Shajarian's
Bidaad album was recorded after a three-year hiatus from a commercial recording. The album's lyrics speak of a wonderful place having been reduced to shambles and bloodshed, in which he sings in sadness, "what happened?". When giving a lecture at
California State University, Sacramento on 2 March 2012, he was asked what the lyrics of this song meant. His response made it clear that he chose these
lyrics based on what happened to the Iranian regime after the revolution – a once beautiful country being reduced to shambles. This is widely considered his first commercial recording meant to represent the voice of an oppressed people in Iran. Shajarian has indicated support for Iranians
protesting against the 12 June 2009
Iranian presidential election results. When Iran's president,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad referred to
the protesters as "
dust and trash", Shajarian told a
BBC Persian channel telephone interviewer that he (Shajarian) considered himself the voice of dust and trash: "It is the voice of dust and trash, and it will always remain the voice of dust and trash." He also asked
IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting) to stop broadcasting his songs. He mentioned that his famous song "Iran, Ey Saraye Omid" (Iran, the land of Hope), has no relation with the current situation of his country. After Shajarian criticized the government publicly and sided with the
Green Movement protesters, the
state broadcaster IRIB banned his
work of art, which used to be a fixture of
public broadcasting until then. Even against Shajarian's will, the state TV and
radio stations stopped airing
Rabbana, a
prayer sung during the Muslim fasting month of
Ramadan heralding the moment of fast-breaking. The
recital had been broadcast regularly every Ramadan since the 1979 revolution but swept from public view after the legendary singer fell out of favor with the establishment. A Shajarian fan in Tehran told
The Guardian Ramadan without
Rabbana was like
Christmas without Christmas carol. In the elections of
2013 and
2017,
Hassan Rouhani criticized the ban on broadcasting Shajarian's works and demanded that Shajarian's works be broadcast on television and radio. In an interview in 2016, Shajarian stated that "my criticism was a mistake of one person, I am not against the republic system. Our music has always been attacked or criticized by a class of religious people. Of course, some of the deviant music can be like this. But the nature of music is not deviant. I myself am fundamentally opposed to deviant music. We accept the clergy and religion". Lyrics of his song "Language of Fire," issued in September 2009, — "Lay down your gun, Come, sit down, talk, hear. Perhaps the light of humanity will get through to your heart too" — are thought by some observers to speak "directly to the plainclothes
Basiji militiamen and security forces" who had beaten protesters during recent unrest. In an interview with
Hamid Reza Nourbakhsh in 2016, Shajarian said that he was not against the
Islamic Republic and that his protest was only against one person (
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad). "We say you have no right to insult the people. This is not a fall with the whole system." Shajarian continues: "Several years ago, we had a concert in
Stockholm with the Aref group, led by the living memory of
Parviz Meshkatian. As soon as we were present on the group stage, they started chanting. They chanted against the
Islamic Republic. The children in the group were all upset. When they chanted, we just sat and listened, and they chanted. They saw that we were not doing anything. Some ordinary people who came also shook hands with us to start our work. I also told Parviz to perform the last ballad and then go. We had two parts of the program, in each of which there were five ballads, and we only performed the last ballad, and we got up and went out, and the children brought their instruments. I told the person announcing the program to say behind the microphone. In honor of those who bought tickets and came from far and near, we performed this ballad. And get your money back and go. Later it turned out that the organizer was one of them, so I came backstage and told him as much as I could. ==Later life, death and legacy==