Signs of Shia courage

Posted by Sayed Mahdi Al-Modaressi - 05 February 2010 08:38

Despite the latest wave of suicide attacks in Iraq, millions of Shia Muslim pilgrims continue to flock to the shrine of Imam Hussein.

Muslim Shiite pilgrims gather outside the Imam Abbas shrine in the Iraq to mark the Shiite mourning day of Arbaeen. Photograph: Getty Images

Several years ago, I met an Australian man who had converted to Islam (and, specifically, to Shia Islam). He told me that, in 2003, he had been watching the news one evening and was astonished by scenes of two million Iraqis streaming towards the holy city of Karbala, chanting: "Hussein, Hussein." For the first time in three decades, in a globally televised event, the world had caught a glimpse of Shia Iraq from the inside.

With the Sunni Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein toppled, Australians, like everyone else, were eager to see how Shia Iraqis would respond to a new era of freedom. "Where is Karbala, and why is everyone heading in its direction?" he recalls asking himself. "Isn't Baghdad the capital of the country? Isn't that where all 'the action' is? Who is this Hussein who motivates these people?"

They were the first in a long line of questions that eventually led him to relinquish his Roman Catholic faith and instead embrace Shia Islam.

What he witnessed in that single, 60-second television news report was especially moving because the imagery was unlike any he had seen before. There was something intense about the commotion. A fervent sense of connection turned human pilgrims into iron filings, automatically aligning with each other as they drew closer to what could only be described as Karbala's powerful magnetic field. It was more than intriguing; it was astonishing and inspiring.

Long trek

In 2007, I travelled to Karbala, my own ancestral home, to find out for myself why such scenes are so captivating. What I witnessed proved to me that even the widest-angle camera lens is too narrow to capture the spirit of this tumultuous, annual Shia ritual.

Thousands upon thousands of men, women and children -- but mostly black-veiled women -- filled the eye from one end of the horizon to the other.The crowds were so huge that they caused a blockade for hundreds of miles. I had the privilege of being driven to Karbala in armoured vehicles with a police escort throughout the nine-hour journey. But the road was overflowing with pilgrims on foot.

The 425-kilometre distance between the southern port city of Basra and Karbala is a long journey by any measure, and must be unimaginably arduous on foot. It takes pilgrims a full two weeks to complete the walk. Some push their parents in wheelchairs. People of all age groups trudge in the scorching heat of the sun during the day and in the bone-chilling cold at night.

They travel across rough terrain, down uneven roads, through terrorist strongholds and dangerous marshlands. Without even them most basic amenities or any travel gear, the pilgrims carry little besides their burning love for "The Master" -- their imam, Hussein. Flags and banners remind them, and the world, of the purpose of their journey.

One banner I saw on my journey read:

O self, you are worthless after Hussein.
My life and death are one and the same,
So be it if you call me insane!

The message recalled words said to have been uttered by Abbas, Hussein's half-brother, who was also killed in the Battle of Karbala in 680AD while trying to fetch water for his thirst-stricken nieces and nephews.

Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, is adored by all Shias. Millions of Sunnis also revere him, as Sayyid ash Shuhada, the "prince of martyrs". He was killed in Karbala on Ashura, the tenth day of the Islamic month of Muharram, having refused to pledge allegiance to the corrupt and tyrannical Ummayad caliph, Yazid.

He and his family and friends were isolated in the desert, starved of food and water and then beheaded. Their bodies were mutilated. In the words of the English historian Edward Gibbon: "In a distant age and climate, the tragic scene of the death of Hussein will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader."

Shias have since mourned the death of Hussein each year, in particular on the days of Ashura and Arba'een. The latter is the Shia holy day of religious observation that occurs 40 days after the day of Ashura. Forty days is the usual length of mourning in many Muslim (and Middle Eastern) cultures. This year, Arba'een falls on Friday 5 February.

Care and devotion

The horrific bomb blasts of late January and early February in Baghdad and Karbala, which killed dozens and wounded hundreds, illustrate the dangers facing Shias living in Iraq, and the insecurity that continues to plague parts of the country after the war. So it is striking to see so many people -- young and old, Iraqis and foreigners -- making the dangerous journey to Karbala.

And it is far from easy to understand what inspires these people. On my own trip, I saw a woman carrying two children in her arms, old men in wheelchairs, a man on crutches, a blind boy holding a walking stick.

I met a 46-year-old man who had travelled all the way from Basra with his disabled son. The 12-year-old had cerebral palsy and could not walk unassisted. For most of the trip, the father put the boy's feet on top of his own and held him by the armpits as they walked. It is the kind of story out of which Oscar-winning films are made, but no Hollywood director or screenwriter dares venture into Iraq these days.

One image that never failed to grab my attention was the sight of thousands of tents, with makeshift kitchens and medical clinics set up by the local villagers who live around the pilgrims' path. The tents (called mawkeb, or "caravan") are the only places where pilgrims can find a space to rest from the exhausting journey.

More surprising were the people asking pilgrims to join them for food and drink. They intercept the pilgrims' paths to invite them, plead with them and eventually prevail on them to take a short break by the side of the road, without asking for payment. They would say: "Please honour us with your presence. Our masters, bless us by accepting our offerings."

Entire towns in Iraq seemed to shut down as millions converged on the holy city. One local tribal leader -- who, in keeping with Iraqi tribal traditions, bows to no one and is treated by his followers as a king -- was standing on the road, calling out through a loudspeaker: "Welcome, o pilgrims of Hussein. I'll kiss the soles of your shoes. May I be sacrificed for you!"

Sacrifice for truth

Just looking at the crowds leaves you breathless. What adds to the peculiarity of the phenomenon is that, as the security conditions get worse, even more people are motivated, it seems, to challenge the terrorist threats and march in defiance to Karbala.

When, days before Arba'een, a female suicide bomber blew herself up after inviting pilgrims to eat in her tent in Alexandria, 45 kilometres south of Baghdad, the crowds turned out in even greater numbers. They chanted in unison:

If they sever our legs and hands,
We shall crawl to the Holy Lands.

And it is not just peasants who take part in this multimillion-man march. There are doctors, engineers, teachers, academics, as well as wealthy entrepreneurs and leading politicians, all of whom participate in what is today one of the biggest annual mass demonstrations in the world. They journey from all over the globe -- Iran, India, Pakistan, Britain, Canada, the United States.

This year, the total number of pilgrims visiting Karbala for Arba'een is officially estimated to have reached ten million. Some say that as security improves in Iraq the figure may one day top 20 million.

Seeing the crowds and joining the procession of pilgrims, I was reminded of the questions that my Australian friend had asked himself when he witnessed the Arba'een procession of 2003: "Who is Hussein? And how does he continue to inspire so many people, over 13 centuries after his martyrdom?"

For Shias, Hussein is the ultimate moral exemplar: a man who refused to bow in the face of tyranny and despotism. Shias see his martyrdom as the greatest victory of good over evil, right over wrong, truth over falsehood. In the words of the Urdu poet Muhammad Iqbal: "Imam Hussein uprooted despotism for ever till the Day of Resurrection. He watered the dry garden of freedom with the surging wave of his blood, and indeed he awakened the sleeping Muslim nation . . . Hussein weltered in blood and dust for the sake of truth."

Holy of holies

But why would all these people walk for hundreds of miles to remember a painful event that took place over 13 centuries ago? Visitors to the shrine of Hussein and his brother Abbas in Karbala are not driven by emotion alone. They cry because they make a conscious decision to be reminded of the atrocious nature of the loss and, in doing so, they reaffirm their pledge to everything that is virtuous and holy.

The first thing that pilgrims do on facing his shrine is recite the Ziyara, a sacred text addressing Hussein with due respect for his status, position and lineage. In it, the Shia imams who followed him after the massacre in Karbala instruct their followers to begin the address by calling Hussein the "inheritor" and "heir" of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus.

There is something profound in making this proclamation. It shows that Hussein's message of truth and freedom is viewed as an inseparable extension of that list of divinely appointed prophets.

Pilgrims go to Karbala not to admire its physical beauty, or to shop, or to be entertained, or to visit ancient historical sites. They go there to cry. They go to mourn. They go to join the angels in their grief. They enter the sacred shrine weeping and lamenting.

It is as though every person has established a personal relationship with the Imam. They talk to him and call out his name; they grip the cage surrounding his tomb; they kiss the floor leading into the shrine; they touch its walls and doors in the way one touches the face of a long-lost friend. It is a picturesque vista, on epic proportions. What motivates these people is something that requires an understanding of the character and status of Imam Hussein and the spiritual relationship that Shias, and in particular Shia Iraqis, have developed with his living legend.

"Who is this Hussein"? For millions of Shia pilgrims, questions this profound, which can cause a man to relinquish his religion for another, can be answered only when you have marched to the shrine of Hussein for 14 days on foot. The verses of a Shia friend of mine sum it up:

The closer I get and when you I'll be seeing,
My emotions take control, with love I begin to shake.
I look at you now and my life has new meaning.
From you some painful beauty with me I must take.

O Karbala, I feel what you're feeling,
O land of loving sorrow, O land of heartbreak,
O land where my leader does rest,
Welcome me as a pilgrim, please make me your guest.

Sayed Mahdi Al-Modaressi is a Shia cleric and chief executive of Ahlulbayt Television Network.

January 21, 2010

Iran protests: the view from Tehran

Zafar Bangash

I must admit that even a seasoned observer of Iran like me has started to wonder if there might be some truth to allegations of widespread anger against the Islamic system following last June's presidential elections.

Troubled by these doubts, I landed at Imam Khomeini International Airport in the early hours of Oct. 4 to be confronted by the same disorganized scenes one has become accustomed to in Iran.

A friend asked me, half jokingly, that if Iranians are such polite people-they are-why one does not see any evidence of it on the roads.

At the airport, people were jostling to get past one another as I have witnessed on earlier occasions. For the two beleaguered customs officers checking arriving passengers, there were five lines of trolleys, all trying to push their way ahead of others.

Instead of customs officials opening bags, they are screened through an X-ray machine. The same friendly chaos was evident there. Everyone tried to dump their bags on the X-ray belt ahead of others, often stalling the machine because bags got stuck inside.

Try doing this in one of the “civilized” Western countries and see what happens. As a frequent flyer, I have encountered more than my fair share of arrogance and outright racism from Canadian customs and immigration officials; U.S. customs and immigration officials are a breed apart. Uneducated, ignorant but supremely arrogant, they lack even basic manners. Their behaviour is akin to gangsters in Hollywood movies.

In Tehran, I tried to seek out the opinion of a wide cross section of people to figure out what was really going on. Having read lurid tales of “massive protests” and how the security forces had beaten and roughed up people after the election, I was anxious to dig out the truth.

While I had never believed such stories, knowing all too well how the Western media distort reality, I thought it would be best to find out first-hand.

I spoke to supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as well as those of his opponents, Mir Hussain Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi. Not once did I hear that Ahmadinejad had not won the election, or that the vote was rigged. It simply was not possible to do so. Even Ahmadinejad’s staunchest critics conceded that he won the elections handily.

So, why the protests and who was behind them?

In a wide-ranging discussion, Professor Muhammad Marandi, who was extensively interviewed on CNN, Al-Jazeera and the BBC immediately after the election, told me that a small group of protesters was determined to disrupt things.

They did not really support Mousavi; they had their own agenda (For the record, Dr. Marandi voted neither for Ahmadinejad nor for Mousavi).

The first opposition rally after the election was not organized by Mousavi’s group. He was told by his advisors to take charge of it after he was challenged by a small but rowdy mob that wanted to go out into the streets regardless. This was also confirmed by Dr. Zahra Rahnavard, Mousavi’s wife, to one of her colleagues at Tehran University who then communicated it to me during a luncheon meeting at the university.

Apart from the June presidential elections, there were two other occasions on which rallies were held in Tehran, and each time the Western media only talked about “massive opposition rallies.”

Interestingly, these reports were not datelined Tehran; they came from reporters based either in Dubai or Beirut. The New York Times went even further; one of its reporters, the Iranian-born Nazila Fathi, is based in Toronto!

The first rally was on Quds Day, which is customarily held on the last Friday of Ramadan. Millions of people attend each year to express solidarity with the Palestinian people by condemning Zionist crimes.

During last Ramadan, while Western media reports talked about “tens of thousands” of opposition supporters defying the security forces, participants at the rally told me that there could not have been more than 5,000 people, and that was being charitable.

Some of the protesters also exposed their true agenda. They chanted slogans asking U.S. President Barack Obama: “Are you with us or against us?”

This was revealing; the slogan was a play on Bush’s infamous demand in his speech immediately after the attacks of 9/11.

Further, the protesters were seeking Obama’s help against the Islamic Republic; this is a death wish. The more than 1 million people marching in the main Quds Day rally easily dwarfed the few thousand opposition supporters.

Yet, the Western media only reported the “massive opposition rally.” Typical of this was the CBC’s As it Happens radio program, broadcast weekdays between 6:30 and 8 p.m. Its hosts have sought out opponents of the Islamic Republic to allow them to spout their hateful messages.

Western media coverage took farcical form on Dec. 8 when universities in Iran were shut down for the Student Day protest.

This event commemorates the 1953 killing of students by the Shah’s regime. Even before the day of the rally, Western media reports were proclaiming that tens of thousands of students would be marching in the streets condemning the “disputed presidential elections.”

On the actual date, there were indeed tens of thousands of students but the majority was not protesting the election result.

The biggest rallies were in support of President Ahmadinejad, the Islamic system and the rahbar (leader) Imam Seyyed Ali Khamenei. This group also carried pictures of the rahbar and Imam Ruhollah Khomeini.

The opponents exposed their true face when they not only condemned President Ahmadinejad but also tore the pictures. Western reporters gleefully reported this.

On Dec. 11, Robert F. Worth of the New York Times in a story datelined Beirut, wrote: “During Monday’s [Dec. 8] demonstrations, the civil tone of many earlier rallies was noticeably absent. There was no sign of the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi, a moderate figure who supports change within the system, and few were wearing the signature bright green of his campaign. Instead, the protesters, most of them young people, took direct aim at Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, chanting, ‘Khamenei knows his time is up!’ They held up flags from which the ‘Allah’ symbol — added after Iran’s 1979 revolution — had been removed. Most shocking of all, some burned an image of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the revolution.”

There was widespread revulsion in Iran when protesters burned pictures of the Imam. He is a revered figure. Even opponents of President Ahmadinejad found this distasteful.

The protesters had finally overplayed their hand. It became clear that they want to destroy the Islamic system of government; their grievance had nothing to do with the election result. That was just an excuse.

There has since been some backsliding as some protesters claimed they were not responsible for burning the Imam’s picture. Some Western commentators also said the Imam’s pictures were set on fire by agents provocateurs. One wonders how they figured this out when not one of them was present in Tehran.

With the hooligans finally exposed and isolated, perhaps it may be an appropriate time for the leadership in the Islamic Republic to get together with those who have genuine differences of opinion, including Mousavi and Karoubi and their supporters, for a wide-ranging dialogue. It would help to sort out such differences so that the enemies of the Islamic Revolution and their paid agents inside Iran are unable to exploit them.

Zafar Bangash is Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought and on the Editorial Board of Crescent International. He lives in Toronto.

Thousands of Iraqis protested the comments by Al-Urefi this past Friday, and the Iraqi Parliament condemned the statements and called on the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) to speak out against such statements. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki strongly criticized the attack on Ayatollah Sistani and was quick to point out that Saudi clerics have exhibited a tendency to attack Shia scholars due to their hostilities to Shia Islam. The Society of Qom Seminary Teachers also reacted swiftly to the insult by Al-Urefi by denouncing the shameful statement and advising Muslims to be conscientious of plans to cause rifts among Muslims through statements such as those by Al-Urefi.

Al-Urefi's defamation of Ayatollah Sistani is a riveting portrait of what Saudi Arabia and the Wahabi juggernaut have been reduced to. In order to claim some legitimacy, Wahabis (who represent the 'religious' views of Saudi Arabia's leadership) are attacking respected Muslim figures who have a proven track record of working against imperialist plans to cause strife among Muslims. A man of peace and the true character of Islam would obviously be attacked by Wahabis who advocate terrorism and destruction. The very presence in Iraq of a righteous and forthright leadership under Ayatollah Sistani is a threat to the very existence of the Saudi Arabian government and its plans to override Islam and go against its very teachings.

In recent years, Wahabi clerics have labeled Shias apostates and made no attempt to conceal their endorsement of suicide bombings that target civilians and holy sites in Iraq, Pakistan, and elsewhere. More recently, Saudi forces launched an open attack on Yemeni Houthi civilians in Yemen, thus disregarding several international laws and committing gross human rights violations. More interestingly, the self-righteous Saudis who have been trying to force-feed their twisted doctrine down the throat of the Muslim community were at a loss to justify breaking countless Islamic laws that forbid violence against civilians. Not a single Saudi cleric, Wahabi or not (except perhaps the Shia ones), was willing to condemn the attack on civilians and taking part in the act of war in Dhul Hujjah, one of the four sacred Islamic months in which war is unequivocally prohibited.

In a distant age, some observers considered Saudi Arabia to be the main representative of the world's one billion Muslims, and by and large, the Wahabis have used this relevance to grow and subject Shias to intense oppression in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries. In a testament to their hypocritical nature, Wahabi clerics have been keen to attack Shias on the basis of them being infidels, but have remained silent on their blatant collaboration with Israel. To be fair, Wahabis don't merely exist in Saudi Arabia, and their influence dictates policies in Egypt, Jordan, and UAE – countries which have for the past 30 years made no effort to hide their fondness of the Zionist entity. As a result, very few of these countries have spoken out, if ever, against Israel's actions in the Middle East. Instead, they have stood with Israel time and time again in its oppression of Muslims in Palestine and Lebanon.

Al-Urefi's attack on Ayatollah Sistani is just another part of a growing list by Wahabis to depreciate from the few Muslim scholars and leaders who refuse to sell out Muslims to Imperial powers. It is of prudence to note that no Arab countries, or the Arab League, have condemned Al Urefi or other Wahabi fanatics for this and previous incidents because it directly conflicts with their character and mantra. Unlike the Islamic leadership of several other countries that has been reduced to mere mouthpieces, Shia scholars have stood steadfast in the face of outside attempts to cause a civil war among Muslims and sacrificed great amounts to secure Islamic unity. Saudi Arabia and its allies have shamed all Muslims, and we should not be surprised by more attacks on those who oppose the current status quo in the Muslim world led by the Wahabis and their Imperial allies.

Everyday the call to prayer is made in different corners of the predominantly Buddhist country – unobtrusively within the confines of its 50 or so mosques and approximately 100 musollas or communal prayer rooms.

Twenty-six-year-old Kubo-san prays at a small musolla in the agricultural district of Saitama, about two hours outside the capital, Tokyo. Read »