It’s 1 Muharram tonight. I can feel its crescent. I haven’t been a Shi’a all my life, but sometimes it seems that way. In Muharram, sometimes it feels like everyone’s a Shi’a. But maybe nobody is. Nobody owns Karbala.
I had a phone call today from a newspaper reporter (I’d told him earlier about Muharram being the first month of the Islamic calendar and the special significance it held for Shi’as.) He asked about what we do. I told him about the lectures we hold–in our centre, a guest speaker usually delivers 10 to 12 sequential lectures on a common theme–and the recitation of the histories, and of course the matham and the mournful poetry. But it’s impossible to describe Muharram, at least not effectively, without making it seem like a bunch of rituals to commemorate a tragic moment of history. It’s more than that. Muharram isn’t a vehicle for rituals or religious performance art, any more than it’s a vehicle for partisan history lessons. Muharram is a process. Put yourself into it. I can’t tell you what you’ll be when you come out of it. It probably looks something like this:
O' Thou!
Whose Name is a remedy
and Whose remembrance is cure
and obedience to Whom makes one
self sufficient;
Have mercy on one
whose only asset is hope
and whose only armour is lamentation!
Source: The Supplication of Kumayl
Ya, Husayn!
