By: Seyyed Ali Shahbaz

“…We appointed Imams to guide [the people] by Our command, when they had been patient and had conviction in Our signs.” (Holy Qur’an 32:24)
It is the Almighty Creator Alone Who appoints the Imams of Guidance to lead people towards the bliss of Paradise through their patience under the most adverse circumstances, through their piety that negates things and acts considered harmful for both the self and the society, through their prudence that always selects the best possible course, through their position on the manifest truth, and through their persuasion to adhere to Divine commandments.
Today, on the 12th of Muharram we commemorate the martyrdom anniversary of one such Divinely-designated Imam whose leadership the evil-minded despised for the very values mentioned above, which were deemed dangerous by tyrants who had usurped political power of the realm and resorted to every foul play to try to isolate them, even if it required the killing of these innocent souls.
This is the reason for the widely prevalent injustice in our world which is beset by hostilities, bloodshed, wars, deprivation, exploitation of the weaker sections of the society, occupation of other’s lands, suppression of fellow humans on the basis of creed, colour of skin, ethnicity, language, and the like, misuse of technology and science, and spread of pandemics such as Coronavirus.
Nonetheless, the Appointees of the Lord Most High have spared no efforts to hold aloft the torch of guidance in every age in order to show to mankind the path of truth and to keep their faith alive in the Divine Promise that the Earth, as foretold in all Heavenly Scriptures, will one day witness the emergence of the global government of peace, prosperity, and justice, led by an Imam of the progeny of the Last and Greatest Messenger, Prophet Muhammad (SAWA).
Now we better understand why Imam Husain (AS) refused to give the pledge of allegiance to the misrule of the usurper Yazid ibn Mua’wiyyah and preferred to fight bravely to his last breath, thereby creating the Immortal Epic of Ashura in Karbala against the bloodthirsty Omayyad hordes, even if it meant the sacrifice of his dearest and nearest ones and the imprisonment after him of his bed-ridden son and successor, along with the children and womenfolk of the Prophet’s Household.
It was thus left to the 23-year old Imam Ali ibn al-Husain Zain al-Abedin (AS), although in chains and fetters in spite of his being sick, to salvage humanitarian values by unmasking hypocrisy in the courts of the tyrants themselves.
His Imamate started on the tragic twilight of Ashura (10th Muharram 61 AH) amidst the flames of the burning encampment of the Ahl al-Bayt, and the head of the martyrs mounted on lances by the Godless hordes, who the next day took him as a prisoner to Kufa, along with his noble aunts Hazrat Zainab (SA) and Hazrat Omm Kulthoum (SA), as well as his little sister Hazrat Ruqaiyya (SA), and his wife Fatema bint Imam Hasan (SA) and his 4-year old son, the future Imam Mohammad Baqer (AS).
On seeing people lined up on the streets at the approach of the Caravan of the Noble Captives, Imam Zain al-Abedin (AS) delivered a brief but moving sermon to introduce himself and to make the Kufans realize the consequences of their sin in inviting his father, and then treacherously betraying him to the forces of Yazid:
“I am the son of the person who was beheaded on the bank of the Euphrates although he had not shed the blood or usurped the right of anyone. I am the son of the person who was attacked by a huge number of people and martyred when he was no longer capable of fighting and had fallen on the ground owing to weakness. It is a sufficient honour for us that our blood was shed, our property was looted, we were insulted and our women and children were made prisoners.”
As the Prophet’s Fourth Infallible Heir, his sermon brought memories to the elders of the gathering of the eloquent sermon of his grandmother, the Noblest-ever lady Hazrat Fatema Zahra (SA), who half-a-century earlier in Medina following the usurpation of the right of political leadership of her husband, Imam Ali (AS) – the Prophet’s Divinely-designated Vicegerent – had exposed the falsity of the caliphate of the coup leaders of the scandalous gathering of Saqifa Bani Sa’da.
“O people! I put you on your oath to tell me in the Name of Allah, whether you know that you had written letters to my father and then deceived him. You made firm promises to him and then rose to fight him… May you reap the harvest of your misdeeds in both the worlds, and may you be disgraced for the indecent policy which you have adopted. How will you face the Prophet of Allah when you are brought before him on the Day of Judgement and with which eyes will you look at him? The Prophet will tell you: “You have killed my children and behaved towards me dishonourably. You are not my followers”.
The people of Kufa realized their folly and this made the Obeidullah ibn Ziyad the bloodthirsty governor of Kufa to hurriedly send the Caravan of Captives of the Prophet’s Household to Syria, to the court of the tyrant Yazid in Damascus.
Here also, Imam Zain al-Abedin (AS) triumphed in captivity. When asked to speak from a pulpit in Yazid’s court, he dismissed the supposed ‘mimbar’ as a mere pile of wooden planks for its being misused for propagation of the un-Islamic rule of the Omayyads.
He then delivered a moving sermon that was interrupted through recitation of the “Azaan” although it was not yet time for the ritual prayer. When the Muezzin pronounced “Ash-hado anna Muhammadan Rasool-Allah” (I testify Muhammad is the Messenger of God), the Imam boldly asked Yazid, as to whose ancestor the Prophet of Islam was?
“Whether yours or mine, and if mine, how could you kill the Prophet’s grandson and still call yourself a Muslim!”
The tyrant became speechless and felt ashamed in front of the whole court. Soon he released the Ahl al-Bayt from prison and permitted them to travel to their hometown Medina, where Imam Zain al-Abedin (AS) continued to wage his jihad in a unique way for 34 years.
His period of Imamate was critical in view of the tussle for power between Abdullah ibn Zubair and the Omayyads. Both were hostile to him and the Bani Hashem Clan. Both wanted to wipe out the followers of the Ahl al-Bayt, especially after the two uprisings in Iraq to avenge the blood of Imam Husain (AS) – the uprising of the “Tawwabin” (Penitents) led by Sulaiman ibn Surrad Khuzai, and the uprising of Mukhtar ibn Abu Obaidah, who managed to bring to justice the main killers of the Prophet’s grandson.
The 4th Imam through his expounding of the tenets of Islam, through his elaborating of rights (including the rights of our own bodily organs upon us), and through his “munajaat” (or whispered prayers) and supplications to the Almighty whose contents range from the fundamentals of faith and moral virtues to scientific issues, such as the weight of light, he bequeathed to humanity a treasure trove of guidance for success in life and salvation in afterlife.
He also groomed several scholars who shouldered the task of spreading the genuine teachings of Islam to various parts of the world.
So magnanimous was he that when the Omayyad rulers had no clue to stop the Byzantine coins stamped with the cross from entering the Muslim lands, he sent his son Imam Muhammad Baqer (AS) to Damascus to set up a mint for the first ever time in Islamic history, thus saving the drain of the bullion to the Christians.
Alas, in 95 AH, Imam Zain al-Abedin (AS) was martyred through a fatal dose of poison given by Waleed I, the self-styled caliph, but not before he had delivered the followers of the Ahl al-Bayt from the thorniest periods of their lives following the heartrending tragedy of Karbala.