ONCE AGAIN a funeral has become a lightning rod for popular anger against the Iranian regime. This time, that of a cleric who was once very much one of its own. Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri (87) was a Trotsky to the Iranian revolution’s Lenin, a veteran of the struggle to overthrow the brutal Pahlavi regime in 1979, and later the purged expected successor to the revolution’s architect and first leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands turned out in the holy city of Qom chanting anti-government slogans. Clashes with the police were reported by dissident websites – western reporters were banned from the city. Opposition leaders Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi extended their condolences at Montazeri’s home, where mourners chanted “Oh Hussein, Mirhossein”.
Their chants echo traditional Ashura laments for Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad who was killed in a 7th-century battle that defined the schism between Sunni and Shia. Ashura is a key date in the Islamic calendar, when Shias pour into the streets to beat their chests and weep in ritual mourning of Hussein and it will coincide with the seventh day of mourning for Montazeri, raising the prospect of even bigger protests next week. Ashura demonstrations against the shah played a pivotal role in toppling the regime.
Montazeri was a marja, or “source of emulation”, and had achieved the highest standing a cleric can hold in Shiism. He was widely regarded as the most knowledgeable religious scholar in Iran. He was the architect of Velayat-e Faqih, or guardianship of the jurist, the theological foundation of Iran’s state and source of the supreme leader’s legitimacy. He served time in the shah’s jails, fell out with Khomeini in the late 1980s over the execution of thousands of dissidents, and became over 20 years one of the most outspoken critics of the regime which he described as “neither Islamic nor a republic”. He had challenged the credentials of Khomeini’s successor as supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and spoken out for human rights and for the opposition after June’s dubious election put President Ahmadinejad back into power.
Montazeri’s insider criticism of the regime was particularly damaging – impossible to answer, and impossible to repress – and came to reflect its narrow social and political base, particularly its increasing isolation from many of those who created the revolution. Time is likely to prove this to be its real weakness.