Karbala: The Universal Cause
Imam Hussain is every prisoner of conscience, he is all of the oppressed of the world, and every child murdered in Gaza
“Why do you care so much about an event that happened 1400 years ago? What is the use of dwelling on it? We learn its lessons and move on,” claimed a friend nonchalantly as she sipped her tea, confused at my seeming “obsession” with the atrocity committed against the Aal al Bayt (the Prophetic household) eons ago.
Unfortunately, this is your typical, normative, mainstream Sunni response to the tragic events of Karbala, when the Prophet’s grandson Hussain bin Ali was ruthlessly beheaded by Ummayyad forces along with 72 members of his family in 61 AD on the 10th of Muharram.
The tendency to belittle—or worse—ignore the importance of that day is the ultimate, most morally deadly scourge to befall Sunnism.
Why? Because Karbala symbolizes the turning point by which Islam became less a moral code encompassing all of life, and instead became a political tool for worldly domination and control. It is when Muslims collectively accepted sheepdom and complacency, and drank the toxic cocktail of tyranny as somehow compatible with Islam and Muslim rulers. Under Ummayyad totalitarianism, it somehow became ‘OK’ for Muslim rulers to be wholly unjust, even kill and curse the Prophet’s most beloved ones, and still be considered legitimate Muslim authority figures worthy of deference and obedience.
It is when the tentacles of greed, corruption, injustice, hereditary rule, silencing, intimidation and control spread in the psyche of the Ummah, which today, is typified by ethno-nationalism and authoritarian nation stated and the so-called “ulama” that serve at the behest of the many Yazids we call our Muslim leaders.
If you truly love the Prophet and his household, then don’t make excuses for injustice. If you love Imam Hussain and are moved by his unjust death, then don’t be groupies for morally weak Muslim leaders and intellectuals.
Those who claim to truly love the Aal al-Bayt must become receptacles of radical Divine love and justice, to live and breathe what the Aal al-Bayt truly stand for: standing up for the oppressed, speaking truth to power, and sacrificing their comfort for the greater good.
Only a fool would fail to realize that Karbala is ongoing. It is in every Palestinian child killed under the rubble of the ruthless Israeli murder machine. It is in every cold refugee tent dripping freezing water in the Levantine winter. Karbala is the internment and suffering of Uyghur Muslims in China. It is the in the legacy of the enslavement of black people and the ongoing systematic racism in the US. It is in sweatshops, in borders, in crop fields, in military check points. It is the deplorable, suffocating silencing of dissent in Egypt, the UAE and many other places in the Arab and Muslim world.
Imam Hussain is every child, every woman, every tear shed in the face of ruthless tyranny. He is every robbed penny, every stolen life, every injustice. He is every tree uprooted by occupation, every stone cracking in Al-Aqsa, every house bombed, every memory erased.
Yazid is every arrogant ruler, every so-called Muslim with a “chosen people” complex. He is every state-sponsored army. Every ruthless warden, every bloodthirstily executioner. He is every Pharaoh, he is the eye in the sky looming over the Ka’bah. He is every lie, every deception, and every little performance passing for piety.
To think that the events of Karbala or Ashura “ended” 1400 years ago is the greatest blind spot any Muslim, or indeed any person of conscience, can have. Ashura is not just about parting the sea for Moses, or the day Noah’s ark landed to safety, it is the day of the Ultimate Universal Struggle for Justice on earth. It is where the arch of the moral universe always bends towards. It is the pole of Islam and the very rope by which one’s sincerity as a so-called Muslim is saved.
It is imperative that every Muslim—not just Shi’as— must proudly proclaim the undying truth: that every day is Ashura and every land is Karbala.