Every year on the tenth of Muharram, the first month of the lunar calendar known as Ashura, millions of Muslim Shiits throughout the world commemorate the martyrdom anniversary of the Prophet Mohammad’s grandson Hussein in 680 AD. Traditionally, the mourners gather at shrines and mosques and fill the streets and chant religiously related slogans.
That is what happens every year in Muslim and non-Muslim countries and Iran, with a majority of shiits, is not an exception and you can see millions of people in black marching in ritual processions and crowded sessions here and there on the day.
Taking advantage of the occasion as usual, MKO hijacked the Shia Muslims Ashura event and a number of the group’s provoked and paid thugs tried to disturb the streets in Tehran by chanting anti-regime slogans that resulted in casualties including four deaths.
The move was the outcome of a plot to initiate a vast propaganda to demonstrate the current ten-day lasting religious ceremonies in Iran as scenes of nationwide uprising against the regime that reached its climax on its last day. In a message following the sporadic disturbances, Maryam Rajavi, leading the terrorist cult of Mojahedin in the absence of her husband, described ‘the outburst of millions of Iranians on Ashura on streets across the country as a clear signal of the inevitable and imminent downfall of the regime’.
The organization has made its attempts to wage violence and social disturbance as a protest against the Iranian regime that the post-election protests ensued.