By: Seyyed Ali Shahbaz

“O Ali, I weep for that which will befall you in this month (of Ramadhan)… when you will be praying to your Lord, and the most wicked person of all times, like the one who chopped off the feet of the camel of (the tribe of) Thamoud (the proof of Prophet Saleh’s mission) will strike you on your head and your beard will be dyed in blood.”
This is what Prophet Muhammad (SAWA) said in his famous sermon on the eve of the blessed month of fasting whose benefits he expounded in a public gathering. He continued, as his companions listened – some in amazement and some in disbelief:
“O Ali! Whoever kills you has (in fact) killed me; whoever annoys you has annoyed me; and whoever slanders you has slandered me, because you are to me like my soul. Your spirit is my spirit, and your nature is my nature. Surely, Allah the Praised and the Glorious created me then you; chose me then you; and selected me for Prophethood and selected you for Imamate. Whoever denies your Imamate has (in fact) denied my Prophethood.
“O Ali! You are my legatee and father of my (grand)children, the husband of my daughter, and my Caliph (Vicegerent) over my Ummah both in my lifetime and after my death. Your bidding is my bidding, and your forbidding is my forbidding. By the Power that granted me Prophethood and made me the most excellent of creation, you are the Hujjat-Allah (Argumentation of Allah) over His creatures, His Trustee over mysteries and His Caliph over His creatures.”
What the Prophet had foretold did occur. A Kharijite (renegade from Islam), named Abdur-Rahman ibn Muljam, struck the One and Only Commander of the Faithful with a poisoned sword on the head while in the state of the ritual prayer in the grand mosque of Kufa on the dawn of the 19th of Ramadhan in the year 40 AH.
“Fuzto wa Rabbil-Ka’ba” or “By the Lord of the Ka’ba I have triumphed” said the Prophet’s dearest cousin and ward on fulfillment of the tidings given to him by the Seal of Messengers over three decades earlier.
In the early hours before the break of dawn on the 21st of the fasting month, after giving the necessary instructions to his sons and companions, the Imam of the Pious, the Symbol of Justice, the Paragon of Valour, the Gateway of the City of Knowledge, the Model of Magnanimity, the Epitome of Eloquence, and the “Quran-an-Nateq” (Speaking Qur’an), achieved martyrdom – thus ending the only instance in history of the government of social justice.
Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS) needs no introduction. Personally brought up since childhood by his elder cousin who was thirty years his senior, he was present on Mount Noor outside Cave Hera when Archangel Gabriel descended with the First Rays of Divine Revelation.
On Almighty God’s formal entrustment of the universal mission of Islam to the 40-year old son of his deceased uncle, he was the first one to proclaim “ash-hado anna Muhammadan Rasoul-Allah” (I testify Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah) – the testimony of faith which all Muslims devoutly recite till this day.
He devoted his entire life to the defence of the Prophet and the genuine message of Islam, risking brushes with death. In his own words: “By Allah! The son of Abu Taleb is more familiar with death than an infant with the breast of its mother.”
At times death appeared imminent when there was no other Muslim except the Prophet’s loyal wife, Hazrat Khadija (SA), and the barely teenaged lad used to protect the Prophet from the showers of stones and rocks hurled by the children of the pagan Arabs at the instigation of their ill-begotten sires.
Then there was the closest brush with death when he volunteered to sleep on his cousin’s bed on the night of Hijra so as to allow the latter to migrate undetected to Medina, while the assassins with swords drawn were waiting for dawn to storm the Abode of Divine Revelation and kill the Prophet.
No wonder, God Almighty revealed the following Ayah of the holy Qur’an in praise of Imam Ali (AS):
“And among the people is he who sells his soul seeking the pleasure of Allah, and Allah is most kind to [His] servants.”
In Medina, there were constant close encounters with death for almost a whole decade, when the Arabs – at times in alliance the Israelites – imposed armed battles on the Prophet. While the neo-Muslims fled or lagged behind, it was Imam Ali (AS), who risked his life to save the Messenger of Mercy and the message of Islam.
At times he was wounded, like the duel with the giant Amr ibn Abduwud in the crucial battle of Khandaq (Trench), where blood oozed from his head from the sword blow of his opponent, whom he eventually dispatched to the bowels of hell in a brave and manly manner after the murderous infidel Arab had spurned all offers of peace.
The closest encounter with death for him was that tragic day in Medina, only a few days after the passing away of the Prophet, when a group of ruffians stormed his house, hurled the burning door on his wife, the Prophet’s Immaculate Daughter, Hazrat Fatema (SA) – who suffered broken ribs and miscarriage – and dragged him for forced oath of allegiance to the person who had usurped the caliphate.
That day, the conspirator-in-chief of the scandalous event of Saqifa Bani Sa’da was cowardly swinging a drawn sword and threatening to chop off the head of the Prophet’s Divinely-designated Vicegerent who had his hands tied, despite the shrieks of the Prophet’s daughter.
After a quarter of a century of deprival of his right to rule, Imam Ali (AS) had to reluctantly take up the reins of temporal power on the insistence and begging of the leaderless masses, but no sooner did he took charge of the caliphate, the Pledge-Breakers, the Seditionists, and the Renegades imposed wars upon him, in which he emerged victorious.
Finally, when he had made decisive plan to defeat the charlatan Mu’awiya ibn Abu Sufyan once and for all by assembling a strong force to march upon Syria, the person who was born in God’s Symbolic House the Holy Ka’ba, met his cherished goal of union with the Lord Most High in Kufa’s Mosque (also a House of God), when the dastardly renegade struck him the fatal blow.
Imam Ali (AS) thus triumphed, and along with him all true believers in view of the Prophet’s famous hadith: “Ali is with righteousness and righteousness is with Ali.”