Zahra Abedinezhad is a Ph.D candidate in Comparative Studies and Folklore at OSU. Having backgrounds in Law (TMU, Iran) and in Folk Studies (Western Kentucky University), she is interested in exploring intersections between religious practices and social regulations/codes. She is currently working on mourning performances of Iranian women. Shurouq Ibrahim, CSR’S Graduate Research Associate, sat down with Zahra to see what the CSR’s Iles Award means for her research!

Shurouq: Hi, Zahra. Thanks for doing this interview with the Center for the Study of Religion. Would you just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your research?

Zahra: Sure. I’m Zahra Abedinezhad. I’m a Ph.D candidate in Comparative Studies with a GIS in folklore. It’s my fourth year of the Ph.D, and my research is called “Resisting Mourning: Vernacular Ta’ziyeh in Iran.” The focal point of my research is a myth that [is] called the “Karbala” event. Some people [call it] an event; some people say it [is] a story…but it’s a sacred story, and based on our definition in folklore and religious studies, we call this a myth. So, I am trying to understand how this myth is interpreted and used by people and how this [clashes] with an understanding of religious authorities in power. At different times, throughout history, this myth becomes a source for people to perform a vernacular religious theatre that is called Ta’ziyeh, and I have that in the title [of my dissertation]. As I said, Ta’ziyeh literally means mourning. So, people reenact that story via Ta’ziyeh. Throughout history, sometimes [Ta’ziyeh] was complicated; it was forbidden, [but] sometimes it was a national symbol of the country [Iran] —  we have a Karbala vernacular folkloristic theatre…

But I, as a folklore researcher/researcher who is interested in religious studies, (because this is a ritual, this a sacred story that ritual is based on that), I am trying to understand at this current time in Iran specifically because of different critical, social, cultural circumstances, how different groups, different communities interpret this story to perform their resistance. There is a sub-group that I discovered so far, that I identified, that [says] the way that [the Karbala myth] is performed or should be performed is really trying to challenge [those in] power. But, this is the way that [only one] group of Iranians claim it. But the way that the state treats this performance is very complicated. Sometimes they say, this is good and we accept this because it helps the proliferation of [the] Shia movement (because the majority of the Iranians are Shia and they stake claims to the Islamic Republic). But for those groups [that mentioned before], they say, “We are religious; we like to perform religion but the way that this performance should be performed is really challenging whoever is [in] power.” Shiism was supposed to be a band of rebels against tyranny and now because tyranny is happening and is implement[ed] by the Islamic authorities and power in Iran, they are saying: “What if we interpret this Ta’ziyeh, this performance, as a performance of resistance and just try to learn some lessons from this performance. It is not enough to just perform it; it is a resource for learning ethical and religious principles and one is: resisting tyranny — resistance mandatory rules. I am more interested in these kinds of interpretations, and I want to know how Ta’ziyeh and the Karbala myth is used as a means of resistance in current times in Iran.