By: Seyyed Ali Shahbaz
     
“O Hesham, the light of the body is in the eyes. If the sight is luminous, the whole body will be bright. The light of the spirit is in the brain (mind). If a person is intelligent, he will acknowledge his Lord (God). If he acknowledges his Lord, he will clearly see his religion. If he ignores the affairs of his Lord, he will be having no religion. Like the body that does not live without a living soul, religion does not live without true conviction. True conviction is proved only through the mind.
  “O Hesham, plants grow in plain, not rocky, lands. In the same way, wisdom will grow in the hearts of the modest, not the arrogant, because God has made modesty the instrument of the mind and made arrogance the instrument of ignorance. Do you not notice that he who raises the head to the ceiling will have his head bruised? Likewise, he who bends down will enjoy the shades and the protection of the ceiling. Similarly, God will disgrace those who do not behave humbly to Him and will exalt those who humble themselves for Him.”
The above two thought-stimulating passages are part of a lengthy piece of advice to the great rationalist and master-debater Hesham bin al-Hakam, by the person whose martyrdom anniversary we commemorate today on the 25th of Rajab.
He was the namesake of Prophet Musa (Moses), and so remarkably did he restrain his emotions in the face of the tyranny of four successive Pharaohs during his 35-year mission to guide humanity as the Seventh Infallible Successor of the Seal of Divine Messengers, Prophet Muhammad (SAWA) that he earned the epithet of al-Kazem.
Similar to Prophet Moses he wrought many miracles during his lifetime by God’s command, but his greatest and eternal miracle is undoubtedly his permanent sway all over the globe from the capital of his tormentors.
The people of Baghdad – whether Sunni or Shi’ite – no longer remember or revere the Abbasid caliphs, as they make obeisance whenever their eyes fall upon the golden-domed shrine of Imam Musa al-Kazem (AS), with the words: “As-Salaamo alaika ya Bab al-Hawa’ej (Peace unto you O Granter of Boons).”
This veneration of an heir of Prophet Muhammad (SAWA) has made the Pharaonic Americans, the Zionists, the Takfiris, and all other enemies of Iraq, so much exasperated that they focus their propaganda tirade on pilgrims visiting the shrine of the Pride of Prophet Moses (AS).  
It is obvious these dastardly enemies of the Prophet’s Blessed Household, like the four Abbasid Pharaohs of the days of the Seventh Imam – Mansour Dawaniqi, his son Mahdi al-Abbasi and grandsons Hadi al-Abbasi and Haroun ar-Rashid – are arrogantly ignorant of spiritual values.
Born in 128 AH (745 AD) in Abwa, between the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, Imam Musa al-Kazem (AS) was 20 years when God entrusted him with the imamate or leadership of the Ummah at the martyrdom of his father, Imam Ja’far as-Sadeq (AS).
His father’s assassin, Mansour the founder of Baghdad, whose favourite pastime was to track down and kill the descendants of Prophet Muhammad (SAWA), had designs against the life of Imam Kazem (AS) as well, but could not succeed. So also failed Mahdi al-Abbasi and Hadi al-Abbasi, despite the latter’s ordering of the bloody tragedy of Fakh near Mecca where in 169 AH, Abu Abdullah al-Husain bin Ali bin al-Hasan bin al-Hasan al-Muthanna bin Imam al-Hasan al-Mujtaba bin Imam Ali bin Abi Talib (AS) was brutally martyred along with 26 other noble Hashemite members of the Prophet clan. 
Imam Kazem (AS) was shocked by this tragedy, which in brutality was second only to Imam Husain’s martyrdom in Karbala over a hundred years earlier. 
In the face of such horrible bloodshed by the Abbasid usurpers, the Seventh Imam continued to enlighten people with genuine Islam by bravely facing bouts of prisons that intermittently lasted for a total of 14 years. He trained a great number of scholars as could be evident by some of his bezels of wisdom mentioned at the beginning of this column.
Finally, in 181 AH, Haroun, the most Pharaonic of the Abbasid rulers, who knew that as long as Imam Kazem (AS) was alive people would question his dubious claim to the caliphate, devised a plan to abduct the Imam from Medina, and bring him to Basra. After almost two years of house arrest in this port-city, the next imprisonment of the Imam was in Baghdad, where successive jailors refused to obey Haroun’s orders for foul plan.
The despicable wretch who fatally poisoned the Imam’s food thus martyring him on 25 Rajab 183 AH (799 AD) was a certain Sindi bin Shahak who damned himself for eternity in greed of a paltry sum of the transient world.
It is obvious that truth eventually triumphs. The shrine of Imam Kazem (AS) stands towering in Baghdad in far more splendour than the tomb of Prophet Moses on Mount Sinai.
As for Haroun, his bones rot in perpetual ignominy in distant Mashhad at the feet of Imam Reza (AS) – the son and successor of his victim – with pilgrims, along with celestial angels, heaping curses on the most Pharaonic of Abbasid rulers.