By: Seyyed Ali Shahbaz

 

“O soul at peace!

“Return to your Lord, pleased, pleasing!

“Then enter among My servants!

“And enter My paradise!” (Holy Qur’an 89:27-30)

We are in the state of mourning, although since last month for almost a thousand of our compatriots, including scientists, military commanders, athletes, teachers, traders and the other innocents martyred in the cowardly aerial bombing by the Zionist entity, our grief has increased manifold on the advent of the mourning month of Muharram.

It is the month in which the greatest ever tragedy occurred a millennium, three centuries and 86 years ago, whose anniversary we commemorate every year on Muharram 10 (July 6 this year) as the immortal epic of Ashura that continues to inspire us to wage Jihad and achieve martyrdom in order to defeat the forces of evil.

Ashura is the day on which we renew our pledge of allegiance to the person who transcends history and historical developments for having refused to give his hand in allegiance to a tyrannical and ungodly ruler.

When pressed further by the enemy forces, who threatened him with death, he gladly preferred to drink the elixir of martyrdom – not through a poison-filled cup, but in manly manner on the battlefield of an unequal combat.

It is obvious to the readers of this column, who he was. I, however, prefer to introduce him in his own words that reverberated on the plain of Karbala in 61 AH (680 AD), so clearly and so impressively that even the horses stopped whinnying when he delivered his famous sermon, after having seen his companions, his brothers, his nephews, and his sons, including the 6-month infant, slaughtered before his eyes:

“Now then! Consider my family, and ponder as to who I am and then admonish yourselves. Do you consider that it is lawful for you to kill me and harm my sanctity and dignity? Am I not the grandson of your Prophet and the son of his “Wasi” (Testamentary Legatee) and cousin, who was the foremost in belief and the bearer of witness upon everything that the Prophet had brought from Allah? Was not Hamza, the Chief of Martyrs, the uncle of my father? Was not Ja’far, who flies with two wings in Paradise, my uncle? Are you not aware of the Prophet’s statement about me and my (elder) brother as Leaders of the Youths of Paradise? ... By Allah, between the east and the west there is no Son of the Prophet’s Daughter except me, either amongst you or amongst others.”

This was Imam Husain (AS), the son of Hazrat Fatema az-Zahra (SA) and Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS), whose immortal saga continues to inspire the seekers of truth all over the world to this day.

When the stonehearted Omayyad forces refused to heed the voice of reason and insisted that he give oath of allegiance to the libertine Yazid, he drew his sword and said:

“By Allah! I shall not give my hands in yours like a base man, nor shall I flee away like a slave.”

The account of his martyrdom is too tragic a scene to picture here. Readers can refer to authentic books of Hadith and history in this regard.

Imam Husain (AS) thus drew a permanent line between truth and falsehood, between faith and disbelief, and between humanity and beasts in human form, that continues to define the struggle between right and wrong right up to our own times.

If not for his heroic stand for the sake of justice and against injustice, mankind would have long lost all humanitarian values and become another of those rapacious animal species – though two-legged and with the power of speech and thinking – that wantonly tear apart each other.  

Today, if some segments of the human race are behaving with the bestiality of devils while shamelessly calling themselves Muslims, it is clear that these are on the other side of the line drawn by the grandson of Prophet Muhammad (SAWA).

By whatever denomination they go (Takfiri, Wahhabi, Salafi, Zionists, Yankees, etc.), they are an ugly blot on humanity, and their identity is clear.  

It is worth noting that Imam Husain (AS) was not the victim of the Sabeans or their progeny posing as Muslims, and neither were his killers, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Zoroastrians, or their Islamized offspring.

  Those who cruelly martyred him, and violated the letter and spirit of Islam by parading the Prophet’s noble womenfolk and children as captives through the streets of Kufa and Damascus, were actually the sons of the polytheists of Arabia masquerading as Muslim.

In other words, they were the issue of Mecca’s pagan Arab, who had plotted to kill Prophet Muhammad (SAWA) on the crucial night of Hijra, but had failed, because of the heroism of Imam Husain’s (AS) father, Imam Ali (AS), to sleep on his cousin’s bed to ensure that their intended victim would migrate undetected to Medina. 

In Medina, these very same pagan Arabs in alliance with Israelites (progenitors of today’s Zionists) would continue to fail despite imposing battles (sometimes in alliance with the Israelites) on the Almighty’s Last and Greatest Messengers, because of the valour of Imam Ali (AS).

When the heads of the martyrs of Karbala reached Damascus, Yazid unmasked himself and his ill-begotten sires, when he gloated that if only his pagan ancestors killed in the Battles of Badr and Ohad (for opposing Islam) were alive to see how he had avenged their blood.

Similar to what the today’s takfiris say in the depth of their hearts, the Godless Yazid burst out saying: The Hashemites played the game of kingdom; neither a prophet was there nor any revelation from heaven.

That is the reason we commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Husain (AS) and hail him as the Saviour of not just Islam, but of all humanitarian values.