Thursday, November 15, 2012

We are the Kufians of Today

"Deed ki gar talaash hai,sar ko jhuka namaaz mein
Dil se khudi ko bhool kar, khud ko mita namaaz mein
Aaiega tujh ko tab nazar rooh-e-khuda namaz mein
Pahle Hussain ki tarah sar ko kata namaaz mein"

If your quest is to find (see) God, then bow your head in prayer (prostration)
Remove "you" (your desires) from your heart, immerse yourself completely in prayer such that there is no "you" left.
You will only see the "spirit of God" in your prayer, when you are prepared to like Hussain (a.s) have your head cut off during prostration

Its that time of the year again, when all shia Muslims and many non-shias will wear black, flock to mosques and imam-bargahs and pay homage to the great sacrifice of Imam Hussain and his family in the battle of Karbala, which is called a battle but was 72 (approx) men on Hussain's side versus over 10,000 soldiers on Ubaydullah ibn Ziyad's side.

The next 10 days and beyond we will hear fervent sermons by scholars on how the Imam was betrayed by the people of Kufa who had written 150 letters (Ayati, ch.3) to the Imam asking for him to come lead a revolution against the tyrannical and unjust rule of Yazid. Most scholars will do a great job of laying out how these people and their leaders were despicable human beings nothing short of satan himself.

Growing up, listening to these sermons I used to feel a lot of anger and hatred towards the people of Kufa and the army of Umar ibn Saad and who fought against the Imam. What I couldn't understand then was that WHY in the world would you go against someone as pious and honorable as the Imam and support tyrants like (Ziyad and Yazid) whom most of Kufians even despised, after all it is their fellow citymen who wrote the letters asking for the imam to come to their aid in the first place.
But by reading more about the actual history of the events that took place pre, during and post Karbala (A good source is "A probe into the history of Ashura" its on Al-Islam.org for free) I came to realize that the people of Kufa 12,000 of whom vowed to support the Imam upon his arrival were just like you and I. They were as satanic as most of us, nothing more, nothing less. To them this wasn't about what was right and what was wrong. They knew that the Imam was right, to them the question was simply whether or not they would go out of their comfort zone and actually do something about  supporting the Imam? We all know the answer to that. They didn't. They all turned back on their lofty proclamations of support, many of them even using the Quran to support their new stance "Do not subject your lives to destruction with your own hands. (Surah al-Baqarah, 2:195)".

They all had the same excuses we would make today; the responsibility to support the life and well-being of their families, their being under the burden of debt from the state and for a lot of them being in the army meant that the fire in their homes kept burning and food reached the bellies of their kids. They ALL did what would be considered today as a RATIONAL decision. They knew that supporting the Imam was a losing bet. They knew supporting the truth wouldn't pay their bills or put their kids through school. DON'T most of us make the same excuse today? What are we doing today to support the innocent or any just causes? What are we doing to combat extremism in Islam which is corroding us from within? Imam Hussain didn't take up arms against the Romans or the Persians, he stood up against the biggest threat to Islam which came from within the followers of Islam. What are we, as so called "followers of the Imam" doing today to make ourselves worthy of that claim?

Nobody but you alone can answer that question. This note is not to point out the flaws in others but to get us to look at nobody but ourselves in the mirror and ask the question, "Would we truly be able to sacrifice all our comforts to support someone who we knew to be just in their cause but had nothing worldly to offer in return?". And if the answer is NO! like it is in my case then lets vow to be better, lets promise ourselves that our lives won't be just about getting a big house in the suburbs with 65 inch TV screens, but will be more about doing something to support the innocent, and change the lives of ones less fortunate than us.

I truly believe that to be the message of Karbala.