Mourning And Celebrations: The Climatic Day Of Hussain’s Martyrdom
Saeed Naqvi
Sunday, July 6, will be the tenth and the climatic day of Moharram which this year, has a unique feature, something that has never happened in history. A sizeable section of the world will, mostly, wear black, the colour of mourning and yet they will celebrate. In total contradiction of the Western media, the celebration will be for Iran having taught Israel a lesson.
The celebrations will be alongside the mourning for the tragedy of Karbala more charged this time than ever before.
For the uninitiated, the solemn observances of Moharram centres around the tragedy of Karbala which took place in 680 AD, barely 48 years after the death of Prophet Mohammad.
To escape the frenetic pace of messengers from Damascus seeking Hussain’s “bayat”, or an endorsement of Yazid’s usurpation of the Caliphate, Hussain decided to leave Medina, for an indefinite period. His daughter Sughra was too ill to travel. The poignancy of the tragedy begins here.
What Hussain’s plan was has remained shrouded in a series of speculative thesis. All one does know is that the epic scale of the high tragedy was eventually enacted in Karbala. Members of Hussain’s family, his close friends and dedicated followers were a band of 72.
Armies of Yazid, numerically much larger, zero onto the group after having cut off water from Euphrates for three days in the torrid heat of Karbala. This is how the blockade of water, food and medicine to Gaza resonates with those observing Moharram.
On the tenth day of Moharram Hussain sees all options of peace closed, except one – endorse Yazid’s rule. Ali’s son would never compromise core principles.
Hussain look the decision to allow male members of his entourage to proceed one by one for single combat as was the custom then. The West has never understood how deeply embedded in the Shia psyche is the notion of martyrdom. Every combat became an epic in the hands of poets hundreds of masterpieces on such varied themes as honour, valour, separation, horsemanship, swordsmanship, relations between brother and sister, aunts, nieces, horse and master, all in dirges, nohey, songs of mourning and, above all, marsias measuring the greatest in world literature, particularly in the hands of such masters as Mir Anis.
The focus this Sunday, 10th of Moharram will be on Hussain’s passionate pursuit of peace when principles are in the bargain. Martyrdom emerges as the paramount theme in this sequence. The remarkable paradox this Sunday is that the mourners of the martyrs of Karbala will also, in undertones, be celebrating their having shattered the myth of Israel’s invincibility. For them Netanyahu will have donned the colours of Yazid. I recommend my friend Pravin Sawhney’s “three essential videos” on the 12 day Iran-Israel war which confirm my own observation on the war.
Israel and its western supporters with the US in the lead has a different narrative: Iran’s nuclear project has been “obliterated” to use Trump’s words.
A great tragedy that has befallen the West and which the West has chosen to ignore, is the collapse of the credibility of the western media. The media carries on regardless without qualms, not shedding spurious punditry.
Almost oracular in his pronouncements is the senior guru of the New York Times, Thomas Friedman. He is quite stunning in the authority he has given himself: he talks of “Putin’s kleptocracy which he compares unfavourably, of course, with God’s gift to good governance in the persona of Syria’s Ahmal al Sharaa who mutated from Abu Mohammad al Jolani on whose head there was a bounty of $10 million because he was a certified terrorist and whom Friedman describes delicately as “the new, frail, democratic government of Syria.”
Friedman is rejoicing not just at the transformation of Sharaa. He visualizes a lot of Sunnis and Shias in Lebanon and Iraq quietly rooting for Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Really? I thought they were being berated for genocide. For the first time in decades, a Syrian state and a Lebanese state are being rebuilt by decent leaders, he continues.
Jolani or Sharaa or whatever name he acquires in the future would never have dreamt in his wildest dreams that he would ever qualify to be called “decent” by a pundit who pontificates from the pinnacle.
I wonder what Robert Stephen Ford, US Ambassador to Syria during the Arab Spring, would have to say about Friedman’s ecstasy. The wonderful thing about American officials is that the day they retire, they acquire the right to sing like canaries. Ford revealed in a recent speech, that a British Intelligence outfit asked him to “groom” Sharaa “diplomatically”, “socially” and “sartorially” to be able to play a bigger role in Syria.
Rather like the moods in the French and the British camps on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt as sketched in Shakespeare’s history play, Henry V, Israel and Iran offer two distinct civilizational visions to compare and contrast at this moment of war and mayhem.
When spaces of apartheid and separate development are expanding like dark shadows, it may be useful even for enemies to know a little more about each other.
I have been travelling to Israel since 1968 when an Australian set fire to the Al Aqsa Mosque. A country of soft, socialist Kibbutz seemed quite agreeable. My untrained eyes were unable to spot the nasty works of Zionism behind the curtains.
Israelis and their cohorts may find it useful to keep a steady gaze on Aashura, the tenth day of Moharram this Sunday in Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Bahrein, Dammam in Saudi Arab, Kuwait and significant minorities in Pakistan and India. The tendency to ignore or downplay Shia history and influences are self defeating. For instance how can one ignore the Fatimid rule which founded Cairo in the 10th century, expanded to Tunis. It is a forgotten story that Moharram processions were regular for 150 years of Fatimid rule in Palermo, the capital of Sicily.
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