WELCOME MUHARRAM 1431 Hijra
By: Syed-Mohsin Naquvi December 16, 2009
This year (1431 Hijra), Muharram begins on the 18th day of the month of December
2009. Muharram is the first month of the Islamic calendar. So this is the New
Year’s day in a way.
In about two weeks time American society will be filled with the (western) New
Year’s celebration. The fan-fare and the euphoria of the New Year’s
celebration will still be fresh in people’s minds as we, the followers of
Ahlul-Bayt would be busy in Muharram and Azadri observance.
Muslims living in the USA, specifically, would ask: Why don’t we celebrate the
beginning of the Islamic year? One group of Muslims actually do come together
as a community during the first ten days of Muharram. Rather than celebrate the
beginning of the Islamic year, they commemorate the great sacrifice given at
Karbala in the 61st year of Hijra (some 1,370 years ago). These gatherings are
somber in nature and consist of serious lectures on history, religious ideology
and the recital of dirges and lamentations and other devotional poetry. Much as
this commemoration is about a tragedy and the gatherings are somber in nature,
there is a great feeling of anticipation for Muharram in that community.
There is a kind of euphoria about the activities that become part and parcel
of Muharram commemorations. Every age group has its own interests to look
forward to. The youth who do Nawha[1] and Matam, are specially enthusiastic
about creating new tunes, forming new Matami groups and practicing the dirges
and Matam. The soz[2]-khwan, or the reciters of the sad poetry that forms the
pilot activity of almost every majlis, come up with their own art form in
singing this poetry and bringing their version of mourning and lamentation. The
speakers of course, work hard to come up with new philosophical points in their
speeches to invite their audience to reflect.
This series of articles, which now appears as a book, was
written on this and related topics.
The lunar calendar falls back by about ten days every year as compared to the
solar one. The lunar year, therefore, is 354 days, as compared to the solar year
which is 365 days. Because of that, a date in the Islamic calendar rotates over
the months in the Gregorian calendar. It comes back to the same date(s) roughly
three times in any one century.
In the year 1400 Hijra, Muharram (and the Islamic New Year) began on November
20th, 1979. The unrest in Iran that had been going on for some months, had taken
serious turns in December of 1978. That same year a group of Saudi zealots who
came from Najd, had taken over the Grand Mosque[3]. The group was led by a man
named Juhayman al-Otaybi who had claimed to be the Mahdi[4]. There are some
hadeeth reports pointing to some dramatic events that were supposed to have
taken place at the beginning of the 15th century of Hijra. The rebels had tried
to make that prophecy come true.
The Saudi government, after having sought Fatwas from the great Qadhis of Makka
and Madinah, had raided the holy precincts with tanks and machine guns, killing
some of the insurgents and arresting the rest[5]. Eyewitness reports (which were
all limited to oral narratives, because the Saudi authorities had prohibited all
press personnel from the city of Makka) have told that there was knee-deep
blood[6] inside the mosque. The city of Makka did not reopen for the public for
three weeks. Obviously, thorough cleaning and cleansing was done before it was
reopened.
In 1978, the month of Muharram had begun on the 2nd of December. It was during
that period that the Islamic Revolution in Iran under the leadership of
Ayatullah Khumayni had materialized. The Grand Mosque incident had taken place
less than a year after the arrival of Khumayni in Tehran[7], an event which had
really shaken the whole world. Under the effect of that earth shattering event,
the western papers, mainly in the British press, had immediately blamed the
Shi’a for the take-over of the Grand Mosque. However, it turned out that the
group led by Juhayman al-Otaybi consisted of old Wahhabi zealots from Dariyya in
Najd, a disaffected group who had actually supported the Saudi ruling family in
the beginning.
This time[8], the simultaneous beginning of the two calendars is witnessing
democratic elections in the country of Iraq (as we said, the first day of
Muharram fell on the 31st of January 2006), and at the same time, an active
insurgency is also raging in that country. More than two thousand U.S. soldiers
have been killed[9] and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children
have also been killed. Shi’a-Sunni relations are being viewed with a totally
new perspective in that country. The whole world is waiting to see if a new
revolution is taking shape in that part of the world.
A new study sponsored by the M.I.T. and actually conducted by
Dr. Gilbert Burnham, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,
and others is to be published on the Web site of The Lancet, a British medical
journal. This new study claims the death toll in Iraq to be as high as
655,000. US Government authorities and many other analysts have questioned the
figure but CNN broadcast the findings on their news on the 11th of October
2006[10].
One only has to watch the various news channels to see that
the daily death toll in Iraq has gone up to more than 100 deaths on some days.
Having given the readers a perspective of things in the last few years to our
present time, let us look back some two hundred years in time.
In Zil-Hijja of the year 1215 Hijra (which fell in April/May of the year 1801
C.E.), the newly rising Wahhabi groups from Dariyya, under the leadership of
Shaykh Saud, had invaded the city of Karbala. As has been the custom over the
years, most of the able-bodied men and some others usually go to Najaf on
special religious days, and so it was on that day. A group of 1,200 invaders
raided the city of Karbala in the middle of the night, while the men were still
away. They killed old men, women and children, looted their homes as well as
their shops and made off with the gold plating from the dome of the shrine of
Imam Husayn.
The next time the beginning of the Islamic year will coincide exactly with the
Gregorian New Year is in the year 2009. The month of February 2006 saw the
destruction of the Imam Askari Shrine in the city of Samarra in Iraq. That
shrine in Samarra houses the mausoleums of both the tenth Imam Ali An-Naqi as
well as that of the eleventh Imam Hasan al-Askari, hence the name.
God only knows what else is in store for us during these three intervening
years.
As this book was being prepared to go to press, a new war broke out between the
Hizbullah fighters in Lebanon and Israel’s regular army, on the 12th of July
2006. The Israeli army invaded Lebanon to wipeout Hizbullah. They, in turn, put
up stiff resistance to the invasion. The Israeli army, facing unexpectedly
tough resistance, decided to change their objective to degrade the capabilities
of Hizbullah. Fighting continued for a few days in which hundreds of innocent
Lebanese civilians, mostly children, were killed. It looked that Hizbullah were
nowhere defeated. The Israeli army had to modify their war plan yet again.
After five weeks of fighting, over a thousand civilians had been killed in
Lebanon, the country’s infrastructure completely destroyed and less than one
hundred Hizbullah fighters killed. Over a million Lebanese civilians were made
homeless. Some 178 Israelis were killed in fighting and by rocket attacks, of
which 116 were army
personnel. A cease-fire came into effect on the 14th of August 2006.
The significant part of this latest war in the Middle East is the fact that it
was not in anyone’s wildest dreams that such a rag-tag bunch of guerilla
fighters, who had arms which are only marginally more than fireworks, would be
able to resist an attack by one of the world’s most well-trained, seasoned and
technologically advanced forces.
Hizbullah’s leader made several speeches during those days of fighting. In one
of his speeches he said: “When our fighters enter the battlefield, they come
saying Labbayk! Ya Husayn!”
That one brief statement by Hizbullah’s leader tells the whole story of how
Hizbullah[11] were able to achieve what they did.
Whatever has happened in Lebanon is a great tragedy. Any loss of human life is
bad and should be stopped at all costs. No compensation can fulfill the gap
created by the death of a loved one in a family. However, this latest brief war
did bring a silver lining with it. Hizbullah became the hero of every Muslim on
the streets in cities from Cairo, Amman, Karachi, to places such as Indonesia.
Hizbullah, who are predominantly a Shi’a group, have been admired by Muslims
of all sects. That has brought yet another look at the relationship between the
Sunni majority and the Shi’a minority. Hopefully, if the momentum is
maintained, it will help reduce the sectarian hatreds among the Muslims. This
phenomenon has also showed up the hollowness of the claims made by other
extremist groups among Muslims such as Al-Qaeda. All they had been able to do in
the last few years is to blow up buildings and airplanes and have just been able
to kill innocent civilians.
Hizbullah, on the other hand, began as an extremist organization, but very
quickly they were able to establish a social services wing inside Lebanon who
won popularity from the public, and they were able to establish a political
wing, which has already won two seats in the Lebanese parliament. Their latest
feat has been to show that with a mere 5,000-man force, which is very lightly
armed, they could resist one of world’s most powerful armies. Hopefully,
they will shed their extremist stance and continue to work on a pluralistic,
tolerant platform and work at a national as well as international level for the
good of the Muslim Ummah. Needless to say, Hizbullah have taken their ideology
from the Karbala event.
Hizbullah are inspired by the ideology of Imams Ali and Husayn bin Ali. They
came to the battlefield with the desire and longing for martyrdom. It just
happened that they were victorious in this occasion. Even if they had been
thoroughly wiped out to the last man in their group, they would still have won a
moral victory. That ideology is coming from nowhere else but Karbala.
In the following pages we reflect on that very significant event in Islamic
history that took place in Karbala, Iraq, back in 680 A.D.
This is an excerpt from my book titled: UNDERSTANDING KARABLA. This book can be
ordered by writing to: MMF Book Service
\
P.O. Box 2309 PRINCETON N.J. 08543
Please enclose $20 plus $4 for postage within the U.S.
You may also order the following three books and the Karbala DVD:
(1) UNDERSTANDING KARABALA $20 + $4 postage
(2) THE HOUSE OF LOVE $15 + $3
postage
(3) DEFENDING THE SHIA FAITH
WITHOUT BEING DEFENSIVE $30 + $4 postage
(4) KARBALA
DVD $15 + $3
postage
Total discount price for the order of the four items: $60 plus $10 for postage
within the U.S.
[1] Nawha is an Arabic word derived from the root N-W-H which means ‘to
lament.’ It is a genre of poetry which is recited with sad tunes while
beating one’s chest. The beating of chest provides the rhythm in which the
poetry is recited.
[2] SOZ is a Farsi word, which means ‘pain.’ It is a genre of poetry
which is recited on improvised classical musical tunes. This was an art form
developed in India during the 18th and 19th centuries and it further evolved in
later times. It is usually the first item at every majlis.
[3] The actual date on which the Juhayman group had taken over the Grand
Mosque was 20th of November 1979 (some 9 months after the Iranian Revolution),
which was the eve of the new Islamic year and the beginning of the year 1400
Hijra. The incident was carried over in the press into the new year of 1980 C.E.
[4] The word in Arabic means ‘the guided one.’ There is an Islamic
theory in all sects that towards the end of times, Allah will raise a ‘rightly
guided leader’ in this world who would fill it with justice and equity as it
is filled with injustice and oppression. Many big and small claimants to that
title have emerged in the world history. The latest one before this event in
1980 had risen in Sudan and thus he is known as the Mahdi of Sudan. He had
fought the Ottoman rulers as well as the British. The British General, Charles
Gordon, was killed in action during a bloody battle in the year 1885. The Mahdi
himself died soon after of typhus. His influence though, continued in Sudan for
many years to come.
[5] Actually the insurgents were aubdued by a group of French commandos
specially brought into Saudi Arabia for the purpose.
[6] Most probably, it was a lot of water mixed with blood. Because the
basement of the mosque was flooded with fire hoses.
[7] Khumayni’s Jumbo Jet had flown from Paris and landed at Tehran
Mehrabad airport on the 2nd of February 1979
[8] This article was written in the year 2006.
[9] The figure as confirmed by the US DoD on the 16th of September 2006 is
2,674 US soldiers killed and a total of 19,910 wounded. A conservative Iraqi
casualty figure, though not confirmed, is close to 50,000; however, it may
actually be a lot more.
[10] Full document is to be found at the CNN website at:
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/images/10/11/human.cost.of.war.pdf
[11] Hizbullah have been declared a terrorist organization by the current US
government. Citizens of this country, therefore, have to be careful in their
actions. Any material help by a US citizen will actually be an act going right
against the policies of the government and it may actually constitute a crime
for which the perpetrator may be prosecuted. On the other hand, expressing
one’s opinion with a view to changing the foreign policy of the country with
peaceful democratic means is quite legitimate.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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