Zahir Ebrahim |
Project
Humanbeingsfirst.org
Here
are some images of the “new terrorists” propaganda system
in the making. Can you imagine the global headlines that Daniel
Pipes, the Jewish Islamophobe propagandist of the West, would give to
these images of self-flagellating blood-letting in Muharram during
the remembrance of the Memory
of Karbala
(while forgetting the Categorical
Imperative of Karbala)
by the Shia devotees of Imam Hussein, aided and abetted by the
Valih-e-faqih, and assorted marja-e-taqlid Ayatollahs from Qom to
Najaf, who tacitly encourage this barbaric display of Shia faith by
silently condoning it, not issuing categorical injunctions against
it, when Dr. Pipes has most imaginatively already captioned “militant
Islam” and “radical Islam” as: “It's
Not a Clash of Civilizations, It's a Clash between the Civilized
World and Barbarians”?
Is this what Shiaism is all about --- is a question that is even
asked by the majority of the Sunni Muslims worldwide, never mind the
world's public.
The
public face of “Revolutionary Islam”
Is this face of Shiadom's Islam the “revolutionary” teachings of Islam?
Is this face of Shiadom's Islam the “revolutionary” teachings of Islam?
Convince
people that: “It's
Not a Clash of Civilizations, It's a Clash between the Civilized
World and Barbarians”,
and you can get them to commit atrocities!
Caption-1
The extremes to which the Shia devotees of Imam Hussein go to
commiserate with the martyrs of Karbala as the fast-path to heaven.
These self-inflicted wounds heal sooner than most people uninitiated
into this ritual might think. This display of faith and love for
Imam Hussein is virtually risk free, as people return to work with
at best minor discomfort for several days, and it's business as
usual. It is, evidently, still a lot easier to break blood from
one's own head, to soak in one's own blood once or twice a year in
remembrance of what the tyrant Yazid's army did to Imam Hussein and
his family in 61 A.H., than to stand up to the systems of oppression
in one's own time. Especially when such display of devotion, tears
and self-flagellation, elegiac poetry with narrative reenactment,
and walking for miles, often barefoot, in long processions to
commemorate the event of 61 A.H., even when there be threat to one's
life due to crackdown by authorities inimical to such remembrance,
is thought as the fast-path to Heaven. It is almost universally
believed by the Shia laity, regardless of which nation and culture
they might live in, that Imam Hussein would intercede on behalf of
his devotees on the Day of Judgment if they shed tears for his
misery. This belief is so strongly held that it has become the
predominant religious ethos of Shiadom.
Shedding
such tears of devotion is also virtually risk free, while
interfering with the imperatives of villainous power is always
hazardous in totalitarian systems. Even in supposed liberal systems,
such as democracy, the corruption of power is only disguised.
Despite the electorate, imperialism and hegemony, endless warfare
and police states, continue to thrive at the expense of the lesser
peoples. To say “NO” to the tyrant of the day, to
say “NO” to his imperialism and injustices, as Imam
Hussein and his womenfolk and children and handful of companions
did, is to lose one's livelihood, or worse, be shot dead for
dissent, when not incarcerated and tortured. This of course happens
only when one acquires the courage of Imam Hussein to say “NO”
to rulers and to their systems of corruption. But for the simpleton
Shia laity, instead of commemorating Imam Hussein's unflinching act
of categorical
imperative,
which the Imam had most elegantly summed up for the benefit of all
times in his now famous sentence: “a
man like me does not give oath of fealty to a man like Yazid”,
the devotees have been culturally trained to commemorate what the
bad guys did to the Imam. Not what the Imam did to the bad guys by
taking his stance!
What
Imam Hussein and his family suffered, surely remained unparalleled
throughout most of mankind's history when battles were fought on
horseback and with swords outside of civilian centers. Until
indiscriminate aerial bombardment of civilian centers became the
preferred military doctrine of the West in our modernity. What
happens from Palestine to Syria to Iraq to Libya to Pakistan to
Afghanistan to Yemen today, or what happened to Hamburg and Dresden
and Tokyo and Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, is not all
that physically different from what happened to the family of Imam
Hussein. Is it really worse to die from the sword of Yazid's army
with parched throats in the middle of 120 degrees heat in the
sweltering desert of Mesopotamia, than from an atom bomb, or daisy
cutter, or in a napalm fire-bomb inferno?
Therefore,
it follows that it is not the despicable and inhuman style of
martyrdom per se inflicted upon the noble Imam and his noble
children which is the point to ponder and remember and commemorate.
They, after all, died courageously in battle with sword in hand, by
choice. Why are manufactured tears extracted from the
devotees for what was a courageous self-sacrifice, a choice that was
deliberately made by the Imam? Why was that choice made by the Imam?
It is solely that act of the Imam and his entourage as a categorical
imperative, to stand up to Yazid, to be the exemplar of the
meaning of Islam, to say “NO” to the corruption and
reign of terror of vile power, to say “NO” to one's own
“banality
of evil”,
which is the point of Karbala –– as heinous and
barbaric, and naturally tear-jerking as the method of murdering the
grandchildren of the Prophet of Islam was.
The
Imam clearly anticipated his fate. It was not a surprise to him, as
his letters and conversations throughout his several months long
journey reveal. And yet, the Imam willingly chose that path which he
knew for sure would lead to certain death. On top of it, the Imam
took his womenfolk and children, knowing for sure that there was
certain death at the end of the road. Why did the Imam take that
path –– which today, to astute political minds whose
only imperative is to rule, would appear foolish and insane?
The
principal lesson to be learned, remembered, and acted upon, from the
Imam's stance that brought him to Karbala in a long journey
throughout which he invited Muslims to join him in the mission, and
for which he offered what is considered the supreme sacrifice,
was his categorical imperative, a fundamental teaching of
Islam.
That
teaching has mainly become relegated to elegiac poetry and religious
theses. The Muslims have been taught for centuries to practice
mainly the shell of Islam. That has resulted in ignoring its fruit,
which is almost always thrown away by all Muslims, each according to
their own shared ethos. The Deen-ul-Haq,
the Religion of Justice, to even enter whose fold first begins with
“NO”, has been transformed into the religion of idiotic
rituals which border on barbarism and superstition in Shiadom. In
the modern day and age, this self-flagellation and blood-letting
appears to be a throw-back to the Dark Ages, the age of Jahiliya
before the dawn of Islam, when people did all sorts of insane
rituals thinking their gods favored it.
This
dysfunction among the Shia Muslims has been aided and abetted
throughout the past fourteen centuries by the clergy class and their
thoughtless story tellers who have misguided and misdirected this
spontaneous devotion of the people to the Ahlul Bayt. That has
ensured that the tyrants remain free to do as they please. No
tyrant, no system of oppression, and no bastard, has ever even had a
butterfly stomach with this display of blood passion by Imam
Hussein's followers, let alone fear for his or her power. Something
has gone terribly awry with Muslims. An inheritance so profound, an
emotional attachment so unparalleled and global, that the devotees,
no matter where they live, in which time and in which space, shy not
from shedding their own blood in remembrance, generation after
generation, and century after century, and yet, still oppressed
everywhere. More images of extremes in blood-letting
self-flagellation during A'shura 2016 are here.
(Images gathered from various news reports on the web, please check
in the JPG image property for any copyright information of the
original source)
Caption-2 Can
anyone guess what Islamophobes would caption this display of
“revolutionary Islam” to frighten the Western audiences:
'It's Not a Clash of Civilizations, It's a Clash between the
Civilized World and Barbarians'! The latter headline has already
been employed by the Jewish reformer of Islam, Dr. Daniel Pipes, to
awaken the Western public against the curse of the Taleban's and the
Al-Qaeeda's version of “Islam” reaching them. Extending
the narrative to “Revolutionary Islam” is just around
the corner. Getting the two absurdities to wage an endless war in
the name of “Islam” that will snowball into a Shia-Sunni
world war,
with the Western audience disdainfully against both barbarians, and
the Western states along with their Eastern vassals, arming both
sides just as during the eight year long Iran-Iraq war, is the
obvious game-theorized scenario on the grand chessboard. Once
brought to the Russian-roulette table, it cannot be averted.
The time for its prevention is before the fait accompli is cast –
and all provocations are being brought to bear on this very
scenario, only the most recent of which is: Saudi
Arabia's grand mufti says Iranians are 'not Muslims'.
Caption-3 This
barbaric ritual in Shiadom, of splitting open one's head and drawing
blood from various parts of the body with swords and knives to mourn
the martyrdom of Imam Hussein and his family at Karbala in the year
61 A.H., has neither anything to do with the Religion of Islam, nor
with the principal
Message of Karbala:
“Qullo yomin A'shura, Qullo
Ardin Karbala”, and nor with
basic human dignity and decency. Where Imam Hussein exemplified
human dignity by freeing it from man's tyranny for all times,
Shiadom enslaved it back again in superstitions and behavior control
systems. The Shia clergy, by staying mute dumb and blind to
this barbaric public practice of the Shia devotees, have
demonstrated for centuries their own real qibla of allegiance: the
god of public opinion before which they too bow like the vulgar
politicians. Here is a lukewarm condemnation of this practice by the
Valih-e-Faqih-e-Muslimeen of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei, falling way short of a categorical religious and legal
injunction banning it:
“It is
wrongful that some people hit themselves on the head with daggers to
break blood. What are they in search of? How can this be considered
an act of mourning? Of course light drumming on the head with one’s
own hand is a distinctive sign of mourning. You have seen it several
times when people are stricken by grief, they hit own their chests
or heads. This is a typical symbol of distress for mourning. But
when have you ever seen a person, who is grief stricken by the loss
of a dear loved one, take a dagger to their own head in order to
draw blood? How can this be a form of mourning?
Tatbir
[Qame Zani] is also a fabricated tradition. It is among issues that
do not belong to the Islamic religion and undoubtedly God is not
pleased with such a practice. Scholars among the last few centuries
did not have the opportunity to speak out and declare it as an
unlawful or wrongful act. However, today is the day of Islamic
establishment and the day for the manifestation of Islam. We should
not go along with actions that may introduce a small group of
irrational, superstitious individuals to Muslims and non-Muslims
alike, to be represented as the bulwark of the noble Islamic
society--the society that loves the progeny of the prophet (pbuh)
and has the honor to carry the names of the Imam of our Time (may
our souls be sacrificed for him), Imam Hussain Ibn Ali (as) and Imam
Ali Ibn Abi Talib (as).
The
more I thought about it (tatbir), the more I truly realized I cannot
overlook my responsibility of informing our dear people on Tatbir,
which is certainly an act of wrongdoing built upon heresy. Do not
practice it, I do not approve. If someone does anything to display
their desire to practice Tatbir, I will be deeply disappointed in
them. I am declaring this solemnly. This is certainly an unlawful
action, one which Imam Hussain (as) would not be pleased with, as
practiced today. I cannot fathom who would and based on what
evidence would they establish such peculiar and wrongful traditions
in Islamic societies and within our revolutionary society?
Tatbir is
one of those concerns which not only lacks logical reasoning, but is
also the nearest of things to superstition. Why do some promote such
things? This is a great danger, which has to be carefully tended to
within the world of religion and religious insight by the guardians
of the faith.” --- Ayatollah
Khamenei, June 07, 1994
Imagine
the thought experiment if you will, that you are taking an
undergraduate class in media studies under Dr. Joseph Goebbels of the
Third Reich --- come up with an emotionally tickling caption for
these images of the bloody ritual of A'shura that would effectively
rally the Western public to fight “revolutionary Islam”
with an equal or greater zeal than they have thus far waged “united
we stand” against “militant Islam”.
An authoritative
account of the Misrepresentations and Distortions in the
popular A'shura narratives heralded from the ubiquitous Shia pulpit
itself is given in the series of four lectures delivered in 1969 by
the notable Shia Iranian scholar Allama
Murtaza Mutahhari.
While ably capturing both the psychological motivations and the
misrepresentations and distortions made by latter day Shia pulpits
from Qom to Najaf, and from Karbala to India with reference to the
sacred penmanship of the pious scribes of history, the learned and
honest Iranian scholar notably failed to address the hagiographic
distortions in that sacred historical penmanship itself. A reportage
of the seminal events of Karbala compiled generations after the fact,
in a primitive tribal society by a partisan people not much different
than those occupying the pious pulpits today, but which is treated as
sacrosanct! Most revealingly, whatever is written in those earliest
historical narratives is treated as gospel truth by even the highest
authorities of the Shia pulpit in exactly the same way as the Sunni
pulpits treat their own hagiographic narratives of early Muslim
history.
What recuses
that early reportage of Muslim history from the same type of rigorous
intellectual examination for the same kinds of psychological
motivations, misrepresentations and distortions, made by the same
kind of fertile imaginations and fallible pens incestuously
reinforcing their own shared ethos both wittingly and unwittingly?
See Introduction
to Muslim Historiography
in my book Hijacking
the Holy Qur'an and Islam,
for elaboration upon this concept of taking recorded history with a
forensic measure, rather than an absolute or literal one. Making
history sacred has many more uses than mere academic
scholarship. It lies at the very heart of mass behavior control.
Novelist George Orwell most perceptively captured the utility of the
control of the narrative – what is penned ab initio, as well as
what is made sacred posthumously: “Who
controls the past controls the future; Who controls the present
controls the past”.
Instead
of making history sacrosanct, as Muslims remember the events of
Karbala in every Muharram-ul Haram as the fastpath to Heaven, and as
the wasilah for fulfillment of prayers, we might also endeavor
to study the Categorical
Imperative birth-panged in Karbala by the
exemplification of deen-ul-haq. We might ask why the religion
of Islam in the Holy Qur'an is called deen-ul-haq, if not to
endeavor to create heaven right here in this world for everyone by
establishing justice for everyone, and ask how, if not by breaking
all bonds of servitude to fellow man. We might ask how that lofty
categorical imperative of Islam got morphed into the selfish
individual goal of seeking Heaven in Afterlife while leaving the
tyrants in this world alone. Karbala exemplified that principal
teaching of the religion of Islam as deen-ul-haq for all time
and space. While no Muslim denies that fact, Karbala has become
relegated to an isolated act of history for history. And the rest of
Islam's preaching for establishing justice is left to Eschatology!
Instead
of making the history of Karbala sacred for extracting individual
tears by imaginative narratives, Muslims might examine our own age
and era in the mirror of the history of Karbala. Instead of beating
one's own chest in unstoppable tears and feeling having given justice
to the memory of the martyrs of Karbala, we might offer our chests to
the tyrants of our own time as the categorical imperative of
Karbala.
That
is the real face of Shiadom which has remain occulted for centuries.
The public face of Shiadom instead of becoming an expression of the
categorical imperatives of Islam, has exclusively become an
expression of sorrow for the fate of the Ahlul Bayt of the Prophet of
Islam, often with absurd rituals which in this day and age seem to be
a throwback to barbarianism.
Just
as Muslims have not understood the message of Karbala and have become
engrossed in memorializing it in rituals as a religious element
despite fourteen centuries of rehearsals, Muslims have also not
understood the religion of Islam and become engrossed in its rituals.
The evidence for this statement is obvious and quite empirical ---
just look around us, fourteen centuries of Islam with full mosques on
every street corner, millions performing Haj each year, million
feeding the poor, and still living in bondage to despotic rulers and
empires with almost a fifth or sixth of the world population living
in hunger and deprivation! It is as if no Prophets ever came to
enlighten mankind.
The
people of the world understanding Karbala in all its dimensions frees
not just Muslims from bondage to fellow man, but the entire world
from tyranny of fellow man.
Karbala
is the singular recipe of moral resistance. It is also the mirror of
history to understand our own times for our own banality of evil
---- for the same sociological principles remain in play again and
again that determine the rise and fall of civilizations.
History,
all history, is only a mirror of learning, and the fount of wisdom,
when it is responsibly used to navigate for a better tomorrow. But,
obviously, not when the mirror is held to the blind!
This
is the lamentable tragedy of man. History has become the manipulative
tool of choice for behavior control in virtually all societies.
Narratives of history are used to instill false beliefs, draw
specious or misdirected lessons, and to implant and perpetuate myths
and ideologies. Once these narratives become part of culture and its
intellectual tradition, the social norms that result from cultural
ethos automatically determines the aggregate public behavior. This is
the principal reason for the existence of Shias and Sunnis, mainly
their differing views of the same history of Islam! Otherwise, both
should have the same beliefs and practices and understanding of Islam
because our Holy Book, the Holy Qur'an, and our Holy Prophet, and his
Ahlul Bayt, are one and the same! Unfortunately, each has been breast
fed their preferred narrative of history in such a way that for both,
tyrants, rulers and empires have come and gone over the past fourteen
centuries but nothing has disturbed their ritual piety! And nothing
disturbs it today either.
Only
when the public understands this subversion of their mind in which
they are voluntarily made to pay homage to their rulers as virtue,
made to agree to tyrannical rule with either apathy or willingness,
Machiavellianly kept busy in pious rituals, awarded peace prizes to
look the other way, all by writing a history that suits the rulers,
or a particular agenda, and socializing the public mind into that
narrative as “their holy truth”, can we ever begin to
free ourselves from its web of control.
This
is why history is a dual edged sword. In the hands of compassionate
wisdom, it charts the course of action in the present to avoid the
same pitfalls. In the hands of Machiavelli, it permits villainy to
rule endlessly.
Come
visit Karbala afresh. While the tender heart will surely forever
lament the barbarianism visited upon the martyrs of Karbala, let's
begin the journey of the mind afresh by recalling not what Yazid did
to Imam Hussein and the Ahlul Bayt, but by comprehending what Imam
Hussein and the Ahlul Bayt did to Yazid!
Karbala
was not an accident of history. It was the result of a decision made
by Imam Hussein. If the martyrs of Karbala made a choice to be there
to offer their lives in ransom to rebirth the message of Islam as the
forgotten deen-ul-haq, then, surely, as obvious as the sun is
bright on a cloudless afternoon, they do not want centuries of tears
of their devotees in response to Imam Hussein's perennial call in
Karbala: “Hull min nasiroon yan soor na”. The
noble Imam wanted then, and for every age and for every time, only
nasiroons, helpers, aiders and abettor, for the mission of enacting
justice, for standing up for what's right, decent, moral,
unequivocally demonstrating for all times that no sacrifice can be
too great to stand up to tyranny.
This
is rather obvious, even to the innocent child when she asks the
puzzling question that why did Imam Hussein take a six month old baby
with him to a mission as hard as standing up to the evil Yazid who
had inherited the pulpit of Islam as its caliph within just fifty
years after the death of the Prophet of Islam, when other noble and
pious Muslims in the multitude of millions at the time chose not to
accompany Imam Hussein? That child's question opens the Pandora's box
of questions ---- and as the legend promises, when you dig down to
the very bottom, all mystery is revealed.
But
this is never obvious when the sanctimonious pulpit has hijacked
Karbala in the service of empire, when the indoctrinated public mind
gathers around it to remember the event in rituals of tears and with
hopes for salvation. It is never obvious when pretentious piety comes
to occupy the public mind year after year, generation after
generation, centuries after centuries. It is never obvious when paid
professionals are engaged to extract the public's tears as an act of
piety. And it is never obvious when emotions take over the ability to
reason from an event of history that touches the heart to its very
core. Books have been filled with the narratives of Karbala but few
teach its categorical imperative as the singular duty imposed
by the religion of Islam upon its followers. The failure to recognize
commonsense, in fact, its total absence among the laity when
remembering the horrors of Karbala and its aftermath, and virtually
its total absence among the clergy who rehearse Karbala as a
profession, who earn their livelihood and their scholarship from the
blood of Karbala, is the tragedy not just of Shiadom, but of Islam
and all Muslims.
Karbala
is a uniting force for Muslims, nay all humanity, if people can only
realize its full significance. Unlike abstract theological principles
like the Biblical Golden Rule never put into practice so as to ever
become exemplary for all peoples, Karbala is a real exemplary event
that defined a real categorical imperative enacted by the
courage of Imam Hussein. It can attract all humanity if some among us
don't despoil its name with strange behaviors and superstitions. It
is the singular categorical imperative to create a just world
---- not by endlessly talking about it in utopian platitudes and
moral clichés as virtually all religions and utopian
philosophies do, but by fighting for it in the style of Karbala in
practice!
In
a just world, by definition, all peoples of all persuasions can find
space for themselves, each according to their own beliefs, traditions
and culture. All high minded theories like the Golden Rule easily
become a practical categorical imperative and put into
practice by all in a just society, but only in a just society where
all abide by the same rules enacted by the fiat of just laws in which
no one takes undue advantage of another. That can only transpire when
tyrants, their special interests, and their systems of oppression to
keep the people in bondage of one kind or another, are defeated, and
perpetually kept defeated. This is the straightforward meaning of
Every day is Ashura, every place is Karbala ---- for indeed,
tyranny is everywhere, and will continue to rise its head everywhere,
in every era, and therefore, by the logic of freedom and liberty
being a desirable virtue for all (unless one asserts that living in
bondage to the ubermensch is virtue), its antidote must also
arise in every place, in every era.
Mankind
to this day knows of no other exemplary resistance against tyranny
among any peoples and civilizations that parallels Karbala. One does
not even have to believe in the religion of Islam, or God, to be
inspired by the resistance of Imam Hussein and his family members in
Karbala!
It
is high time this travesty in understanding Karbala is recognized by
the public themselves and its holy narratives liberated from
artificial sacrosanctness and antediluvian superstitions which have
now become enshrined in the public face of Shiadom. The world public
today cannot accept this, let alone be attracted to it as a
categorical imperative of moral existence!
So
come revisit Karbala as the timeless categorical imperative of
Islam gifted to all humanity, on how to rise up to systems of
oppression without yourself becoming a barbarian in the process.
Watch Islamophobes and their Machiavellian concoctions like “militant
Islam” scurry for cover.
Excerpted
From 2013 Report: The
Rise of Revolutionary Islam in Pakistan – A Report on Behavior
Control
For
the mystery of Karbala see 2016 Open Letter: Open
Letter: The ma'ajjra of Karbala - What is it all about 1377 years
later?
Also
see 2017 Open Letter: Categorical
Imperative and Karbala – Open Letter to Muslims and Non Muslims
Faith-Politico
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http://faith-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/p/the-public-face-of-revolutionary-islam.html
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Last
updated A'shura 1438 A.H., October 12, 2016 2693
Postscript
Categorical Imperative of Karbala added 8th Muharram-ul Haram 1439
AH, Friday September 29, 2017 4514
The Public Face of Shiadom's
Islam