My son Mohammed Ebrahim is all a couple of years old and his
restlessness never ceases to amaze me. He’s one of those kinds of children who
you want to put to sleep when you’re tired but the moment they doze off, you
yearn to have them awake, back to being normal-being mischievous. So last
night, when he had been jumping on the bed, I tried to put him to sleep by cradling
him on my lap and used a lullaby to calm his senses, yet the moment my voice
refused to be heard, he’d open his eyes and gave a smile that was angelic and
sinister at the same time. I knew he wasn’t ready to retire so soon; after a
good one hour or so, he came up with a demand. Ebrahim wanted to hear a story
while resting his head on my bosom-he loved listening to my heartbeats, I knew,
but this time I decided upon a story that even my heart would find difficult to
serve properly!
It’s a story- story of a battle fought by a small group of people
against a huge army. These were the men who arose to give humanity a lesson
against tyranny and oppression; and they had no wherewithal of arms or
ammunitions except the inspiration that their Lord’s pleasure is all that they
ever sought! Their families accompanied them despite knowing the men will be
slained and the women, children would be tortured exhaustively. You may wonder
why, it’s because when a tyrant raises his sword to suppress the innocents, God
inspires even the most delicate of His creations, the women and children to
bear witness and let the world know the truth. So, they put up their tents in a
desert like place of Karbala where there was a river flowing a few yards away. The rivals knew about the presence of their
families and their evil minds conceived a terrible plan. The strategy was to
acquire control over the river so that these men of valour would either die out
of thirst or could be emotionally exploited by hearing the cries of their families
for water. But perhaps they were unaware of the fact that this small army which
was headed by Imam Hussain, the beloved grandson of the Prophet (p.b.u.t),
comprised of his true friends, siblings and sons who harboured an unflinching
spirit to blacken the face of injustice so that the ideology to encourage
brotherhood, peace and the zeal to overcome obstacles with awe inspiring leaps
of faith could be served to mankind for perpetuity.
A night before martyrdom, Imam Hussain gathered his companions and
said, “May Allah grant all of you a
good reward. I think that the day of our fighting with this army has arrived. I
permit all of you to go away, there is no restriction from me and you can take
advantage of the darkness of the night,” he turned off the lamp so that his
companions do not feel ashamed of taking their first step. But there wasn’t a
single man among them who would trade their honour to die by his side for
material pursuits and they said, “Should we go away to live after you? We pray
to Allah that the time may not come when you may be killed and we may remain
alive; what a shame to live the life which is without you!"
The battle began on the 10th
day of Mohurrum, the first month of the Islamic year, and it saw each of the 72
martyrs fighting individually in a way that seemed purely divine, as if they
had come to the battlefields wearing shrouds that were meant for humans but wings
designed for the angels. Perhaps, their
spirituality had ascended to a station where it was their bodies trapped in a
soul that sought the Creator Himself. All of them fought from morning till an
hour before sunset. Their leader Hussain himself went to comfort his comrades
during their last moments or came to collect their bodies those who were mowed
to pieces by the stampeding horses. When he went to console his brother Abbas
in his last moments, the Imam took his brothers’ head on his lap but the latter
moved away his head and the Imam sadly inquired, “why are you preventing me
from comforting you?” and the badly wounded Abbas, with an arrow in his eyes
and hands that had been severed off his body, said, “O master, why should I be
comforted in death by you while no one will be there to comfort you when you
die?”
The fighting continued till they all
reached their heavenly destination one after the other, even young children and
suckling infants readily accepted arrows on their parched throats. Imam Hussain
stood alone on the plains of Karbala and gave one last sermon to call the
infidels to the right path before their hands become stained by his pristine
blood. But souls meant for damnation and curse are destined to be doomed
forever and the heedless crowd of over thousand soldiers pounced upon the
sublime, infallible Imam. Some pelted stones; others shot arrows and stabbed
him with swords. The attack was so gruesome that when he fell to the ground,
his divine body rested on arrows and he said to His Lord, “O Allah, I have left
the whole world in your desire. I accepted the orphanage of my children
in your remembrance. If in your love my body is mangled in to pieces,
even then my wounded heart will be in your quest.”
Indeed, Imam Hussain was an exponent of
human freedom, self sacrifice and justice; it is with the event of Karbala that we understand
that Islam is the religion of peace and we must reject the monarchic
representation of Islam. I’m reminded of Dr.Allama Iqbal’s mellifluous words
when he said, “I have learnt the secret of the Quran from Hussain. From
his fire I treasured flames of faith.”
