The Academia Magazine
Hussain (AS): History’s Greatest Martyr and a Paragon of Truth
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
There are many a Western intellectual who often wonder why Muslims don’t celebrate the onset of their Hijra Calendar—which works according to the sighting of the moon—with fanfare associated with the New Year of Roman (Solar) Calendar.
I often ran into the kind of curiosity it invokes in Western minds during my long career in diplomacy. My Western colleagues would quiz me—not out of cussedness but curiosity—what prevented the followers of Islamic faith from marking their New Year with the kind of gaiety and festivity taken for granted in the Christian world?
It’s not that we, Muslims, have a special moronic streak in our bones or DNA that holds us back from marking the arrival of our Hijra or Lunar Calendar with fanfare and jubilation. Our sobriety, in observing the sighting of the Muharram crescent—which heralds the beginning of our Hijra Calendar—is entirely out of reverence that we carry in our hearts for the man, and his family and clan, whose imprint on Muharram is, for Muslims, permanent and for all times to come.
The ‘man’ is none other than Imam Hussain, our Holy Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) grandson—from his daughter, Fatima (AS) --and the great martyr of Karbala.
It’s Hussain’s immutable and monumental sacrifice—of his own life and the lives of his sons, friends and associates—on the battlefield of Kerbala, on the 10 th of Muharram, in Hijra year (AH) 61 that marks the commencement of our Islamic Calendar, besides being the most epochal event in the History of Islam. The great tragedy underlying the heroic sacrifice of Hussain (AS) is the hallmark of Muharram, and all the gory details that go with that watershed event in Islamic history.
There are both temporal and ecclesiastical aspects to the battle of Kerbala, and the events preceding it. The whole episode can’t be understood without a reference to history
After the demise of Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) there was the beginning of a schism among his followers on the question of succession to him.
According to some of his followers, he hadn’t left any categorical guidelines as to who should succeed him and lead the Muslim Ummah, or the community of Believers he had spawned through his prophetic mission and guidance in his lifetime.
There were others who believed that the Prophet had categorically designated his cousin and son-in-law, Imam Ali (AS) as his successor in his last sermon, delivered at the Water-well of Ghadir ( Khum-e-Ghadir, in Arabic) on the 18 th of Zul-Hijja—the last month of the Muslim Calendar—on his return journey from his first and last Haj, or Pilgrimage.
The ideological schism didn’t quite manifest itself during the reign of the first two Caliphs, Abu Bakar and Omar. But it did start manifesting itself during the reign of the Third Caliph, Usman, who hailed from the tribe of Banu-Ummaya (remembered as Ummayads, in subsequent history of Islam). Banu Ummaya had been in the forefront of organized opposition to the mission of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). The Ummayad clan was led by Abu Sufyan, an outspoken adversary of the Holy prophet who didn’t leave any stone unturned to oppose and obstruct the Mission of Muhammad (PBUH).
Abu Sufyan had, formally, embraced Islam and submitted himself to the Prophet after he had been vanquished in the Conquest of Mekkah—the Prophet’s birthplace from where he’d been compelled to emigrate because of stiff opposition mounted by Abu Sufyan and his cohorts—in the 8 th year, AH. But many doubted if Abu Sufyan had embraced Islam from his heart.
It was Abu Sufyan’s son, Muawya, who made the great schism a reality when he raised the standard of revolt against the Caliphate of Imam Ali (AS) whom he held responsible for the murder of the Third Caliph, Usman, his cousin and clansman.
Muawya declared his own Caliphate in Damascus and battled with Imam Ali at Siffin. The schism had, sadly, become a reality because of Muawya’s obduracy and revolt.
After the martyrdom (Shahdat, in Arabic ) of Imam Ali, in year 40, AH--for which many held Muawya responsible—Muawya , at his seat of power in Damascus, proclaimed himself as the Caliph of all the Muslim Ummah, while Imam Ali’s eldest son, Hasan (AS) was proclaimed Caliph in Kufa, Iraq, where Imam Ali had shifted the seat of the Caliphate during his time.
A peace treaty, after prolonged negotiations between the two contending parties, was signed between Muawya and Imam Hasan, according to which Muawya was accepted as Caliph of the Ummah. However, the title was to revert to Imam Hasan after the demise of Muawya. But Imam Hasan was eased out of Muawya’s way. In the year 50, AH when he died of poisoning. Many, again, pointed the finger at Muawya for engineering Imam Hasan’s poisoning.
With Imam Hasan dead, the Caliphate should have reverted to Imam Hussain (AS), the younger brother to Imam Hasan and the favorite grandson of the Holy prophet (PBUH). So enamored was the Holy prophet of his grandson Hussain that—according to a universally-accepted saying of the Holy prophet, Hussain was from him and he was from Hussain.
But Muawya had other ideas. In stark violation of the peace treaty he had signed with Imam Hasan, he designated his debauched and drunkard son, Yazid, as his successor.
Upon ascending the throne in Damascus, Yazid, demanded of Imam Hussain (AS) to profess fidelity (Bayet or Beya, in Arabic) to him. The Imam refused, categorically avowing that he, the grandson and successor to the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), would never owe allegiance or fealty to a usurper like Yazid, who, because of his perfidious and debauched credentials was an insult to the dignity of Islam and the Muslim Ummah.
This was the backdrop of Kerbala. Hussain, the cherished grandson of the Holy Prophet, couldn’t be expected to be overawed by the forces of Yazid arrayed against him and his handful of followers. He remained undaunted because he had undiluted faith in his being on the side of right, on the side of truth.
Much against the subjective analyses of some historians and commentators of the epic struggle that culminated in the Battle of Kerbala, on the 10 th of Muharram, 61 AH, Imam Hussain wasn’t a contender for the Caliphate. He was in the battle to save the fundamentals of the divine religion and faith his illustrious grandfather had bestowed upon humanity for its guidance, not for any specific or particular time, but for all ages till eternity.
Hussain stood, and sacrificed himself, his children and faithful followers and companions to uphold the sanctity of the fundamentals of Islam. No cardinal principle of the Islamic faith is more sacred than piety and truth underpinning the Ummah. Yazid, the debauched, was the antithesis of the basic requirements of a leader or ruler in Islam.
The inviolable supremacy of truth and justice, as the corner stone of an Islamic polity, was sacrosanct to Hussain. And that explains, for all times to come, what led him, his children, his clan and his companions to gladly lay down their lives for the sublime cause of not giving in to falsehood, hypocrisy and injustice embodied by Yazid and his tyrannical rule.
Imam Hussain (AS) was fulfilling the mission that had commenced, millennia ago, with his grand ancestors, Prophets Ibrahim and Ismail (Abraham and Ishmael, in the Bible). Prophet Ibrahim had been commanded by Allah to sacrifice his son, Ismail. That sacrifice had remained incomplete, because Allah had exchanged Ismail with a sacrificial lamb.
Allah had commanded His last Messenger, our Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) to sacrifice. In Surah (Chapter of the Qur’an) Kauser (Chapter 108 of the Qur’an) Allah commanded His last Messenger to “Pray unto Thy Lord and sacrifice.”
In return for His Messenger’s sacrifice, Allah promised him that his enemy will be “Without Posterity.” It was Hussain, the Prophet’s favorite and chosen grandson, who was destined to take his grandfather’s sacrifice—and that of his progenitor, Prophet Ibrahim—to its logical fulfilment.
So, in laying down his own precious life and the lives of his kith and kin, including the lives of his 18- year- old young son, Ali Akbar, and his six-month-old infant son, Ali Asghar, Imam Hussain was completing the mission of his illustrious progenitors and forebears.
Hussain’s was a Mission of Truth and Justice. Through his immutable and unmatched epic sacrifice on the battlefield of Kerbala, Hussain ordained for all ages, till Doomsday, that truth would never surrender to falsehood or injustice and that, for the achievement of this noble and glorious goal, no sacrifice was too great a price to pay.
We, Muslims, owe it to the noble mission of Imam Hussain to be faithful to his ideal of upholding the dignity of truth and justice over tyranny and injustice. Only by imbibing the spirit of his great sacrifice as our own traits can we succeed in crafting a society where these sacred principles would serve as beacons of progress.
A great historian and philosopher of our age, Dr Ali Shariati, of Iran—who was hanged by a tyrannical Raza Shah Pehlavi for opposing the tyrant’s rule—paid a seminal tribute to the mission of Imam Hussain. Shariati said, ‘If you are not standing on the side of truth and justice, then history has no interest in knowing where were you—at a mosque or in a brothel—at the decisive moment of struggle between truth and falsehood.
(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
