John Bradshaw once said, “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” Can man stand up to these conditions? “Man can but not necessarily with ease”, Imam Husain, the grandson of Prophet Mohammad annunciated from the battlefield of Karbala (Iraq), on the fateful day of 10th Muharram, 61 AH (October 10, 680 A.D.).
The pre-Islamic period in Arabia is known as the “age of ignorance”. Scudding away from the noble attributes of human principles, the Arabs were treading the path of retrogression and abhorence. Suffering from worst evils and vices, these Arabs known as Bedouins (uncivilised rustics) were highly temptative of wrecking vengeance, group quarrels, tribal animosities leading to bloody warfare that lasted for generations.
In pre-Islamic period these Arabian Bedouins used to bury their newly born daughters alive out of ego. They had no sense of equality, humanity, decency and brotherhood. In this crucial moment, Prophet of Islam Hazrat Mohammad brought the message of peace, tolerance, humanity, forbearance, liberty, equality, brotherhood, assisting to weak and securing justice for the persecuted. The Prophet gradually started transforming the heartless brutes to humanise and turning towards peaceful life.
The most notorious among them were the Bedouin tribals of “Bani-Omayya” (Omayyads). Omayyads did not tolerate the sojourn of humanity and peace. They violently opposed Prophet’s teachings. Omayya’s grandson, Abu Sufiyan, son of Herb, unfurled the flag of revolt against Islamic teachings.
They started a campaign of persecution on the Prophet, who was forced to migrate from his home in Mecca to Medina. As such, the year of Prophet’s flight from Mecca to Medina is marked as the begining of Hijri era of Islamic calender. Still the Prophet Mohammad was not given any respite and relief. Mohammad was compelled to fight battles many a time. In Medina, Prophet established the system for administering the “rule of law” in the light of Islamic jurisprudence, under the command of his son-in-law Hazrat Ali Murtaza. Not withstanding the bravery of Ali, Omayyads suffered a thorough collapse. The shrewd
Abu Sufiyan played a trick to subscribe to Islam outwardly and the Prophet mercifully granted quarter to Abu Sufiyan and his men. On the contrary, Mohammad realising his duties as Prophet was preparing his two beloved grandsons, ‘Hasan’ and ‘ Husain’, sons of Ali Murtaza and Fatima Zehra, as perfect specimen of his own attainment and imparted to their young minds all the characteristics of his high morality.
After the demise of the Holy Prophet Mohammad, the school of Islamic thought, philosophy, culture and administration was shifted to ‘Caliphate’ with temporal and ecclesiastical powers. The first three caliphs were: Abubakar, Umar and Usman. The last caliph Imam Ali Murtaza, was assassinated by the henchmen of the conspirator and hypocrite Muawiya son of Abu Sufiyan while Hazrat Ali Murtaza was prostrating before Allah in the mosque. After Ali’s assassination, Muawiya with the might of sword, usurped the seat of Caliphate in Syria and declared himself as the self-appointed caliph. Muawiya, the first ruler of the House of Omayyads displaced the democratic Islamic rule by oligarchical and barbaric despotic rule. After the death of Muawiya, his son accursed Yazid ascended to the Caliphate seat of Syria. He was a heartcore terrorist and had surpassed all his ancestors in practicing cruelty, violence and corruption. Yazid was libertine and sinner to the extent that the barest mention of his objectionable character is taboo in this civilised society. Yazid was the mammon of unrighteousness, whose lust for power prompted him to beat society the mould he favoured. Yazid’s criminal behaviour indicated the extreme occurrence of vulger, inhuman innovations in the established Islamic values.On the contrary Imam Husain was recognised throughout the Arab world for his excellence of behaviour, wisdom, compassion and piety.
When Yazid occupied the seat of Caliphate, deceitfully usurped by his father Muawiya, Yazid by terrorising the citizens sought their allegiance to accept him as leader of the faithful. He then demanded allegiance from Hazrat Imam Husain. Yazid was equipped with all the paraphernalia of power but so long, he didn’t get the allegiance from Imam Husain, the grandson of the Prophet, he had no religious sanction to claim the Caliphate.
He therefore demanded allegiance from Imam Husain to subscribe him as leader of the faithful. When Yazid bargained hard for Imam Husain to choose between allegiance and death, Husain straightaway refused him for allegiance, saying, “A person of my kind, can not accept the allegiance of a man of his (Yazid’s) kind.” Husain knew that recognition of Yazid’s immorality will permanently disfigure the “true faith” and a “pseudo religion” will emerge in the guise of Islam. Had he encountered no opposition, Islam was bound to acclimatise to the paralysing atonality from Yazid’s degenerated symphony. Imam Husain was mercilessly assassinated in the desert of Karbala along with 71 family members and companions on 10th of Muharram, 61 Hijri (October 10, 680 A.D.), after being kept hungry and thirsty for three days.
Their heads were severed from the bodies and were mounted on lancers. Among the slain martyrs was Husain’s six month old infant son, Ali Asghar, the buoyancy of whose innocent blood refloated the sinking ship of Islam. Ali Asghar’s moon-like innocent severed head was too mounted on a lancer. Asghar’s little innocent body among 71 others was too trampled through the hoofs of horses of Yazid’s cavalry.
The tents of Husain’s household were torched. Daughters and grand children of Prophet Mohammad’s extended family and the only surviving, ailing son of Imam Husain, were taken captives and paraded from Karbala to Syria, on bare backs of camels, where they were appeared before accursed Yazid, the wild beast in human form.10th Muharram is universally observed by right thinking and kind-hearted people irrespective of caste, religion or faith. “Never in the fight of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”, said Churchil. The event of Karbala, taking place on 10th Moharram, 61 Hijri, teaches us: Never support injustice and oppression, no matter, how powerful the oppressor might be. No matter, what incentive, what threat you might be given.
(The writer is a legal journalist and author. Views are personal)
