At Your Service O' Hussein
The Caribbean Is One Nation.
by Pachamama
At this time of the Muharram Mourning Ceremonies, especially for the Shia Muslims of the world, we are reminded that we can never be guided by reductionist tendencies alone. On the 10th day of Muharram of 680 AD or 61 AH in the Islamic calendar, Prophet Mohammed’s grandson, Imam Hussein Ibn Ali (PBUT), was martyred at the epic Battle of Karbala, in modern day Iraq.
‘At Your
Service O’ Hussein
 |
| A beautiful Muslim Mosque |
At this time of the Muharram Mourning Ceremonies, especially for the Shia Muslims of the world, we are reminded that we can never be guided by reductionist tendencies alone. On the 10th day of Muharram of 680 AD or 61 AH in the Islamic calendar, Prophet Mohammed’s grandson, Imam Hussein Ibn Ali (PBUT), was martyred at the epic Battle of Karbala, in modern day Iraq.
These highly
significant events continue to influence the affairs of all of mankind to this
very day. Imam Hussein’s example of self-sacrifice and resistance against
injustice is indeed instructive to all justice seeking peoples everywhere. It
serves as a powerful connection to the beautiful and the sublime.
Of course,
any goodness in this world has to be properly located within an ocean of evil.
Within Islam itself, some Sunnis, tend to want to dampen the recognition of
these events as sacred. A quarrel which has its genesis in a 1433 year old
argument as to whom The Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) left in charge. This argument
is the basis of a divide between the two dominate currents of Islam.
It is an
argument that today has extremist, Takfiri, Sunni, zealots trying to restrict
religious diversity within Islam itself. Of course, most of Sunni Islam don’t
share this view either. The zealots have long decided that any deviation from
their notions as to what represents Islam is never to be tolerated. It matters
not to the Sunni zealots that they prime supporters, themselves, are indeed the
enemies of all Muslims everywhere.
These
enemies of Islam will include, first and foremost, the Saudis who were brazen
enough to attach their family name to Arabia. Then we have the world powers
seeking to create strife within Islam based on internal disagreement, divide
and rule you say? We have the wider petrol-monarchies of the Persian Gulf. Then
we have Muslims themselves who have acted in ways which divide the Islamic
Ummah. Acted in ways that contradict the central tenets of Islam resulting in
poverty and despotism in too much of the Islamic world.
Imam
Hussein’s example maybe prescient for Caribbean nations at a time of social and
economic uncertainty. Nations with a little-known but long interaction with
Muslims even before the slave period. The surrender of one’s life for the good
of all mankind and in the service of justice represents the best of the human
spirit. Recently in Trinidad & Tobago we have seen an example of the sacred
spirit of Imam Hussein (PBUH) as a hunger striker put all that he was on the
line in a confrontation with a dictatorial government apparatus.
Such was the
Battle of Karbala. Imam Hussein (PBUH) refusal to recognize Yazid 1, as Caliph,
resulted in a small detachment of his defenders and close family facing off
against a much larger contingent from an unpopular ruler. A ruler, not unlike
most currently in power within the Islamic world and many in the Caribbean
today. These are the conditions from which martyrdom is born.
At this time
of Muharram we must all find ways of operationalizing the selflessness and
sacrifice shown by the Great Imam Hussein’s (PBUH). For should Imam Hussein
(PBUH) had been a Westerner his name would have been marked on the steeple of
every door.
Pachamama is a social commentator.
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