The scenes from Dearborn, Michigan, where thousands of Shiite mourners marched through the streets to commemorate the 40th day of a death nearly 1,400 years old, deserve to be understood as more than material for internet debate. Children carrying banners, religious paraphernalia, and portraits of figures such as Khamenei and Nasrallah, alongside troubling chants and incidents of violence, point to a larger problem of political-religious indoctrination. Dearborn offered a glimpse of an ideological infrastructure America has spent decades refusing to examine with the seriousness it deserves.
Domestic Shiite extremism should not be treated as a fringe concern or a string of isolated episodes. The signs have been visible for decades: children holding portraits of Ali Khamenei and Qassem Soleimani, public pledges of allegiance to Iran, alleged assassination plots targeting President Donald Trump, the attack on Salman Rushdie, attacks on synagogues, and other terrorist plots too often treated as disconnected events. Iran has cultivated radicalized sympathy among segments of the global Shiite diaspora by weaponizing religious symbolism, historical grievance, and apocalyptic doctrine.
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That domestic problem reflects a larger failure of Western analysis. After 9/11, Sunni militancy understandably dominated the attention of security officials, think tanks, and commentators. But backdoor cooperation with Iran against the Taliban, and later against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, helped create a dangerous analytical imbalance. While Washington and its allies focused almost exclusively on Sunni jihadism, Iran expanded its reach across the Middle East and South Asia, then into Europe and North America.
The first casualty of that oversight was the loss of hundreds of American lives, as Tehran instigated a bloody insurgency in Iraq. It eventually spawned a global anti-American movement culminating in the current war with Iran. Things are also getting problematic on the home front.
Muharram observances provide an excellent window into this phenomenon, where Shiite Muslims commemorate the assassination of Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson. These events show how ritual can become a vehicle for normalization. Parents encourage children to beat their chests, participate in rituals of self-flagellation, and, in some cases, have their foreheads cut in remembrance of a seventh-century imam. The practice has crossed into the West, where a British man was convicted in 2008 of forcing his children to self-flagellate. Yet even the Dearborn procession was described by the Detroit Free Press as a “walk for peace,” a framing that shows how easily the underlying concern can be softened or missed.
Nor is this limited to private rituals inside homes or religious centers. Social media is full of images and videos of Shiite processions in Europe and America occupying entire streets, with participants beating their chests and using horses for ceremonial commemoration. Western societies can and should protect religious freedom, but that protection must not become a shield for practices that endanger children or animals. Religious liberty deserves protection, but abuse should not be laundered through ritual.
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The revolutionary and sectarian dimension is what turns ritual excess into a security concern. A perpetual politics of grievance and mourning, when fused with the ideology of Ruhollah Khomeini, Hassan Nasrallah, and other Shiite leaders, becomes mobilization. Many Americans have traveled to Iraq and Syria in response to calls from Shiite clerics and militias, while many more contribute financially to religious causes. In Shiite jurisprudence, many believers are expected to pay Khums, a fifth of certain qualifying earnings, to religious authorities. Critics have warned that such funds can sometimes be diverted to support militant activity. There is thus a real risk that some religious and financial networks can become vehicles for radicalization.
While experts are still debating whether al Qaeda is relevant, Iran has erected a durable infrastructure of chaos and terrorism. Western societies need to stop treating Shiite extremism as tradition when it appears in the street, as diaspora politics when it waves portraits of ayatollahs, and as geopolitics only when Iranian proxies fire rockets. If Sunni extremism can be scrutinized in the name of security and liberal values, Shiite extremism must be held to the same standard.
Saad Khan is an independent researcher on religion and extremism with a doctorate in political science from Georgia State University.
