppressors!” Of course, they meant the opposite.

On March 2, the workers tried again to use the Friday Prayers ceremony to protest, but police prevented them from entering the venue where the prayers were taking place. “Friday prayers, beware! We are workers, not thugs!” the workers chanted in protest.

 

What has Changed since the January Protests?

Although the recent protests are in many ways unprecedented, protests during Friday Prayers venues are not a totally new phenomenon in Iran.

In fact, prior to this winter’s protests, there were occasional cases of demonstrations taking place during Friday prayers in some cities of Iran. However, these protests were never as bold or extensive as the protests have been following the unrest in January 2018.

For instance, on May 14, 2017, video footage showing a group of protesting workers at the Friday Prayers ceremony of Bandar Abbas, the capital of southern Hormozgan province, went viral. However, when the Friday Prayers preacher addressed the workers and told them their problems had nothing to do with him, the unhappy workers simply left the venue without any resistance.

The recent protests, on the other hand, seem much more demanding and radical.

Many observers have viewed protesters’ recent invasions of Friday prayer gatherings as a signal of a new atmosphere for protest in Iran, an atmosphere that began building at the end of December 2017 and took hold during the growing protests of January 2018.

This view is more fitting if we take into consideration that, during many of the January protests, mobs attacked the offices of the Leader’s representatives. According to Ayatollah Khamenei’s representative in the western province of Hamedan, these attacks numbered at about 60.

These attacks and the Friday Prayers protests that followed may indicate a turning point, and a new approach for protesters: Holding the Supreme Leader and his representatives — as the icons of the highest level of political power in Iran — to account.