From Karbala to Palestine
There is a line that has been drawn in the sand, and it's been drawn with the blood of children.
It was a curious sight for roadside drivers in Toronto on a July afternoon: Hundreds of families clad in black, somberly walking along a cordoned-off lane in North York, waving green and red banners and chanting eulogies in Farsi and Arabic.
Processions are an important part of Ashura Day, during which Shia Muslims grieve over a seventh-century assassination and battle that characterizes one of the darkest chapters in early Islamic history.
The victim of the assassination on that day was Husayn, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad, and the memory of his death, in what is now the Iraqi city of Karbala, still reverberates as an iconic symbol of resistance against injustice.
But this year’s commemoration held a different resonance, reflected in the keffiyehs worn during processions, and the carefully selected theme some religious scholars focused on in their traditional week-long lecture series leading up to Ashura Day: the eerie parallels between the Battle of Karbala with Israel’s ongoing bloody onslaught in Gaza.
Husayn’s murder was the culmination of a long and protracted battle between two camps of Muslims after the death of the Prophet in 632 A.D., and a dispute over rightful succession ensued. In 680 A.D. the leading Ummayad caliphate army of mercenaries in what is now modern-day Iraq demanded that Husayn pledge allegiance to the sitting Caliph, Yazid, in Damascus or face death. Husayn resisted and a bloody battle followed in the city of Karbala. On Ashura Day, Yazid, a corrupt and brutal despot, killed with his army every male member of the Prophet's family before finally boring down on Husayn, trampling his body with horses before decapitating him. Female members and children of the Prophet's family were taken captive and taken along with Husayn's head as a trophy to Damascus. Holding the Quran high in one hand, Yazid and his supporters rejoiced in front of a stunned audience. The Ummayad's had succeeded, they said, in "restoring" Islam to its true principles.
I imagine that scene to not be unlike the one we witnessed on Wednesday when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - who faces an outstanding arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court over war crimes - delivered a thunderous speech to a joint meeting of Congress.
“The Jewish people emerged from the depths of hell, from dispossession and genocide, and against all odds we restored our sovereignty in our ancient homeland,” Netanyahu told U.S. lawmakers.
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Shia Muslims often feel a close affinity to the events on Ashura; year after year, gatherings are held within mosques for consecutive nights and the entire episode of the battle of Karbala is revived.
“It's become more palpable,” says Laya Behbahani, a Shia Muslim in Vancouver. “Of course you’ve always heard and learned about [the historical event of Ashura], but it hits close to home differently now - it’s literally happening right now as we speak. I think that's the piece that hurts me the most.
We see mothers who are being torn away from their children, you see babies being completely decimated like Ali Asghar was in Karbala [Husayn’s six-month-old son]. You see women being left without husbands. You see children being left without parents.”
Apart from the catastrophic scenes of families being obliterated, it’s also been chilling to see trucks filled with aid blocked by Israeli officials from entering Gaza. The U.N. and aid groups say deliveries in May were hindered by military operations, lawlessness inside Gaza and delays in Israeli inspections.
Here too, it is difficult not to recall how the Umayyads blocked access to the Euphrates River with 500 cavalry troops to force Husayn and his followers into submission.
(By the way, a report last week from The Associated Press and the Israeli investigative site Shomrim found that while Israel has now pledged to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, the U.S. and Israel have allowed tax-deductible donations to far-right groups that have blocked that aid from being delivered).
The raw visual dispatches of the war in Gaza, broadcast daily on social media platforms have made those stories feel more tangible for Shias, who often frown upon visual depiction of Husayn or any member of his family and army. A few hours ago for instance, Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza posted a photo of Gaza rescue workers placing the head of a newborn baby next to its tiny body for burial.
“Those stories now become so much more real,” Behbahani says. “I think for those of us who have grown up hearing the events of Karbala, and always just had to rely on our imagination and all the hadith (Islamic oral tradition) and the bodies of work that have gone into describing every detail… to now see this unfold in Gaza, is like seeing all those elements come to life. A baby being shot with an arrow [Ali Asghar] comes to life.”
“It's not that we're drawing parallels between the family of the Holy Prophet and the people who are going through it now,” Behbahani adds. “It's that those instances of torture and suffering and massacre and genocide come to life.”
Those sentiments are even more palpable in south Lebanon, where scores of families have been displaced to the north of the country after Israeli jets and drones struck targets across Lebanon and neighbouring Syria for months. Ashura processions were larger this year than ever before for this reason, Ghina Rebai, a human rights researcher based in Beirut tells me.
But there’s also greater momentum for the Ashura commemorations because of the ongoing indiscriminate killing across the border in Gaza. “Even after almost 1400 years, the Battle of Karbala still resonates with Muslims because it ligated values that are beyond place and time,” Rebai says. “These include: genuine dignity, genuine integrity, genuine virtue; the sacrifice in order to obtain or restore rights, the non-submission to tyrants, the right to safety, the duty to stand against injustice… even if it means giving up some personal interests. Husayn maintained those values and concepts and solidified them for centuries to come.”
“Today we bear witness to Israel committing daily massacres and starvation against civilians in Gaza. And this entity is being openly backed up by the U.S. and the E.U., while Gazans are being betrayed by most Arab regimes, just as happened in Karbala.”
The imperative learning from Ashura is the moral responsibility upon every member of society to resist injustice when we witness it. While it was Zainab, Husayn’s sister, who is credited for relating the events from that fateful day through fiery sermons in the court of Yazid, today’s resisters against Palestinian oppression manifest through bold student activists, journalists who fight censorship in their own newsrooms and lone politicians like U.S. Democrat Rashida Tlaib and Ontario MPP Sarah Jama who fearlessly stand against our government’s support and aid of Israel’s actions. Truth be told, commemorations of Ashura don’t amount to much if we do not follow them with action against injustice - whether it be for Gaza, or anywhere else.
As Sayed Hussain Makke, a Lebanese religious scholar proclaimed last night: “There is a line that has been drawn in the sand. You know what that line is drawn with? The blood of children. There is no in-between and there is no debate. You need to decide which side you’re on.”