Muharram, part 5.

Before setting out towards the city, Hazrat Husayn sent his cousin, Muslim son of Aqeel, out towards Kufa. Aqeel was to meet up with former supporters of the Imams Ali and Hassan, and see if there was a workable chance to oppose, albeit politically and intellectually, the reign of Yazid.

Muslim scouted the city, and was moved around by allies of the Shiat’ul Ali from house to house, in a vain attempt to cover his movements from Damascus-loyal troops and governors. By the time his mission in the city was done, he had collected an impressive 16,000 signatures of support from every ethnicity, class, and background across the city. He hurriedly wrote to his cousin, back in Makkah, to sojourn to Kufa, where he would be safer (Yazid’s ministers had ordered Hazrat Husayn be murdered during the Hajj), and could appeal to all parties present, Arab and non-Arab.

Muslim would soon find however, that most of the Arab clans who had sworn allegiance to the Imam Husayn if he were arrive, were bribed by Kufan governor, Ibn Ziyad. The tribes had switched their allegiances, leaving only clan-less freed slaves and the already much-despised Persian emigres as the only large constituencies to support the Imam Husayn.

Sensing the collapse of the pro-Husayn movement looming ahead, Muslim ibn Aqeel acted swiftly, and called for a popular-uprising in the city of Kufa. His calls would fall upon deaf ears, and he would be tortured and beheaded the same night he called for rebellion, after throngs of worshipers abandoned him in the city’s main mosque during evening prayers. 


Arab troops would swarm the mosque, and while Muslim prepared to bow in worship, his head would be cut off, ending Islam’s presence in the city. The betrayal was complete.

Meanwhile, Hazrat Husayn met with his relatives and retainers stationed in the Hijaz. It was agreed, though with much apprehension from friends and his only surviving brother, Muhammad (ibn-ul-Haniffiyah), reminding him that Kufa was something of a wild city–no man holds sway there for long.

However, the Imam Husayn disagreed, not only was he under the impression from their cousin Muslim that Kufa had done some soul-searching, but more importantly all of Islam was at stake. If he did not publicly make clear from Kufa, Husayn argued, that Islam was not the province of any particular clan or tribe, but the birthright of a global humanity, then those who stood for Truth would be guilty of the greatest of falsehoods: Indifference.

So then, the Imam Husayn gathered 103 of his closest aides, family and retainers, and set out for Kufa. He would, on the third day of Muharram, be stopped by a Levantine Arab army, at a place just north of Kufa, forever known as Karbala . The soft earth. 

Muharram, part 4.

Yazid’s bullying tactics dissuaded even the ever-tolerant Banu Hashim clan from agreeing to let him rule. Muhammad (PBUH) and his immediate kinsmen were all Banu Hashim,and therefore so was the Imam Husayn.

Husayn, annoyed with the extra-constitutionality of Yazid’s accession, and further angered by the ruthless techniques used by a man claiming to be both Emperor and Successor to the Prophet of Islam (PBUH), decided to accept a request to speak to Mesopotamian Muslims in Kufa about the future of the religion. This “lecture circuit” would have been more than a few sweetened words speaking about harmony and unity in faith. More likely, the Imam Husayn would probably have declared himself in opposition to the Caliphate, and demand a grand council to convene, and restore balance to the Ummah, or Muslim people–singular here as to refer to one single whole, rather than the fragmented bits that had emerged in the post-Muhammad (PBUH) experience.

The reasons for Husayn’s marked departure from his brother’s pacifism need to be made clear. Towards the end of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)’s life, it was made clear to the Islamic people that not only were all equal in the mosque, but in the home, in the marketplace, and in the mind, as well. Slavery was an economic condition, and Muhammad specifically addressed Racism (an enduring Arab value), declaring that Arab and non-Arab were equal–in the eyes of the Law and of the Lord who provided the Law.

Under particularly Yazid I, usury returned to marketplaces, racism and chauvinism was widespread against non-Arabs, and Yazid even attempted to have both the Qur’an and records of Muhammad’s life changed, to reflect claims to legitimacy for Ummayad rule.

All of these reasons were enough for any God-fearing man to refuse the suzerainty of an obvious brute and bully. But particularly for the grandson of a prophet, the son of a Caliph, and the brother of a recent martyr, the feeling that something had to be done would have been inescapable.

Karbala

In 680 CE, Mu’waiya’s son, Yazid, usurped power, ignoring both stipulations his father made with the Imam Hassan, and what had become to be accepted as the tradition of an electoral college of elders of clans and important tribes deciding the who the next Temporal head of Islam should be.

Yazid was unable to secure either a popular vote, or endorsements of the families of the Caliphs Abu Bakr, Umar and Ali, and many of the companions of the prophets also declared his usurpation of power to be illegitimate. This vexed Yazid, who believed his military career and capturing of Smyrna and Chalcedon qualified him to lead the Islamic peoples. Unfortunately, even though it is plausible he had the best interests of Islam at heart, his blatant refusal to consult the greater Islamic community, and his brutal supression of revolts–one of which led to the damaging of the Kab’aa, has won him no favor in the eyes of Muslim scholars, across the Sunni-Shia divide. Imam Hanbali, one of the major Sunni jurists, is even quoted as saying no good Muslim could ever associate themselves with Yazid, ever.

It was in this politically charged environment, with his brother and father murdered, his religion in serious threat, and Islam’s experiment with limited democracy in tatters, that Hazrat Husayn, so of Ali, was approached by two parties. One part-demanded, part-pleaded he endorse the crown (as it was to become a monarachy) of Yazid I in Damascus, the other a delegation from his father’s former capital of Kufa, asking that he speak to them in person, about what the future of Islam’s temporal leadership should be.

Athough Mu’waiyyah had probably seen no other way to keep united the ethnically diverse lands of Islam, he had began a tradition that is now a hallmark of Arab culture and society: Racism. Mu’waiyyah had patronized and empowered Arab elites as first-class citizens in the Islamic World Order. Persians, Africans, Turkic tribes and others were considered less-than-equal. Arabs were (just as in many Arab-dominated states today, such as Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and the gulf-states) the better people, the holy people.

A cult of Kohenism around the Arabs developed, exemplified by the frenzied burning of Persian libraries by the armies of the Ummayads, in direct contrast to the will of the Caliph Umar, who had conquered Persia. When his generals began to enrich themselves and buy up Persian land at windfall prices, the Caliph Umar hopped on his steed, and rode towards Makkah. “But ‘Amir, where are you going?”, asked a junior officer. “I did not come to enslave or to harm these people, but to deliver them the Truth.” The generals quickly relinquished their holdings, though probably because Caliph Umar was known for a furious temper that had a tendency to come out when subordinates didn’t follow his lead.

Considering Muhammad’s (PBUH) original companions included Persians and Blacks, the very people the Ummayads were now oppressing in order to maintain order (and enrich themselves to ensure their continued rule), there was obvious tension. Kufa, the Imam Ali’s capital while Caliph, was a Mesopotamian city chawk full of Persians and other non-Arab group. In utter disgust, and with the vocal support of Abu Bakr’s, Umar’s, and his own clansmen, Husayn refused to recognize the Ummayad King, Yazid I.

Husayn set out for Kufa, hoping to restore equality to the races, democracy to the masses, and his political birthright as the Caliph–for the sake of Islam.

He would in the process, become the greatest protagonist of post-Muhammad (PBUH) times.