Moharram and Ashura

Today is the twelfth of the month of Moharram, the first month of the Islamic lunar year 1431. But for all Shi’as worldwide this month is a time of mourning, commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hossein, the Holy Prophet’s grandson, and his followers at Karbala, now in Iraq, in 683 CE.

The Imam’s camp comprising his followers and members of his family including women and children had its water supply cut off on 7 Moharram by the army of his enemy Yazid ibn Muawiyya. On the 10th of Moharram Yazid’s army and Imam Hossein’s seventy-two loyal followers engaged in combat which resulted in the killing of the Imam and all his soldiers and the captivity of his womenfolk and his ailing son Zain ul Abedin, who became the next Imam.

The significance of the Karbala massacre has come to symbolise the importance of standing up for Right against Wrong, at whatever cost. The Imam himself, and in fact his father Imam Ali and the Holy Prophet had known that he would be martyred there, but this was the only way that the purity of faith would be preserved: the martyrdom of a small group of men would henceforth live in the collective memory of believers as a triumph of good over evil.

So since Friday 18 December/1 Moharram young people all over cities and villages in Iran set up makeshift tents hung with green and black banners, in remembrance of the Imam’s encampment, and they gather in them every evening until the 10th of the month, listening to lamentations of the different events of the battle, beating their chests to the rhythm of the dirge and going on street processions that reproduce the Imam’s battle array, with drums, battle standards and a crier that chants the praises of the Imam.

The commemoration of Imam Hossein’s martyrdom not only keeps his memory alive, but alerts Muslims to the ongoing struggle against oppression and injustice, as it has done at critical moments in Iran’s history. (There is a mention of violence as a result of Moharram’s processions in E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India). Last year the beginning of Moharram almost coincided with the bloody events at the Gaza strip, with the first of Moharram declared a day of public mourning in Iran, and with people in mass rallies demonstrating against Israeli government violence.

The mourning ceremonies reached a peak the day before yesterday, the day of Ashura (the tenth of Moharram) with street processions of men and boys carrying out ritual chest-beating and self-flagellation. A far cry from Christmas back home; but then again, as the Greeks say, “opou yis, patris,” or “everywhere on earth is home.”