“Welcome to You”.. and the Social and Cultural Effects
(Welcome to you, O visitors of al-Husayn..)—a phrase that echoes from loyal, loving lips, embracing millions of souls and minds before it draws in the bodies, fills the stomachs and quenches the veins.
In the season of the Arbaʿin ziyarah in holy Karbala and around it, and on all the roads leading to it, the engine of attraction works through the expression of welcome (Welcome to you), so that the visitors who have come in throngs from distant places turn to what this guesthouse and that mawkib offer, what this man and that woman perform, and what that boy and that girl strive for, in a ceaseless movement in which machines grow weary but that service does not grow weary. Yet it does not stop at the limit of temporary physical service for the visitors’ comfort; rather, it crosses distances and folds up the ages, drawing images of a culture and a scene of a society, defying all borders and restrictions.
All the sociologists and theorists of anthropology, and all the veterans in the fields of thought, psychology and politics, have not been able to establish a culture and a society by the mechanism of (Welcome to you, O visitors); rather, they must stand before this awe-inspiring scene with reverence and humility, reading the scene with analysis and drawing benefit from it, in order to fill the gaps of modern theories in the making of societies, the founding of cultures and the making of the human being.
The Ahl al-Bayt (a)—and they are the mine of knowledge, its highest, its deepest and its most truthful—laid the foundation for the culture of (ziyarah). They encouraged the believers and filled them with longing to set out on journeys for it, and they worked with great precision to create balances between one ziyarah and another, and with the pen of the Unseen they drew the map of the distribution of the seasons along the annual timeline of mankind, so that crowds gather from every land, reciting texts of knowledge and self-purification, giving and receiving, serving and being served, crying out and weeping, imploring Allah and seeking forgiveness, renewing the covenant of wilayah and disavowing its enemies, meeting in this state to create the experience of a society of loyalty in a few days. For (in your meeting there is life for our cause), and the life of the cause is an opening onto the good life to which Allah has pointed in His Wise Book.
And the matter does not stop at this awe-inspiring scene. Rather, the secret lies in their taking the doses and blessings back to their homelands and societies; and the more the visitor takes, the more he benefits and gives benefit.
And the blessing broadens at the level of conduct and culture, and of standing, merit and ranks in the Hereafter. Among them is one who is given the reward of an accepted ʿumrah, and among them is one who, whenever he raises a foot, is given a hajj, and whenever he puts it down, is given an ʿumrah; the reckoning is in proportion to the walking, and the walking by the shortness of the steps. So none of those whose feet have trodden the holy valley of Karbala returns empty-handed..
Hence, the continuation of the million-strong crowds in the paradise of Imam al-Husayn (a), in the awe-inspiring procession of the ziyarah every year, is bound to kindle the culture of goodness and giving, to draw the map of righteous societies, and to strengthen the spirit of refusing humiliation and of loyalty in every land. For the ziyarah is the pure, sweet water that Allah the Exalted sends down from the sky of al-Husayn (a) onto the land of al-Husayn, and it flows to every land, so that it stirs and swells, and grows every delightful kind and abundant good.
Sayed Mahmoud Al-Mosawi
Safar 1439 AH
