As thousands of Iranian families have this month buried loved ones killed in the deadliest street protests in their country’s history, social media has been filled with unexpected scenes: families and friends dancing, clapping and ululating at their funerals — all as music blares around them.
At the recent burial in the northern city of Tonekabon of Sourena Golgoon, an 18-year-old student who, according to his family, was shot from behind during the demonstrations, a viral video showed car horns blaring and women dancing as participants re-enacted tabaq-keshi, the traditional tray-carrying ceremony performed at weddings.
Decorated trays — normally taking gifts, fabrics and jewellery from a groom’s family to a bride’s home — were carried instead to mark the life Golgoon never lived. “My son’s blood will not be trampled upon,” said Golgoon’s father, as other mourners broke into chants of “Death to the dictator”.
Dancing at funerals is not unprecedented in Iran. In parts of the ethnically diverse country, some tribal traditions have long blended mourning with music and movement.
But the recent trend has gone further: in a theocracy that has for decades banned public festivities, women’s dancing and expressions of grief and joy alike, the festive funerals are transforming mourning into an act of resistance.
For centuries, the clergy’s social role centred on two main duties: performing rites for the dead prior to burial and uniting people in marriage. Yet, after clerics took power in the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran’s increasingly secular society has drifted further from political Islam, with more and more funerals and weddings now drawing on pre-Islamic and Persian traditions.
At the funeral of Reza Barani, a 32-year-old man killed in the city of Karaj and buried in his hometown of Ramhormoz in south-western Khuzestan, mourners clapped their hands in the air and moved in unison to music, according to a video of the occasion.
The sorna, a traditional Iranian woodwind instrument with a piercing sound, and the dohol, a large powerful drum, were played together, a pairing long associated with outdoor celebrations and communal dances.
Many see these occasions as a way of rejecting religious symbolism and the values imposed by Iran’s ruling clerics, a system that came under its most severe challenge yet during the recent demonstrations.
After starting with shopkeepers in Tehran over economic distress, demonstrations spread around the country as protesters poured on to the streets, many calling to overthrow the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic republic itself.
Amid the unrest, which Iranian authorities said was egged on by “terrorists” armed and trained by the US and Israel, about 350 mosques and 90 Shia seminaries were set on fire, according to official figures.
Authorities said 3,117 people were killed before the protests were ultimately brought under control, crushed in a sweeping crackdown that shocked a nation with a long tradition of civic dissent.
Human rights groups overseas have estimated that the toll is many times higher, with the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency saying that at least 6,126 people have been confirmed killed in the protests, including 214 members of the security forces. It said an additional 17,091 deaths were still under investigation.
Internet access has remained largely restricted since the height of the protests, obstructing access to information, though intermittent openings in recent days have allowed new videos to surface, revealing scenes of street violence, rows of bodies in morgues, and of the funerals.
In one 12-minute video, released by the activist account Vahid Online, the father of a man identified as Sepehr Shokri wanders through a morgue in southern Tehran, searching among rows of bodies. “Sepehr, Baba is here, where are you?” he cries.
The footage shows body bags mostly laid on the ground, with others on carriers, left partially open so families can identify their dead. As he walks across bloodstained floors, cursing the Islamic republic and Khamenei, he points to the bodies of young women as well.
“Look what they have done to this country’s youth,” he says. State media later claimed the video was fabricated, airing an interview with the father of another man named Sepehr Ebrahimi, who said his son had been killed by anti-regime forces.
The Islamic republic has vowed to make no concessions. Authorities have instead blamed the violence on armed agitators, saying many of the dead were members of the security forces who were shot, burnt or beheaded.
State media have broadcast “confessions” of those allegedly recruited by foreign agents to foment violence and pave the way for military intervention by the US, which has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran in recent weeks.
Yet, while there is little public evidence that the high death tolls have caused major fractures within the ruling establishment, some reform-minded supporters of the regime have withdrawn from political activity in an apparent sign of disillusionment.
Fayyaz Zahed and Abbas Abdi, prominent activists who supported the election of reformist president Masoud Pezeshkian in 2024, said they would suspend all public political engagement.
Mohammad Fazeli, a reformist sociologist close to the government, wrote on Tuesday that “we failed” to make Iran a better place. “Iran’s history will be entangled with [these killings] for decades and will remain buried under the rubble of this catastrophe,” he said.
Even some hardliners have struggled to justify the scale of the bloodshed. Ali Gholhaki, a conservative journalist, told reformist Ensafnews that “this level of killings and martyrs will not easily leave the country”. Riot police, he argued, should be trained to minimise casualties.
A lot of Iranians now see only a grim choice: once again risk their lives — and the sort of rampant, internecine killing experienced in countries such as Syria — or resign themselves to continuing to live under a system fundamentally resistant to change.
Many mourning ceremonies were predictably sombre affairs, without any political chants. One family in the north, contacted by the FT, said authorities forced them to hold their funeral in the evening with the presence of only 10 relatives.
Elsewhere, however, the defiance continues. In the northern city of Gorgan, mourners danced to a local song at the burial of Sina Haghshenas, a 25-year-old florist. In the southern oil city of Abadan, the funeral of 33-year-old Saeed Torvand included music and dancing, with women in black clapping and moving in rhythm.
In another video, the father of Mani Safarpour clung to his son’s body bag at a morgue in Tehran and whispered: “Mani, Baba is here. You can go — I’ll join you.”