Abbas Na’lbandian’s (1947-1987) plays, renowned for their lengthy and enigmatic titles, are imbued with themes of desolation, suffering, and profanation as they depict characters who, as resentful members of the downtrodden in Iran, strive for impossible redemption. As a pioneer of the absurdist genre in the Iranian pre-revolutionary theatre, Na’lbandian creates characters who are affected by existential angst; they are perpetually haunted by existential crises for which they find no remedy. Na’lbandian crafted his most admired play, Suddenly: This Beloved of God Died in the Love of God, This God-Slain Died by the Sword of God (1971), in six elegiac acts. The play centers around the tragic life of Fereydoon— a schoolteacher and an alcoholic who has lost his job and resides alongside other poverty-stricken characters— within the dilapidated confines of a shabby house. On the Day of Ashura, the tenth day of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar, Fereydoon is murdered by his housemates in the misguided hopes of securing a casket in which they assume are valuable possessions and gold. Fereydoon’s death, accompanied by recitations of the Koran and the rhythmic sounds of self-flagellation, is in numerous ways reminiscent of ta’ziyeh, a Shi’ite dramatic form depicting the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali in the battle of Karbala on the tenth day of Muharram in 680 AD. Suddenly... has abundant references to the Koran, Shi’ite symbols, martyrdom, and Iranian myths and poetry. In this essay, I will undertake close readings of specific scenes in Suddenly... to delineate the Shi’ite affective concept of mazlumiyyat — the state of having been wronged, which indexes a fatality speaking to the simultaneity of being oppressed and innocent— and its embodied, emotive forms depicted in the play and its organizing tonality. Iranian studies scholar Hamid Dabashi elucidates the concept of mazlumiyyat, derived from its trilateral, paradoxical Arabic root of ZLM, encompassing both "tyranny" and "injustice." Taking my cue from this conceptualization of mazlumiyyat in Shi’ite history, I will lean into the Shi’ite dramatic form of ta’ziyeh to trace its affective realization in the form and content of Na’lbandian’s text. I posit that via the function of voices eluding and transcending the stage, remaining within the unseen realm of the off-stage, Suddenly...emerges as an avant-garde ta’ziyeh.

This article delves into the role of the Iranian Mourning Mothers Campaign as one of the most effective digital movements in holding the Islamic regime of Iran accountable for massive violations of human rights, gender injustice, and the killing of a large group of protesters over the past forty years. Drawing inspiration from Sarah Ahmed's cultural politics of emotion, the paper scrutinizes the Iranian Mourning Mothers movement as a case study, shedding light on the transformative role of motherhood by everyday emotional practices as rich and complex sites interwoven in struggles for social change. Contrary to the approach of Western feminism, which values ignoring the feelings of femininity as a part of the development of the feminist movement, this study emphasizes the role of motherhood feelings in creating political changes and calling for global solidarity by global feminists in cyberspaces. In this study, using the qualitative content analysis method, the struggle of six groups of Iranian Mourning Mothers from 1981 to 2022 was investigated. Research findings show that the digitalization of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran created a new avenue for international solidarity with Iranian mourning mothers who have been resisting state violence. Although the intensity of violence and the number of victims in the Woman Life Freedom movement (2022) were less than the Khavaran event (1981), the current uprising gained the height of international traction across European countries, the United States, and Australia. Moreover, the Woman Life Freedom Movement developed a reflexivity in the body of feminist literature and united Iranian people inside and outside of Iran. Keywords: Iranian Mourning Mothers Movement, Global feminist, Indigenous women, digitalization.

Shia tradition promises divine rewards, believed to aid believers in the afterlife, for mourning the martyrdom of Shia holy figures, especially the third Shia Imam, Hossein. Yet, the young participants of Shia mourning rituals in Tehran rarely present divine rewards as their primary motivation for engaging in ritual practices. Instead, they emphasize how participating in rituals brings liveliness, material success, and internal peace to their daily lives, shifting the focus from spiritual to immediate, this-worldly benefits of mourning rituals. Given the historical centrality of the experience of suffering in Shia mourning rituals (Ayoub 1978), how could we understand these young ritual participants’ emphasis on narratives of inner peace, liveliness, and success? In this paper, I draw on the interviews I have conducted with young ritual participants during my doctoral fieldwork in Tehran. I elucidate how my interlocutors’ narratives can be understood in their relation to two competing yet intertwining discursive resources: state-sponsored Islamist activism, which prescribes positive emotions as a prerequisite for realizing particular religious-political ambitions, and secular neoliberal productivism, which promotes the self-management of emotions as a means to maximizing material advantage. The latter has been popularized in Iran since the 1990s by a secular happiness industry sponsoring a wide range of self-help publications and public seminars on positive psychology, mindfulness, and alternative therapeutic spiritualities, among other topics. I argue that my interlocutors’ narratives of this-worldly benefits of mourning rituals allow them to employ and challenge both Islamist and neoliberal discursive resources simultaneously. While suggesting a nuanced engagement with both religious and secular discourses, my interlocutors’ narratives reveal how they navigate and reinterpret these discourses to defend their participation in rituals. My interlocutors use a productivist logic to resist secular criticisms that dismiss Shia mourning rituals as irrational, melancholic, and anti-modern. Yet, their individualist interpretations challenge normative conceptions of these collective rituals. This innovative engagement with mourning rituals suggests a complex interplay between individual agency, the state, religious orthodoxy, and neoliberal logic, signifying the changing dynamics of Islamism in contemporary Iran. Works Cited: Ayoub, Mahmoud M. 1978. Redemptive Suffering in Islam: A Study of the Devotional Aspects of Ashura in Twelver Shi‘ism. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Over the past five decades, Iran has witnessed significant societal shifts, yet scholarly inquiry into the evolution of death rituals remains limited. This paper addresses this gap by examining the influence of modernity on death rituals in Iran, with a specific focus on Behesht-e Zahra, Tehran's cemetery. For a six-year conducting fieldwork, participatory observations and in-depth interviews with participants of death ceremonies, the study reveals the changing dynamics of death practices. It uncovers a transition from simple, survivor-led rituals in pre-modern Iran to a more complex process where survivors have less influence. Furthermore, the research underscores how modernity not only molds death culture but also reshapes societal perceptions of mortality in Iran. By exploring the interplay between modernity, cultural norms, and attitudes towards death, this study provides valuable insights into the shifting landscape of death rituals within Iranian society.