Analysis of the critical discourse of the mediatization of religion in the murals of the constitutional Era

The constitutional era was the most frequent religious discourse in Ashura’s attitudes. Religious movements led by religious authorities and the Shiite authority were influential intellectual platforms in the emergence and continuation of the Ashura attitude in accordance with the political and social conditions of this period, such as the emergence of revolutionary movements. The shift from the oral discourses of popular religion to visual ones has affected the understanding of religion for some time. The political conceptualization of Ittihad-e-Islam, which was reflected in the beliefs of the Jangle’s Ittihad-e-Islam movement, challenged the "effects" of the messages with the development of print media in the form of manifestos, constitutions, and the Jangle newspaper and its impact on murals. Understanding murals as a "place of combining and symbolizing culturally significant belief systems" and understanding religion as "making sense of reality in people's daily life experience" leads to the mediatization of religion. The constructionism of religion regarding the changes in religious forms during the constitutional era, at least from a visual point of view, has focused on increasing the diversity of religious situations following the increase in globalization. The presence of religious views other than Shiite Islam in Ashura narratives, which were historically based on the views of Jafari Shiite scholars, created new forms of political and religious conflict and influenced the national culture and religious values of Shiites in the late Qajar era, which were selectively used as civilized identities. The general trend of mural painting and the use of religious forms in accordance with religious sects in Iranian cities was slow but continuous. While these tendencies are more obvious in northern Iran, such as Gilan, there are clearly similar processes in Kermanshah, Shiraz, and Isfahan. This situation leads to an increase in "religious complexity". The aim is to understand the processes of the mediatization of religion, especially in mural painting media, and to change the nature of the public representation of religion in the society of the constitutional era. From this perspective, the problem is twofold: 1. How are the processes of media creation, emphasizing the medium of murals, changing the nature of the public representation of religion in society of the constitutional era? and 2. How do religious elements in the discourse on the murals of the constitutional era, through the structure of the discourses and images, cause the formation of individual and social identities? The findings of this research show that the mediatization of religion in the Ashura murals of Iran's constitutional era, focusing on systematic structures and the representation of religious traditions, played an important role in reflecting the social and religious relations of that period. With the support of the Ottoman government, the discourse of the Ittihad-e-Islam Jangle movement has been able to institutionalize a certain social identity and religious order in society through these murals. The analysis of murals as social and ideological actions shows the complex interactions between religion, culture, and politics during Iran's constitutional era. The Constitutional Revolution was a catalyst for multifaceted transformation.