MADRID – Arbaeen, the pilgrimage that each year brings together millions of people on the road to Karbala, has transcended any reading reduced to mere ritual to become the core of a political and historical-discursive pedagogy central to 21st-century Islam. 

Traditionally, Arbaeen marks the fortieth day after the martyrdom of Hossein ibn Ali in Karbala—a foundational symbol of Shia Islam and a universal emblem of dignity in the face of oppression. No attentive observer can ignore that Arbaeen has become one of the most powerful socio-political phenomena in the region, an event that condenses—and renews—central themes of resistance, sacrifice, and justice, which are key pillars in the ideological and theological architecture of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Arbaeen pilgrimage operates on different levels: as a stage for mass mobilization, as an affirmation of communal Islamic identity, and as a political operation focused on the internal legitimacy and external projection of the Iranian state. 

The performativity of resistance

Arbaeen condenses the founding narrative of Shia Islam: the memory of Imam Hossein’s martyrdom in Karbala, the suffering in the face of injustice, and the dignity preserved even in physical defeat. This historical core is translated—within Iranian political discourse and practice—into a pedagogy of resistance: a collective act in which millions embrace the experience of sacrifice not merely as something of the past, but as an active principle for the present and the future.

The Arbaeen pilgrimage stages the idea that resistance is both possible and necessary in the face of adverse political realities. Pilgrims, walking hundreds of kilometers often in precarious conditions, embody an ethic of action, solidarity, and perseverance, illuminating the popular capacity to overcome material and political limits imposed from outside. Resistance here is not framed as an act of violent confrontation, but as fidelity to the principle of justice, autonomous mobilization, and the offering of one’s own body as political testimony.

The message of Arbaeen challenges passivity: against despotic power, against structural injustice, and against the global hegemony of exclusionary models, what is affirmed is the possibility of articulating emancipatory practices grounded in a horizon of meaning with deep roots. Sacrifice, therefore, is redemptive not as an isolated act, but as the founding moment of a political community that survives and resists.

Justice as a political-social foundation

In the contemporary reading advanced by the Islamic Republic, Arbaeen is far more than the commemoration of an original injustice. It is the revival of the demand for justice as the organizing principle of politics, society, and the Islamic state. The procession becomes a communal testimony against all forms of oppression: Imam Hossein’s narrative speaks to every participant, linking them to the current struggle against marginalization, colonialism, and the instrumentalization of peoples.

Islam, as both discourse and political practice, refers to Arbaeen to insist that justice is not abstract but a concrete demand that runs from the local community to the regional geopolitical stage. Iranian authorities do not hide their aim of transforming historical memory into present-day mobilization: the message conveyed from the Islamic Republic is that—faced with hegemonic actors, whether foreign empires or corrupt domestic elites—the organized people, faithful to their Islamist heritage, can and must challenge the status quo.

Arbaeen operates as a political pedagogy in which the injustice suffered does not lead to victimhood, but to a permanent demand for dignity, equality, and the redistribution of power. The Iranian state recognizes itself and legitimizes itself as the heir to this struggle, presenting its political system as the vehicle for realizing Islamic justice.

Sacrifice and community

One of the most powerful elements of Arbaeen is the formation of an extraordinary political community around shared sacrifice. The act of walking, the overflowing hospitality along the routes, the spontaneous organization of services, and the self-regulation of the pilgrim flow constitute a technology of social cohesion that strengthens Iran’s Islamic and national fabric.

Internally, the state makes use of this material and symbolic infrastructure to reaffirm citizens’ loyalty to a political-theological project in which belonging is lived actively and collectively. The pilgrimage seeks to dismantle domestic boundaries and reproduce national Islamic identity through lived, not delegated, practice. This process reinforces the internal legitimacy of the political system: when millions of Iranians take part in Arbaeen, what is celebrated is not blind obedience but the renewal of the communal pact in the face of time’s challenges and external powers.

Islamic identity and geopolitical projection

Iran does not conceive of Arbaeen solely as a domestic phenomenon; the pilgrimage is also a framework for the country’s international projection and legitimacy. When millions of Iranians travel to Iraq, what unfolds is a geopoliticization of the Islamic experience that transcends borders and challenges the logics of sectarian division promoted by external actors.

Arbaeen allows Iran to present itself as the gravitational center of mobilized Islam: a nation capable of bringing together multitudes, building infrastructure, and orienting discourse toward regional justice. Through Islamist pedagogy, the Iranian state promotes supranational unity, integrating communities within a political horizon that challenges imperialist narratives. This message is not merely rhetorical: Arbaeen is the practical visualization of an alternative civilizational project, proof that Islam can serve as the foundation of a just and sovereign politics, independent of imported or imposed logics.

In this way, the pilgrimage helps Iran counter international pressure. Arbaeen becomes a strategic stage for strengthening the Axis of Resistance and for laying the groundwork for a future community of nations with an emancipatory vocation.

Each year, Arbaeen reconfigures the question of the meaning of justice and the possibility of a political response, affirming that the Islamic experience cannot be reduced to ritual or doctrine, but lives in the process of collective transformation, in the circulation of examples, and in the hybridity of discourses.

The vitality of Arbaeen lies in its openness to critique and renewal, confronting whatever obstructs concrete and effective justice; and against visions that seek to reduce Islam to a depoliticized ritual matter, the pilgrimage sustains the political centrality of the community as an agent of justice.

In a world marked by fragmentation and conflict, Arbaeen emerges as the material reminder that the Islamic community—organized around sacrifice and perseverance—can challenge injustice and reclaim a central role in history. Iran makes Arbaeen its main argument for embodying values of resistance and justice in the face of global power, and in doing so, reimagines Islamic politics as the space where sacrifice and hope merge to give meaning to collective action.

Thus, the pilgrimage is not only a physical journey—it is the renewal of a path that unites, questions, and projects the possibility of a just and sovereign community faithful to its historical principles.