In Middle Eastern societies recovering from civil wars, Islamist movements utilize religious observances and celebrations to reinforce political order and claim social authority. These events range from military parades to sacred processions to collective prayer that transform into rituals of rule, linking the sacred with the political.
Events range from military parades to sacred processions to collective prayer that transform into rituals of rule, linking the sacred with the political.
After Saddam Hussein’s downfall in 2003, for example, Iraq’s Shi’i politicians embraced the Ashura commemoration and the Arba’in pilgrimage to the shrine of Imam Husayn, both long-banned by Saddam’s regime, to fuse Shi’ism with the new political culture. More than twenty years later, Shi’ite political leaders and even non-Shi’ites relocate to Najaf and Karbala to participate in the commemorations and to cultivate the religious constituency. The two holidays today are arguably Iraq’s chief cultural, religious, and political event. This creates an avenue for clerics to politicize religious observances to educate youth, assert power, and display strength. Individuals observing Ashura observances do not consider such observances merely acts of religious piety; they understood them to be substantial political demonstrations.
Houthi rebels in Yemen invoke political anniversaries to display religious fervor. Every September, they celebrate their 2014 capture of Sanaa as “liberation day.” Crowds pack the central squares for rallies in which the groups chant slogans against Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States. Demonstrators hold “Death to America” signs while young men and women sing victory songs. On stage, some young men fuse Yemeni nationalism with Houthi religious interpretations by dancing traditional Yemeni dances while their supporters hold pictures of men like Saleh Ali al-Sammad, the chairman of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council and the Houthi regime’s de facto president whom Saudi Arabia killed in a 2018 airstrike.
Hezbollah likewise uses the rituals of martyr commemoration and Ashura to reinforce its legitimacy, strengthen resistance, and incorporate youth into a culture of commemoration. Upon the first-year anniversary of the death of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah organized public mourning in the southern suburbs of Beirut and in other Lebanese cities, where tens of thousands offered prayers around Nasrallah’s grave, and Hezbollah’s new secretary-general appeared on television to address those in mourning.
Nor is the pattern limited to Shi’i movements. Consider the Taliban, for example. In 2021, before the U.S. withdrawal, the Taliban declared August 15, the day the Taliban took over Kabul, as “Victory Day.” The Taliban regime embraces this date as a religiously sanctioned holiday. Taliban spokesmen urged the “mujahid nation of Afghanistan” to thank Almighty God for the great victory. Every year, fighters, supporters, and families flood the streets of Kabul with children waving black and white Taliban flags. The Taliban’s supreme leader warns Afghans to “show great gratitude to Allah Almighty on Victory Day” or face punishment for disobedience. Rituals associated with Victory Day allow the Taliban to legitimate its rule as divinely bestowed and justify its repressive rule over women as divine law.
Through rituals, Hamas intertwines instrumentalized Islamic practice with the Palestinian national identity.
Hamas also utilizes religion to bolster its hold in Gaza. In 2012, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal spoke at a rally celebrating the group’s twenty-fifth anniversary in which organizers displayed religiously-themed flags and posters depicting the terror group’s battle with Israel. Two years later, to honor its twenty-seventh anniversary, Hamas sent armed members wielding rocket launchers down the streets of Gaza City. During this parade, Hamas leaders declared their ambition to “destroy Israel,” consistent with the group’s Islamist charter. In much of their speeches, Hamas officials wrapped their reverence in God, honored deceased terrorists whom they depicted as martyrs, while presenting their terror as jihad, thus linking ritual and politics. In daily life in Gaza, that control reaches into the sphere of moments, too. Through rituals, Hamas intertwines instrumentalized Islamic practice with the Palestinian national identity.
While such commemorations use religious rhetoric, their purpose is anything but spiritual. Islamist groups employ them as tools of control and signaling. Through festivals of victory and commemoration, these groups reshape public behavior by promoting unity, instilling obedience, fostering militancy and sectarian identity, and providing emotional reasons to feel empowered. Policymakers err by ignoring the religious legitimization of the fight, for Islamist militant groups incitement the population and tie their cause to religion in a way that makes diplomatic compromise and resolution impossible.
