How much do we know about Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar (this year, January 20 - February 18)? Must it not be a time to reflect on the oppression being done around us—by us as well as by others—to those who are different and helpless?
This is the revised text of a talk —'Talking about Muharram' — given at
Chicago in Muharram 1998 before a group of concerned young Muslims who call
themselves South Asian-American Professionals (SAMP). It is heartening to note
now that it is not the only association of its kind in the United States. The
horrific sectarian violence that rages in Pakistan and Afghanistan and has
reached its worst form in Iraq impelled me to revise and share these remarks
now.
When I accepted your kind invitation, I had no
intention of going into the 'facts' of Muharram—the whys and wherefores of
the martyrdom at Karbala. I did not feel any useful purpose would be served by
re-hashing the political/theological issues that for centuries have engaged
historians and rogues alike. Arguments on 'facts' only too often lead to
sectarian conflict, particularly in South Asia. I was going to stick to the
cultural and literary aspects of Muharram. However, as I began to prepare my
remarks, my mind gradually changed, influenced by what was happening around me.
I had not been unaware of the long-enduring tensions between the Shi'ahs and
the Sunnis in South Asia, which have resulted in recent years in some most
horrific incidents in Pakistan. But what really triggered the shift was a
different recent incident, as I shall explain in conclusion. The bulk of my
remarks will be in two parts. In the first, I briefly offer my own narrative of
the events that led to the tragedy at Karbala; in the second, I present the way
some important Urdu writers idealize Imam Husain, perceiving in his martyrdom
the optimum expression of human courage and virtue.
Muharram is the first month of the Islamic calendar,
and its first day should be a day of rejoicing for Muslims. The advent of
Muharram in the pre-Islamic days marked a period of peace, bringing a temporary
closure to internecine warfare among the tribes of Arabia. Presumably it was
also a time for celebration and joy. But now, for devout Muslims, Muharram is
the month for a profoundly sombre engagement with what happened at Karbala—in
present-day Iraq—on the tenth day of the 61st year of Hijra (10 October 680
CE). On that day, barely fifty years after the Prophet Muhammad's death, his
beloved grandson, Husain, was killed on the battlefield, together with several
members of his own family, and the killers were none other than some members of
the Prophet's own ummah, the community of the Faithful.
Just before the Prophet's death in 632 CE at Madinah, the dÃn
(religion) named Islam had been explicitly declared 'complete' in a divine
revelation, but the shape that the polity of the Faithful was expected to take
after his death was left undefined. Who was to succeed the Prophet within the
newly formed and constantly expanding community of the Believers, not in his
prophetic role, for that ended with him, but as his khalÃfa, his
representative or viceroy, in worldly affairs? The Prophet had brought together
the tribally divided people of Arabia into a single polity, whose binding power
lay as much in his own person as in the shared faith in Allah. Now that his
person was going to be no more, would the faith in One God be enough to hold all
the Faithful together?
Soon after the Prophet breathed his last, and even before his body could be
prepared for burial, a group of Ansars, the original people of Madinah, met and
started discussing as to who should be the new amÃr,'the commander.'
They discussed names only from among themselves. When the word reached the
Mosque of the Prophet, Umar and Abu Bakr rushed over to the meeting place, and
presented a counter-claim as exclusive in nature. They privileged the people
from Mecca as those who had been the longest in Islam, and thus closest to the
Prophet. Their argument won the day when Umar offered his hand in allegiance to
Abu Bakr, and the leader of one of the Ansar factions followed suit. The small
ad hoc gathering of a few prominent figures in Madinah ended with Abu Bakr's
elevation as the first Caliph and 'Commander' of all Muslims. Notably absent
at the meeting was Ali, the Prophet's nephew and son-in-law, who claimed to
have been the first male to accept Islam. Soon, most of the people then present
in Madinah offered Abu Bakr their allegiance. Ali, however, did not do so, nor
did a number of other people, including a prominent Ansar. The important thing
for us to note is that those who refused to sign up in Madinah—the first
'refuseniks' in Islam—were left alone. Any dissenter elsewhere met a
different fate. Two simultaneously-waged processes marked the first caliph's
brief rule of two years: a highly centralized consolidation of Muslim temporal
authority, and the suppression of an assortment of political and religious
breakaways in other places.
Abu Bakr, on his deathbed, obtained oaths of allegiance and loyalty—from
only a select cohort of prominent people in Madinah—in favour of the person of
his choice, who subsequently turned out to be Umar. During the second caliph's
rule, the temporal authority of Madinah spread far into what earlier had been
two powerful empires, the Byzantine and the Persian, bringing under the rule of
the Arabs a variety of other people, who had political and social traditions
quite different from the Arabs.
Umar was assassinated. Before he died he nominated six select 'Companions
of the Prophet,' including Ali and Usman, to choose a person from among
themselves. This time Ali made his claim known, but the person appointed by the
group to make the decisive choice named Usman as the third caliph.
During Usman's rule, Arab/Muslim armies further extended the borders of the
Madinan state, but there also occurred (1) the rise to prominence of several
members of Usman's own clan, and (2) an increasing rift between Damascus and
Kufa, the eastern and western regional centers of political power. Usman was
killed in his house by his political opponents, many of whom then swore
allegiance to Ali, who eventually also obtained the support of some other
factions.
The barely five years of Ali's rule were filled with turmoil. He had to do
battle with those who felt he had failed to seek sufficient revenge from the
assassins of the third caliph, and then also with those who felt he had not been
resolute enough against his opponents' demands. While Ali moved from Madinah
to Kufa in Iraq, where lay most of his support, Mu'awiyah, the governor in
Damascus, not only expanded his power into Egypt but also set himself up as a
rival caliph. Thus for some months, there were two Muslim caliphs, each
separately acknowledged by factions within the Faithfuls.
Ali too died at an assassin's hands. Some of Ali's supporters wanted his
eldest son Hasan to make a claim, but Hasan withdrew in favour of Mu'awiyah,
received a generous annuity in return, and retired to live in luxury in Madinah,
where he died of poisoning.
That brings us to the year 661 AD, barely thirty years since the Prophet's
death. And a pause for some retrospection would be useful. During those years,
three Muslim caliphs were assassinated—two by Muslims themselves, and one by a
Christian slave—and countless other Muslims had died violent deaths at the
hands of other Muslims. Meanwhile the Muslim/Arab state had ceaselessly spread
over the entire Arabian Peninsula, across the Nile delta in the west, to the
borders of Anatolia and Armenia in the north, and all the way to the eastern
borders of present day Iran in the east. In merely three decades it had become
an imperial power of a size that dwarfed all previous imperial powers in human
history.
The preceding narrative was not to cast aspersion on
extraordinary individuals. They had acted in the spirit of their times, and
quite often for what they saw as a selfless cause. What I wished to bring to
your attention is the trajectory—as I see it—taken by the consequence of
their actions: the emergence of a despotic polity, in which no systemic
allowance was made to accommodate political dissension or opposition. It was a
polity wherein a litany—'Obey God, obey the Prophet, and obey those who hold
command over you'—became the governing principle.
Later, a vast majority of Muslims down the centuries began to refer to the
reign of the first four caliphs as the period of the rashidun, the
'rightly-guided' caliphs. That descriptive phrase, to my mind, was a useful
device. It saved Muslims from making rigidly factional decisions about the four
elder statesmen, about one being exclusively right compared to another. And as
such, it also served them as a psychological crutch, a way for their collective
self to protect itself from being overwhelmed by a specific past that should
have been anything but so bloodstained. That so many of the elders, all
'Companions of the Prophet,' disagreed, fought, and killed each other over
issues related to temporal power had to be somehow reconciled with the natural
urge of the larger community to get on with life more peaceably. And so the
first four caliphs and their actions were declared to be 'rightly guided' by
God, who alone judged what they did and who alone knew why they did it. It was
not for the posterity to say who was right and who was wrong. That they were
declared to be 'rightly guided' also implied, I would assert, that they were
not necessarily always 'rightly guiding.' In other words, the Muslims'
natural desire to honor those elders did not inevitably require regarding the
time of those elders as 'the best of days,' and a model for all times.
Perniciously, that exactly is what happened, and only because it was also the
time when an Arab imperium emerged. The period of the temporal rise of the
Arabs—a people—came to be known as the exemplary years of Islam—a faith.
Returning to our historical narrative, Mu'awiyah, the parallel caliph, not
only further expanded the Arab empire, but by nominating his son Yazid as his
rightful successor he also set the precedent for hereditary rule in Islam. The
caliphate that began as the exclusive privilege of the people of a particular
place and tribe now became more narrowly confined to just one family.
Mu'awiyah, during his life, made sure of Yazid's succession by obtaining
declarations of allegiance to Yazid from various parts of the empire. However,
at his death, some resistance to Yazid's claim appeared in both Madinah and
Kufa. The resistance eventually consolidated itself around the person of Husain,
son of Ali, who left Madinah for Kufa, expecting support from the former allies
of his father. Yazid's forces, however, easily put an end to Husain's Kufan
support while the latter was still on the way. Thus it was that with only a
small number of supporters Husain had to face a far larger imperial force at
Karbala. When his opponents demanded that he should immediately surrender, and
formally swear allegiance to Yazid, Husain countered with three options. He
asked that they should allow him to return to Madinah and a life of quietude,
let him proceed to some frontier of the Islamic/Arab Empire and fight there for
Islam's cause, or, as the last resort, take him to Yazid so that he could put
the matter directly before him. Some say that Husain's opponents refused to
budge from their position and launched an attack, while other traditions claim
that some members of his own party, seeking to avenge the murder at Kufa of one
of their kinsmen, precipitated the battle. In any case, the end was swift.
Husain and those of his companions who took part in the battle were killed; the
surviving women and children, and the sick were first taken to Damascus, and
then sent back to Madinah. The dynastic rule launched by Mu'awiyah and Yazid
continued for several decades, only to be replaced by an endless series of
dynastic rules and a more imperious caliphate—all now forgotten except by the
specialists. On the other hand, the deaths of Husain and his companions are
mourned every year by millions of people worldwide, and their lives are still
regarded exemplary by many more.
* * * 
What is there in that brief and tragic stand taken by
Husain at Karbala that has so gripped the hearts and minds of countless
generations of Muslims? There are of course those who are known as the Shi'ahs,
the partisans of Ali, who believe that Ali had been the Prophet's chosen
successor, and who also believe in the concept of Imamate, which they consider
to be exclusive to the male descendents of Ali through Husain. For them, of
course, Husain is and should be a luminescent figure. But why should it be true
also for the non-Shi'ahs, particularly after so many centuries, and even after
so much sectarian accretion around the events? I find some answers in the
imaginative literature I know most about, for literature arises out of the power
of the metaphor, and its simple words often stand for complexities of thoughts
and actions that most of us may find almost ineffable.
Muhammad Ali (d. 1931), a prominent leader of the anti-colonial movement in
India and the most important leader of the so-called Khilafat Movement in the
Twenties, is also famous for a couplet which he wrote while he was a political
prisoner. It has since become proverbial in Urdu.
qatl-i husain asl meñ marg-i yazÃd hai
islám zinda hotá hai har karbalá ke bád
Husain's murder is in fact Yazid's [own] death;
[For] Islam comes alive again after every Karbala.
For Muhammad Ali and millions of his compatriots, Husain stood for Truth and
Freedom, and Yazid for everything opposite. In their view, every Yazid was bound
to lose finally, even if he appeared to succeed for the moment. And Husain's
name invoked a sense of hope among those who were confident only in the
righteousness of their cause. But we should not ignore the words that the poet
used: it is Islam that comes to life again after every Karbala.
What was the Islam that Husain symbolized for the
Indian poet/politician? Here we can do no better than to seek guidance from a
greater poet, Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938), from a section in his poem, Rumúz-i
BekhudÃ, 'The Mysteries of Selflessness.' The section is titled,
'Concerning Muslim Freedom [hurriya], and the Secret of the Tragedy of
Karbala.' After briefly setting up an opposition between Passion and
Reason—one bold, the other crafty, one empyrean in flight, the other
earthbound—the poet goes on to declare:
'I would speak
Of that great leader of all men who love
Truly the Lord, that upright cypress-tree
Of the Apostle's garden, Ali's son,
Whose father led the sacrificial feast
That he might prove a mighty offering;
And for that prince of the best race of men
The Last of the Apostles gave his back
To ride upon, a camel passing fair. .........
Moses and Pharaoh, Shabbir and Yazid—
From Life [hayát] spring these conflicting potencies;
Truth lives in Shabbir's strength; Untruth is that
Fierce, final anguish of regretful death.
And when Caliphate first snapped its thread
From the Koran, in Freedom's throat was poured
A fatal poison; like a rain-charged cloud
The effulgence of the best of peoples rose
Out of the West, to spill on Karbala,
And in that soil, that desert was before,
Sowed, as he died, a field of tulip blood.
There, till the Resurrection, tyranny
Was evermore cut off; a garden fair immortalizes where his lifeblood
surged.'
Iqbal then goes on to call Husain 'the edifice of La Ilaha, of faith
in God's pure Unity,' echoing a quatrain ascribed to Mu'inuddin Chishti of
Ajmer (d. 1325), the pivotal sufi saint of South Asia. Had Husain been pursuing
a selfish goal, Iqbal continues, he would not have provisioned himself the way
he did—his sword was for the glory of the Faith, and he unsheathed it only to
defend the Law. The poet concludes by saying:
'Though Damascus' might, Baghdad's splendour
and Granada's majesty have all vanished, all lost to mind,
Yet still vibrate the strings Husain struck within our soul,
for still ever new our faith abides in his cry: Allahu Akbar.'
For Iqbal, Husain epitomizes the original mission of Islam, which, as he puts
it, was 'to found Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood among all Mankind.'
Those who oppose these goals belong to Yazid's ranks, while those who strive
to bring them about stand tall beside Husain.
Munshi Prem Chand (d. 1936), a Hindu, is considered one
of the foremost writers of prose fiction in both Hindi and Urdu. His only play, Karbala,
was written during the time when after the collapse of the Khilafat Movement in
India much communal enmity had erupted between Hindus and Muslims. Using the
lore and legend of a very small Hindu community known as the Mohyals (also often
called the 'Husaini Brahmins'), he placed a group of Hindu warriors in
southern Hejaz, who, upon hearing the news of Husain's opposition to the
despotic rule of Yazid, rush to Karbala and die fighting on Husain's behalf.
The Hindu party, led by Raja Sahas Rai, arrives at the battlefield just when
Husain and his few remaining companions begin their obligatory afternoon
prayers. The Hindus immediately take up defensive positions, and shield the
praying Muslims from their enemy's arrows. After the prayers, Husain speaks:
Husain: 'My dear friends who share my grief, these prayers will ever be
remembered in Islam's history. We couldn't have completed them without
these brave servants of God standing behind us to protect us from the arrows
of the enemy. O Worshippers of Truth, we greet you. Though you're not of the
Believers [momin], your religion must be true and God-given if its
followers are such defenders of Truth and Justice, and if they think so little
of their own lives in order to support the persecuted. Such a religion will
always remain in this world, and its light will spread worldwide together with
the glory of Islam.'
Sahas Rai: 'Hazrat, we thank you for the blessings you have just cast
upon us. I too pray to Almighty God that whenever Islam needs our blood there
should be plenty of my people to bare their breasts for its cause. Please give
us now your permission to go into the battlefield, and lay down our lives for
the cause of Truth.'
Husain: 'No, my friends.