by Ed Husain
His companions refused to abandon him, however, and Husain was intent on reaching Iraq, despite the dangers that lay ahead. ‘The hearts of Iraqis may be with you,’ warned a messenger who rode from Kufa, capital of his father Ali’s years as caliph, to meet Husain. ‘But I fear their swords belong to Yazid. I ask you by God to return to Mecca.’
Mecca’s governor, meanwhile, fearing for Husain’s life, sent messages pleading with him to return and offered ‘safe conduct, kindness, generosity and protection’. Husain was the grandson of Mohamed. The Prophet Mohamed taught his family and companions that once a prophet puts on his armour for war, he never returns home. He fights to be victorious in this world, or a martyr in the next. Husain replied: ‘The best guarantee of safe conduct is from God. Man journeys in darkness, and his destiny journeys towards him.’
Still other messengers caught up with Husain and his companions as they travelled toward Kufa. Fear was widespread. Husain must retreat, the messengers told him, and wait for a better time to make his move. His father, Imam Ali, had accepted arbitration. His elder brother Hasan had opted for abdication. But Husain was determined neither to arbitrate, nor abdicate. He wanted to rejuvenate Islam with his blood. For Muslims today, both Sunni and Shi‘a, Imam Husain’s journey to Iraq is the finest illustration of courage, self-sacrifice, and the pursuit of justice.
Three weeks after leaving Mecca, Husain had almost reached Kufa. It was from this city on the banks of the Euphrates river that he had received the bulk of messages of support. Kufa had been the capital of the Islamic caliphate under Imam Ali. The Kufans wanted the caliphate returned to the Prophet’s family, and to them; they did not support the tyrants of Damascus. Their pledge was to the Prophet, to Imam Ali, to the dynasty of which Husain was now the standard-bearer.
It was night when, 20 miles from Kufa, Husain and his companions stopped to rest, preferring not to enter the city in darkness. When news reached the city that the Prophet’s grandson was nearly at the gate, the governor, loyal to Caliph Yazid, sent one hundred men to warn Husain and his companions to retreat.
The warrior who led that battalion is famous in the annals of Islamic history. His name was Hurr Al-Riyahi, meaning ‘free’, and he approached Imam Husain under orders from Kufa’s governor. He did so as a valiant man, however, his shield reversed in a gesture of peace. Disobeying his governor’s orders, Hurr could not bring himself to arrest the Prophet’s family. With his soldiers behind him, he begged Imam Husain to return peacefully to Mecca, or pledge allegiance to Yazid.
‘No, by God,’ Husain answered. He stood on his saddle, his head held high, and addressed the soldiers from Kufa:
I will neither give my hand to a tyrant like a humiliated man nor flee like a slave. May I not be called Yazid. Let me never accept humiliation over dignity. I have here two saddlebags full of your letters to me. Your messengers brought me your oath of allegiance, and if you now fulfil that oath, you will be rightly guided. My life will be with your lives, my family with your families. But if you break your covenant with me, you have mistaken your fortune and lost your destiny, for whoever violates his word, violates his own soul.
Muslims still recall Husain’s moving speeches. The Shi‘a memorise and recite them every year when they commemorate the catastrophe of Karbala. In a clear reference to Caliph Yazid and his governor in Kufa, Imam Husain roared: ‘The goodness of this world is in retreat, and what was good is now bitter. Can you not see that truth is no longer practised? That falsehood is no longer resisted? When that is so, I can only see life with such oppressors as tribulation, and death as martyrdom.’
There was nothing left now for Imam Husain to inherit. No pledges, no weapons, no wealth, no power, not even an organised mass following. Nothing at all. Yazid and the Umayyad caliphate controlled every reach of society. Husain had only one weapon: his own death. For him, martyrdom was not a loss. It was a choice to be shahid, a witness, to meet his Lord in death, to return to his father, mother and grandfather having stood up to an unjust caliph in Yazid.
Hurr was unable to arrest Imam Husain, but he could not allow him to enter Kufa, either. Husain helped the warrior by turning away from the city, but he did not head back to Mecca. Instead, he walked north for three days, leading his small caravan in the desert heat towards a no-man’s-land. Within sight of the cool blue waters of the Euphrates, he led them further on.
News soon reached the governor of Kufa that Hurr was escorting the family of the Prophet away from Kufa, but not detaining them. Outraged, the governor sent a four-thousand-strong force of cavalry and archers headed by a monster of a man, Shimr. The troops had a very clear mission: to put Husain’s family under siege in the terrible heat, denying them all access to the river. Surely thirst would force Husain to capitulate.
The location of this siege would become known as Karbala, literally ‘place of Karr and Bala’, or ‘trial and tribulation’. The site where thousands of soldiers of Yazid’s corrupt caliphate trapped Imam Husain and his seventy-two companions in the blistering sun has come to stand for truth against falsehood.
Over the next seven days Husain gave rise to a new history. His suffering forms the basis of Ashura, an annual commemoration in which Shi‘a mourn Husain’s pain and loss with Taziya, or passion plays. Husain’s suffering is also recalled by Shi‘a and non-Shi‘a alike in the Muslim fight for self-worth. His actions and attitudes, his serenity under siege, are inspirational for Muslims.
Husain’s nephew Qasim, son of Imam Hasan, who was travelling with the caravan, knew that the group’s destiny was martyrdom in Karbala. He carried a letter his father wrote on his deathbed, which read: ‘A day will come when Islam will need to be saved by giving blood. My brother Husain will need you. On that day, be there with him and represent me.’ Led by Qasim, several other members of the Prophet’s household rode into the enemy ranks and faced certain death. The most painful of memories for Muslims is that of Husain’s six-month-old son, Ali al-Asghar, racked with thirst in the burning heat.
Imam Husain held the thirsty, crying child up to Shimr and Yazid’s guards and said: ‘You are at war with me. This infant has done nothing wrong.’ Before Husain could finish, a three-headed arrow pierced the helpless baby’s neck. Husain returned to the tent holding the tiny, blood-soaked corpse. When the baby’s crying ended, the women began to wail. This was the last day of the siege.
That night, Imam Husain turned once again to his companions. Totally composed, he said: ‘All of you, I hereby absolve you from your oath of allegiance to me, and place no obligation upon you. Go home now, under cover of darkness. Use the night as a camel to ride away upon. These men of Yazid’s want only me. If they have me, they will stop searching for anyone else. I beg you, leave for your homes and families.’
But no one moved. With their dry mouths and hoarse voices, one of Husain’s companions said: ‘We will fight with you until we reach our destiny.’ Others offered to renew their pledge, but vowed never to leave the grandson of the Prophet. Visibly moved, but tranquil, he spoke: ‘Then call upon God and seek His forgiveness. For our final day will be tomorrow.’ He recited a verse of the Quran known to all Muslims, recited when death or difficulty visits us: ‘To God we belong and to God is our return.’
That night, Imam Husain donned white cotton. This was his burial shroud. He applied melted myrrh and put on perfume. Tears fell on the parched faces of the family of the Prophet, for this was the end.
In the morning, Imam Husain bid farewell to the women of his family and mounted his white stallion. With a small band of warriors surrounding him, he charged fiercely into enemy lines. ‘By God I have never seen his like before or since,’ one of Yazid’s soldiers would remember. ‘The foot soldiers retreated from him as goats retreat from an advancing wolf.’ Still, as he advanced, the enemy force kept up its attacks. By the time he fell to the ground there was an arrow in his shoulder and thirty-three knife and sword wounds on his body. His mount rode back to the camp alone. Imam Husain was no lo
nger physically alive, but spiritually he captured the Muslim mind for ever.
Not content with killing him, Shimr’s men chopped off Husain’s head and impaled it on a spear. Then, with the women and children as captives, Shimr sent the family of the Prophet marching unveiled, dishonourably, to surrender to Caliph Yazid in Damascus. Husain’s eloquent sister Zeinab now led the caravan, holding Husain’s one surviving son, Zain Al-Abideen. In front of hundreds of witnesses in the court of the caliph, she proclaimed:
‘O Yazid, do you believe that you have succeeded in closing the sky and the earth for us and we have become your captives because we have been brought before you in a row? And that you have secured control over us? You are boastful and happy. Wait for a while. Do not become so joyful.’
She then recited verses of the Quran, reminding Yazid how much oppressors ultimately lose, in this world and the next. Indeed, after all the precious blood spilt on his behalf, Yazid ruled for only three years, from 680 to 683.
The killing of the grandson of the Prophet sent shockwaves across the Islamic world. Rebellions broke out in Mecca and Medina, and Yazid subdued them with brute force. The caliph’s army laid siege to Mecca, and bombarded the holy site of the Ka’bah, setting it on fire with catapults. His forces also attacked Medina, raping many women in the city of the Prophet. Such was the Muslim-on-Muslim violence inside the Prophet’s own city, within only a century of his dying.
Meanwhile in Damascus, Zeinab stood daringly before Yazid in the caliph’s court. She chastised him for veiling his own womenfolk, while the daughters of the Prophet were paraded before Damascus without honour. Lady Zeinab retired into the suburbs of Damascus until her death in 682. She lived with a group of believers and, loyal to Imam Ali and Husain, continued to teach and remember the lessons of Karbala.
Her nephew, the great Imam Zain Al-Abideen, grew up and became, true to his name, the ‘prince of the pious’. He was also known as Imam al-Sajjad, or the imam ‘who habitually prostrated’. Among all Muslims, Sunni and Shi‘a, this man’s legendary piety led to the birth of Sufi orders and spiritual chains of authority that still survive. Muslims today continue to practise his teachings. He returned to Medina, where he taught a select group of Muslims, died in the year 713 and was buried in the city. More than a thousand years later, in 1925, his shrine was destroyed by the modern Saudi government under orders from Salafi clerics who deemed such veneration of the Prophet’s family as a form of polytheism. Saudi destruction of historical Muslim sites fuelled tensions with mainstream Muslims and particularly the Shi‘a. Turkish and Iranian hostility to Saudi Salafism is born from such Saudi acts of obliteration.
Zeinab’s dazzling tomb stands in Damascus today. In the Umayyad Mosque, the prayer niche of Zain al-Abideen lies at the corner of the grave where Yazid buried Imam Husain’s head. An endless march of Muslims visits these shrines and remembers Karbala. And for Shi‘a and Sunni alike, Karbala was not 1,200 years ago. It feels as if the massacre happened in our lifetimes, that we failed to come to Imam Husain’s aid. This guilt still tugs at the Muslim conscience. The Iranian government has sent soldiers to Syria to protect these graves from demolition at the hands of violent Salafis such as ISIS.
However, while both Sunni and Shi‘a feel this guilt, it manifests itself in very different ways. When most Sunni Muslims are asked about Karbala, they feel regret, remorse, and distress that the Prophet’s beloved grandson was killed by other believers. But Sunnis do not grasp the intricacies of what happened. Sunni Muslims fear fitna, or dissension, and this leads to the obscuring of a painful history.
For Shi‘a Muslims, it is the opposite. They hold on to every detail of Karbala. Shi‘a life, clothes, colours and creed reflect that catastrophe. The majority of observant Shi‘a wear black clothes. Women wear black robes, and men who claim descent from Ali wear black turbans and robes, still in mourning for the death of Imam Husain. Hezbollah’s Hasan Nasrallah, Iraq’s Moqtada al-Sadr, and Iran’s Khameini mostly reflect this trend, as do the millions of women who wear a black chador in Iran or Afghanistan to cover their chins, foreheads and the rest of their bodies with the same black wrap. Sunni women generally tend to wear a headscarf as separate clothing to the abaya or gown.
Shi‘a Muslims believe that Imam Husain’s son, Zain al-Abideen, became their imam after Husain died. And from father to son, this imamate passed until the twelfth imam went into occultation or spiritual hiding in 873. Hence most Shi‘a Muslims are known as Ithna Asharis, or Twelvers, because they believe that, including Ali, there were twelve imams. Breakaway sects such as the Ismailis or Alawites believe in a different number of imams. While Sunni Muslims believe that only the Prophet was protected from flaws, Shi‘a believe that these imams, part of the household of the Prophet, were also free of faults. Shi‘a Muslims live in anticipation of the last imam, also referred to as the Mahdi, a mythical figure who appears at the end of times and, with Jesus, will bring peace to a troubled earth. Iran’s former president Mahmud Ahmedinajad kept an empty chair in cabinet meetings for the Mahdi.
Most Muslims believe that those the Prophet referred to as next of kin were his immediate family. Shi‘a, however, give a fifth of their income to those they consider descendants of the Prophet, their religious guides. They follow the Quranic injunction that a fifth of the spoils of war, or a fifth of the Muslim treasury, should go to the Prophet’s family, a practice known as khums, literally meaning ‘a fifth’. Today, this ancient practice funds thousands of Shi‘a scholars in the great cities of Qom in Iran, Najaf in Iraq and Syria’s capital Damascus, as well as smaller Muslim communities around the world.
When Shi‘a Muslims pray, they press their foreheads on a piece of flat stone extracted from the soil in Karbala. In their prayers and rituals, the remembrance of the Prophet and the family of the Prophet feature frequently. When Shi‘a faithful visit tombs and shrines in the Middle East, they mourn, cry and recite sad verses to remember Karbala. Sunni Muslims generally do not undertake such elaborate rituals.
Among Arab Sunni Muslims, especially in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, the pejorative term for Shi‘a is Rawafid or ‘the rejectors’. The name stems from Shi‘a dismissal of the first three caliphs of Islam. This slander of the Shi‘a has been part of the modern Arab Muslim lexicon since the 1790s, when Salafi extremists from today’s Saudi Arabia raided Karbala and other Shi‘a-dominated cities. Al-Qaeda, ISIS and other violent Salafi jihadi movements use this exact word to describe Shi‘a Muslims when justifying their mass murder.
If Shi‘a customs and prayers seem strange to Sunnis, then to Shi‘a their Sunni brethren seem tyrannical, unthinking, disloyal, and worse, supporters of murderers. Sunni Muslims recognise the caliphs Abu Bakr, Omar and Othman as ‘rightly guided’ caliphs, thereby rejecting Imam Ali as Mohamed’s successor. Sunni Muslims recognise the realities of that period, and see the Umayyad dynasty, however flawed, as a caliphate and as part of a legitimate continuum.
There are many Shi‘a grievances against the Sunni majority. However, Sunnis, who have been the stronger group both numerically and militarily throughout Islamic history, have mostly been tolerant of the Shi‘a. Where this tolerance did not exist, in rare instances of history, the Shi‘a created the dogma of Taqiyya, the legitimate concealment of their faith in order to prevent persecution.7 Most Sunnis have no knowledge of the doctrine of Taqiyya, although since 9/11 anti-Muslim American pundits have accused activist Sunni Muslims of Taqiyya in wishing to convert the West to Islam (wrong allegation and incorrect community). This is another example of those outside the House of Islam misunderstanding what happens inside. The rivalry between Iran and its allies, and Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies, has metastasised into the Syrian war. But this war between Sunni and Shi‘a is yet to peak.
The emotions of Karbala live on. The potential for conflagration and conflict is still worse than anything the world has witnessed in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Pakistan. What can heal this centuries-old wound? If anything can stop further int
ra-Muslim bloodshed it is a return to a deeper, fuller understanding of the sharia, the Islamic pathway that the majority of Muslims, both Sunni and Shi‘a, hold sacred.
5
What is the Sharia?
As the Prophet’s companions left for Yemen to call people to worship God, he appointed Muadh bin Jabal to head the small delegation. The Prophet had concerns. If there were differences between the groups or the people they would meet in Yemen, how were they to settle disputes? he asked.
‘By referring to the Quran,’ Muadh replied.
‘And what if the answer is not in the Quran?’ the Prophet asked.
‘By consulting your ways [or Sunnah] here in Medina,’ answered Muadh.
‘And what if my Sunnah has no precedent for your question, dear Muadh?’
‘I will exercise my own reason and judgement, O Prophet of God,’ responded Muadh.
The Prophet smiled and praised God for Muadh’s precise answer. Muadh was among the most knowledgeable and upstanding of the Prophet’s companions. The answer he gave before setting out to Yemen embodies the spirit of sharia, or Islamic law.
When facing tough questions that require guidance, a Muslim refers to the Quran and the Prophet. If an answer is not found, then a Muslim exercises their independent reasoning, or ijtihad. But what does it mean in practice to interpret the holy texts? And why is sharia so controversial, and so feared in the West? Is there a way in which sharia can find a conciliatory place in the modern world?
The word sharia means ‘path to water’ in Arabic, a mark of a people with a nomadic heritage. Something so basic, so simple, has become complicated through centuries of accumulated Muslim scholarship and commentary on scripture. The absence of sharia as state law in most parts of the Muslim world now drives a widespread political cause, a protest movement of modern Islamists. Their success can be measured by the popularising of the call for sharia as the perceived solution to the problems besieging the Muslim world.