Manufacturing Success: Are We Like Yazeedor Imam Hussain?
By Zulfiqar Ashraf Chaudhry
Roseville, CA
Are we good or evil? Are we obedient (like Gabriel) or a rebel (like Iblees)? Are we a hero (like Imam Hussain) or a villain (like Yazeed)? Are we tax-paying citizens or tax-evading business-men? The truth lies somewhere in the middle.
We vacillate between good and evil. It’s really how we behave in situations that determine our fate. Perhaps, that’s why, we have two angels--one on each shoulder, recording our good and evil deeds (although given our current condition, the angel on the left shoulder would have been sufficient.)
By action only, life becomes either paradise or hell;
otherwise, this creature of dust, in its nature, is neither of light nor of fire.
Around Ashura, my favorite Imam related a new, but less known point, about the Karbala tragedy. He said that the murderers of Imam Husain first prayed behind him before killing him. I was stunned at this new piece of information. I thought “what madness”, “what schizophrenic behavior!” How could you pray behind someone, and then murder the same person and his family?
Before passing any judgment, let’s first try to understand our ancestors’ mindset. They respected Imam Hussain so much that they did not want to miss the opportunity of praying behind the beloved grandson of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). Unfortunately, they were also practical people; they had to earn their bread too; after all, they were employees. They had orders to follow. They had families to feed and their own necks to save. So, after praying behind him dutifully, they brutally murdered him and his family. Then severed his head from his body—the same head that was once kissed and caressed by none other than Mohammad, Ali, Fatima, and sent it back to their leader, Ibn Ziyad in Kufa, who “mistreated it in the most abominable manner and paraded it through the streets…. So great was the shock from Hussain’s martyrdom, that even Yazeed sought to distance himself from the tragedy. Ibn Kathir reports that when he heard of the events of Karbala, Yazid wept bitterly and cursed the actions of Ibn Ziyad. But when we view the sum total of Yazid’s actions and his personal character, these were nothing but crocodile tears of a tyrant.” (Ahmed, Islam in Global history, 2000, p67-68). The question is: would we have behaved the same way?
This schizophrenic disconnect, where murderers pray behind the Imam, knowing full well that they will be killing him soon after they end their Namaz, explains our current failure at the individual and the international level.
There's no shortage of prayers and fasting in the Ummah--more people go to Hajj every year. The problem is that "our clock" (to use MaulanaMaududi’s analogy) is broken and does not do what it was made to do. We fast and pray, yet we "murder" others. We have a calculator running in our minds, where we think our account with Allah is overflowing with money and credit. We think, "Laila-Tul-Qadr took care of my 84 years of sins; I just slaughtered a goat few months ago on Eid, so that's got to count for something; plus Hajj in 2013 took care of all my previous sins; so I am clean like a new-born. Hey Abdullah, sorry I cannot pay your $20,000 back this year. Insha'Allah, I will pay you next year. Sure I will... O' Imam just reminded me yesterday that if fast on Ashura, all my previous sins will be wiped out, hopefully Abdullah's loan too. Let's fast." In other words, we use religion to justify our contradictory - nay abominable -behavior. As Iblees tells his Mushir (councilor), most of us are alien to the world of Imam Hussain.
Keep him alien to the world of character
Until he loses at the game of life
On closer examination, current Muslims in general, and Pakistanis in particular, seem closer to Yazid than Imam Hussain in one important way. They both have unflinching support of their parents. It does not matter if they are right or wrong, they can count on their parents. Most of our parents will gladly bend the rules of the universe, sort of like Yazid's dad (Muawiya bin Abu Sufian) to give us the best chance of succeeding in this fable world. They give us comfortable-nay luxurious - living; get us into the best schools, help us get jobs, even select the most advantageous spouses for us. Yazid was no different from us in this respect. His respected and well meaning dad made a special trip to Madina to convince the “pious five” (i.e., Hassain ibn Ali, Abdullah bin Zubair, Abdullah bin Omar, Abdullah bin Abbas, and Abdur Rahman bin Abu Bakr) to elect his beloved, but incompetent son. When they did not agree to this, he nonetheless, “came out of the meeting and declared that the five had agreed to take the pledge of allegiance to Yazid. According to Tabari and Ibn Aseer, Muawiya openly threatened to use force if his proposition was not agreed to.” ( Ahmed, Islam in Global History , 2000, p 65). Wouldn't our parents (if they were in similar circumstances as Yazid's dad) do the same for us?
No matter how inept, lazy, unfit we might be for a particular job or a spouse; they will guard our interests, our future prospects, even at the expense of bending the Divine injunctions. But we are not like Yazid: we neither have the stupendous power, nor the authority to appoint Generals, who end up killing the beloved grandson of the Prophet.
Unfortunately, the latest research tells us that we would behave more like our “butcher brethren” at Karbala than our noble Imam Hussain and his few followers. History affirms this assertion. Remember Nazi’s killing 6 million Jews in WWII, Bosnian Serbs killing countless Muslims in 1990s, Rwandan Hutus killing 1 million Tutsis in 1990s. Clearly, the power of Authority and culture is irresistible. Only rare individuals, like Imam Husain, have the courage to stand up like a mountain against the crushing waves of prevalent culture and rulers.
Disturbed and intrigued by the atrocities of Nazis in WWII, social psychologist Stanely Milgram of Yale University, decided to test this hypothesis. He was interested in finding out if average, law-abiding citizens of New Hampshire, will commit the same heinous crime of killing another human being by following orders issued by Authority figures, as did the Nazis. So, in 1963, he placed an ad in the local newspaper. Many people responded. After confirming their mental health, they were instructed by an Authority figure, in white coat, to deliver electric shocks to human subjects. As the shocks were delivered, the participants could hear the subjects cry out in pain. Of course, the electric shocks were not real and the subjects were actors, who were pretending to be in pain. But the participants did not know this. To Milgram’s surprise, “ 65% (two-thirds) of participants (i.e. teachers) continued to the highest level of 450 volts. All the participants continued to 300 volts.” So, he concluded that “o rdinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being. Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up.”
So, if the authority figure, like Yazid, is asking you to quell a rebellion, even if the opponent is none other than the beloved grandson of our Prophet, then research says that most of us will obediently comply with our orders, like our ancestors did in the past, and we did it in East Pakistan in 1971 (“ Independent researchers think that between 300,000 and 500,000 died. The Bangladesh government puts the figure at three million.” (Internet)
In 1971, Dr Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University, inspired by Milgram’s experiments of 1960s, wanted to test the hypothesis of situational influences on individuals. In other words, he wanted to see if bad apples (individuals) are to blame, or if the barrel (system) causes apples to go bad. So, he advertised for volunteers, who will act as either prisoners or guards. Many Stanford students obliged. By randomly assigning them roles, as either guards or prisoners, Zimbardo simulated the conditions and environment of a prison. He converted the basement of Jordan Hall at Stanford into real-life prison cells-fully equipped with bars. He stripped the prisoners of their identity (so their humanity is reduced to a number), while giving sunglasses and uniforms to the guards (so they can hide behind their privileged positions). This artificial situation (of simulating prison environment), completely transformed the average, normal, physically and psychologically healthy young men into sadistic guards (like the ones apprehended at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003) and helpless prisoners. Dr Zimbardo had to abandon this experiment within 6 days, when his girlfriend, Christina Maslach, who was also a psychologist at UC Berkeley, came to visit him on Thursday at Stanford, and “saw a chain gang of prisoners being carted to the toilet with bags over their heads as guards shouted orders at them and she witnessed my (Zimbardo’s) apparent indifference to their suffering, she exploded (Zimbardo, the Lucifer effect, 2007, p.457).” After this experiment was abandoned, Zimbardo concluded that situation (system) can convert even good people into bad; so it’s the barrel, not the apples that dictate how to behave.
We have all seen how this phenomenon plays out with our newly arrived fellow Pakistanis: a college educated, bearded male, in shalwar-kameez, standing for countless hours at street corners, gawking at every female that passes by, changes instantly when he enters a plane, and 24 hours later arrives at LA airport. His beard and shalwaarkameez are replaced with a clean-shave, clean T-shirt and jeans; his long hours of standing around doing nothing (except staring at women) is replaced by long-hours of hard work behind a cash-register, in a taxi, or in the English-class-for-Adults at night. In-short, it’s not the bad apples, but the barrel that dictates how to behave. So, let’s answer our original question honestly: are we like Yazid or Imam Hussain?
In the next article, we will explore how heroes are made.
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