All praises to The Most High One, Jah Ras Tafari:
I want to explain how the Islamic regime and IRGC use Karbala through the psychology of learning, emotional memory and group identity. But the foundation has to be clear first.
The starting point is the claim that Muhammad is a perfect moral model. I reject that claim because look at the conduct attributed to him and the rules presented under his authority - especially their consequences for girls and women. This claim carries enormous weight because it supplies the authority for what follows.
Qur’an 33:21 presents Muhammad as an exemplary model. Qur’an 33:36 says that believing men and women have no choice in a matter once Allah and the messenger have decided it. Exemplary status is combined with an obligation to obey. [1][2]
The Sunni hadith collection Sahih al-Bukhari reports that Muhammad married Aisha when she was six and consummated the marriage when she was nine. I reject presenting the conduct described in that report as a perfect moral example. A claim of sacred authority does not make sexual activity with a child morally acceptable. [3]
Qur’an 4:34 establishes male authority within marriage and, in the Sahih International translation, includes striking wives in its prescribed response to feared disobedience. Qur’an 4:11 assigns a son twice a daughter’s inheritance share when sons and daughters inherit together. These unequal prescriptions carry the authority of divine commands. [4][5]
The Muhammad part carries particular weight because his preaching explicitly invokes Yeshua and the Gospel. Qur’an 5:46 describes the Gospel as containing guidance and light. Qur’an 57:27 associates Yeshua’s followers with compassion and mercy. His message shows awareness of Yeshua and the Gospel and explicitly acknowledges those moral values. [19][20]
That is essential to my criticism. Compassion and mercy are moral reference points acknowledged within the message itself. I judge the claim of Muhammad’s claimed perfection against those values including how girls and women are treated. Invoking that tradition does not give someone permission to override its concern for human beings through a claim of personal authority.
In Twelver Shia doctrine, prophets and Imams are described as protected from sin and error. Al-Muzaffar explicitly connects their infallibility to the obligation to follow them. His argument makes their freedom from wrongdoing necessary to preserve their authority. [6]
This is what I mean by the foundational lie in this structure. Declare the authority incapable of moral error, then defend its prescriptions on the strength of that declaration. Once that premise is accepted, troubling conduct can be reinterpreted until it fits the claim of perfection. The next claim inherits its authority from the first.
That has direct consequences for women. Teach that the source of a hierarchy is morally flawless, and obedience to that hierarchy can become a measure of goodness. A woman’s objection can be interpreted as a failure of obedience before her reasons or the harm she experiences are considered.
The claim of perfection can make defending subordination feel like defending morality itself.
Developmental psychology shows why authority matters here. In a study involving 379 children aged three to five, researchers presented unfamiliar actions that caused distress. An adult’s appeal to authority made children more willing to judge those actions as permissible. The effect weakened with age. The experiment demonstrates that an authority’s explanation can change a young child’s moral evaluation of harm. [7]
Children also learn conduct by observing models. In Bandura and colleagues’ aggression experiment, children who watched an adult attack an inflatable doll subsequently reproduced more of that behaviour when the adult was absent. The measured outcome was imitation in a laboratory setting. It establishes that aggressive behaviour can be acquired through observation. [8]
This is why the content of the role model matters. When a model’s warfare is presented as morally exemplary, the teaching includes a justification for violence. Declaring the model incapable of wrongdoing supplies that justification in advance.
These lessons can be encountered while the systems involved in understanding other people are still developing. A longitudinal MRI study, using 857 scans from 288 participants aged seven to thirty, documented continuing structural changes in regions involved in social cognition across adolescence and into early adulthood. These include regions involved in interpreting intentions and social relationships. [9]
Then comes Karbala: violent death, separation, denied water and thirst. The deprivation of water is part of the historical account of Husayn’s final confrontation. [10]
Emotion changes what is remembered. Dolcos and colleagues found that emotionally arousing pictures were remembered better than neutral pictures, and that interactions between the amygdala and medial temporal memory systems predicted that advantage. Emotional intensity can strengthen memory. A strong memory and an accurate moral judgment are different things. [11]
The water element connects the narrative to a basic bodily need. In a human brain-imaging experiment, de Araujo and colleagues found that responses to water depended on whether participants were thirsty or had drunk enough. Activity in parts of the orbitofrontal cortex tracked water’s pleasantness; some responses disappeared after thirst was satisfied. Water’s value changes with the body’s need for it. [12]
The religious instruction makes the association explicit. Kāmil al-Ziyārāt promises rewards for drinking water while remembering Husayn and cursing his killers. Drinking becomes an occasion to rehearse the religious memory. The connection between water, remembrance and allegiance is written into the practice. [13]
Repetition has its own measurable effect. Fazio and colleagues found that repeated statements received higher truth ratings, including when participants possessed knowledge that contradicted them. Familiarity can influence a truth judgment even when relevant knowledge is available. [14]
Ritual also affects belonging. In an experiment with children aged four to eleven, participating in a scripted group ritual increased affiliation with members of that group compared with a matched activity without the ritual structure. Participation can therefore carry a social function alongside whatever information is being communicated. [15]
The compassion point needs precision.
Sharing someone’s distress, feeling concern for them, and acting to help them are distinguishable processes. In Klimecki and colleagues’ training study, practising empathic resonance increased negative emotion and responses in the anterior insula and anterior midcingulate cortex while participants watched suffering. Subsequent compassion training reduced negative emotion and increased positive emotion, accompanied by a different pattern of brain activity. Emotional distress and compassionate concern were not interchangeable responses. [16]
Group membership also matters to helping. In an experiment with football supporters, participants watched a supporter of their own team or a rival team experience pain. They could accept pain themselves to reduce the other person’s suffering. Neural responses and reported concern predicted differences in costly helping across those group boundaries. Feeling connected to one group’s suffering does not automatically translate into concern for people outside it. [17]
That is what I mean by “the Lie attaches itself to compassion.” The illusion is the equation of devotion with goodness: I grieve for this sacred figure, therefore allegiance to the cause associated with him is compassionate.
That equation collapses emotional distress, group attachment and compassionate action into one thing. The research distinguishes them.
The Islamic regime and IRGC’s appropriation of Karbala is documented. In his study of IRGC publications and imagery, Afshon Ostovar describes how the organisation presented the Iran-Iraq War as a renewed Karbala. Khomeini’s representative to the IRGC called him the “Husayn of our time.” The organisation presented itself as continuing Husayn’s struggle. [18]
My argument is that this propaganda draws on the processes described above: learned authority, emotionally memorable suffering, repeated reminders and group identification. The institutional move is specific: attach the Islamic regime and IRGC to the sacred figures, then present service to those institutions as participation in the sacred struggle.
Within that framing, loyalty can be interpreted as goodness and opposition as hostility to the sacred victim. The inherited story supplies a moral interpretation of the present before the conduct of the people claiming that authority has been examined.
This is the deception I am describing with druj: a moral picture in which attachment to an authority becomes confused with goodness, and grief becomes confused with compassionate conduct. The claim of perfection helps protect the authority; the emotional attachment helps protect the claim.
When I use “virus,” I mean cultural transmission through teaching, repetition and participation. The scientific terms are social learning, emotional memory, the illusory-truth effect and group identification.
The psychological distinction is concrete: remembering suffering, feeling distress and identifying with a group are different from helping a person who is suffering.
My argument is that this confusion is also learned by people who reproduce the Islamic regime and IRGC’s propaganda. People who have themselves been lied to and exploited can learn to mistake allegiance for goodness, then teach and enforce that same mistake. The exploitation becomes something they participate in because they have learned to understand it as moral duty.
That is how the lie reproduces itself. A person does not have to recognise a lie as a lie to transmit it or use it to control others. What was imposed on one person becomes what that person teaches, defends and imposes on someone else. The person who was exploited can become an agent of the same exploitation.
And now think how this same pattern can apply to racism against Black people, antisemitism, discrimination against South Americans and Asians - these histories go DEEP. Think about discrimination against women, queer and gay people, people with physical or mental disabilities - anybody treated as lesser simply because they are DIFFERENT.
Now keep thinking... how does this apply to how we treat animals?!
Anyways, sources:
[1] Qur’an 33:21.
Presents Muhammad as an exemplary model.
https://quran.com/33/21
[2] Qur’an 33:36.
Makes decisions attributed to Allah and the messenger binding on believing men and women.
https://legacy.quran.com/33/36
[3] Sahih al-Bukhari 5134.
Primary hadith source reporting Aisha’s marriage at six and consummation at nine.
https://sunnah.com/bukhari:5134
[4] Qur’an 4:34, Sahih International translation.
Male authority within marriage and the prescribed response to feared disobedience.
https://legacy.quran.com/4/34
[5] Qur’an 4:11.
Includes the two-to-one inheritance allocation when sons and daughters inherit together.
https://legacy.quran.com/4/11
[6] Muhammad Rida al-Muzaffar, The Faith of the Imamiyyah Shi’ah, Part 2: Prophethood.
Primary doctrinal source explaining prophetic and Imamic infallibility and its connection to obedience.
https://al-islam.org/faith-imamiyyah-shiah-muhammad-ridha-al-muzaffar/part-2-prophethood
[7] Li, P. H., & Koenig, M. A. (2025). “Appealing to consequences, or authority? The influence of explanations on children’s moral judgments across two cultures.” Cognition, 254, 105994.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105994
[8] Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1961). “Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63, 575-582.
https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Bandura/bobo.htm
[9] Mills, K. L., et al. (2014). “Developmental changes in the structure of the social brain in late childhood and adolescence.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nss113
[10] Encyclopaedia Iranica, “Ḥosayn b. ʿAli i. Life and Significance in Shiʿism.”
Historical account covering Karbala and the deprivation of water.
https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/hosayn-b-ali-i/
[11] Dolcos, F., LaBar, K. S., & Cabeza, R. (2004). “Interaction between the amygdala and the medial temporal lobe memory system predicts better memory for emotional events.” Neuron.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15182723/
[12] de Araujo, I. E. T., et al. (2003). “Human cortical responses to water in the mouth, and the effects of thirst.” Journal of Neurophysiology.
https://doi.org/10.1152/jn.00297.2003
[13] Kāmil al-Ziyārāt, Book 2, Chapter 34.
Primary religious text connecting drinking water with remembering Husayn and cursing his killers.
https://thaqalayn.com/chapter/24/2/34
[14] Fazio, L. K., et al. (2015). “Knowledge does not protect against illusory truth.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000098
[15] Wen, N. J., Herrmann, P. A., & Legare, C. H. (2016). “Ritual increases children’s affiliation with in-group members.” Evolution and Human Behavior.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2015.08.002
[16] Klimecki, O. M., et al. (2014). “Differential pattern of functional brain plasticity after compassion and empathy training.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4040103/
[17] Hein, G., et al. (2010). “Neural responses to ingroup and outgroup members’ suffering predict individual differences in costly helping.” Neuron.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2010.09.003
[18] Ostovar, A. (2016). “Warriors of Karbala,” in Vanguard of the Imam: Religion, Politics, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Oxford University Press.
Historical research drawing on IRGC publications and imagery; the Khomeini comparison appears on printed page 133.
https://ashuraworkshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Ostovar-Warriors-of-Karbala.pdf
[19] Qur’an 5:46.
Explicitly invokes Jesus and describes the Gospel as containing guidance and light.
https://legacy.quran.com/5/46
[20] Qur’an 57:27.
Explicitly associates Jesus’ followers with compassion and mercy.
https://legacy.quran.com/57/27
