Iran's Ancient Fire-Worship Revived In Defiance Of Islamic Hardliners

by Ramin Mostaghim

(IPS) TEHRAN -- Bonfires roared and firecrackers split the dark as Iranians defied Islamic hardliners to enact ancient rites ahead of the Persian New Year, which starts on Mar. 21.

Fire worship has marked Charshanbeh Suri, the eve of the final Wednesday of the Persian calendar, since long before the advent of Islam 1,400-plus years ago.

Thousands of people, young and old, took to the streets of this capital and other towns, including the holy Shiite city of Qom, for fire-lit celebrations on Tuesday night this week.

This, although state-run media announced that Tuesday was to be set aside for official mourning ceremonies in honor of the fourth Shiite Imam, Sajjad, who died in 659 AD. The year-end celebrations also defied 'fatwas', or edicts, by religious authorities who warned young people against setting bonfires.

"You see, young people here do not care about those fatwas," said Ahmad Eqbali, 40, a shopkeeper in the Golestan shopping mall in Tehran's affluent north-west quarter.

Facing the prospect of celebrations on an unprecedented scale, law enforcement officials here announced on Monday that bonfires would be authorized at 50 designated sites across this metropolis.

"Law enforcement's announcement represents a belated retreat by the Islamic regime," said Lohrasb Farvardin, 39, as he jumped over a bonfire set in front of his downtown house and joined his parents as they squatted near the fire in the unseasonable cold. "Until last year, officials entirely ignored the national and pre-Islamic culture of worshipping fire but this year they seem to have budged."

"According to mythologists, worshipping fire dates back five millennia before Christ," said Lohrasb, a Zoroastrian who returned to Iran after living in Silicon Valley, the technology corridor in California in the United States, for more than 20 years. "It is deeply rooted in our history although the Islamic regime has tried, in vain, to ignore it."

Ancient Greece and Rome also worshipped fire, as experts were quoted as saying in reformist newspapers. But in Iran and elsewhere the practice is most closely associated with Zarathustra, also known as Zoroaster, the prophet of Zoroastrianism.

The practice, dating back to a time before recorded history, has become a symbol of resistance to the Islamic regime because Zarathustra is believed to have lived in what is now north-western Iran.

"Since the triumph of the Islamic regime, fanatic officials have not stood for Iranian culture but for Islamic and Arab culture. Therefore, as a backlash, middle-class people overdo their Iranian cultural legacy," said Feridoun Amiri, 48, the principal of a public elementary school west of Tehran.

The year-end celebrations also have become an outlet for young people.

"By making a large noise with their firecrackers and homemade explosives, the youth vent their frustration and anger against the Islamic ruling establishment," said Mernoush Parsanejad, 44, an artist and unpublished novelist.

"Unfortunately, the smell of sulfur is everywhere and it forms a thick cloud over houses thanks to young people's fireworks, which are highly polluting," she added.

Even the holy city of Qom, an Islamic bastion two hours' drive south-west of Tehran, appeared to have fallen to revelers denounced by mullahs, or clerics, as heretics and pagans.

"In Qom's well-to-do areas and parks on the city's outskirts, every year young people gather and brave the vigilantes' batons and police anti-riot gear, as they did last night," Farid Modarresi, a 25-year-old journalism student from Qom, said on Wednesday.

Comparing this year's jubilations with the past, he added: "Even grand mullahs in Qom softened their hostile tone against pre-Islamic culture and hinted at some sort of compromises in the fatwas they issued ahead of the fire celebration."

Even so, revelers said the Iranian leaders seemed to be on edge, remembering the CIA- instigated riots that overthrew the elected regime of Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, leading to the return of the U.S.-backed shah.

"The regime is on its toes on any occasion that provides a pretext under which young people get together and enjoy themselves," said a 24-year-old who asked not to be named. He spoke near Tehran University dormitories that were the scene of student rioting nearly five years ago.

"Even Shiite religious rituals are not welcomed unless they prove to be within state defined norms, let alone the fire celebration," he added.

Opposition political groups, some of which broadcast from radio and television stations in Europe and North America, also have sought to exploit the fire celebration as an opportunity to voice dissent.

"Those who have the unlawful but some how tolerated satellite dish and can watch opposition TV channels could compare the mourning atmosphere of the local regime's TV channels with the rapturous feeling on the opposition channels," said Morad Kashfi, 58, a former political prisoner who runs a book shop in southern Tehran.

"People can suffer from political apathy but they express themselves through cultural celebrations. They set big bonfires to cool their nerves in the wake of a total charade parliamentary election," he added. He was referring to Iran's recent national polls.

Kamran Etemadi showed the scar on his elbow he said he received from a baton blow on Tuesday night in the vicinity of the Tehran University dormitories.

"The Wednesday-eve fire celebration reiterates this undeniable fact in Iran: that a ceremony similar to the British Guy Fawkes Day here can be an excuse for unspoken conspiracy against the Islamic regime by a majority of the people," he said, referring to annual bonfire ceremonies commemorating a foiled plot to blow up the English Parliament and King James I in 1605.