First of all, peace be upon you, my master Abu ʿAbd Allah al-Husayn, O my master and the light of my heart, O lifeblood of the soul, and our intercessor along with your grandfather, your father, your mother, your brother and your pure, infallible children, may blessings and peace be upon them ... .
We are at the anniversary of the martyrdom of the Master of Martyrs and the Master of the Youth of the People of Paradise, the grandson of the Messenger of Allah (s), our master Imam al-Husayn—this anniversary that is alive in the conscience of the nation from the time of the Most Noble Prophet (s) and throughout the whole of Islamic time, where one comes to know the course of the beloved grandson, the sweet basil of the Messenger of Allah (s), this great Imam who was deservedly the foremost reformer after his father, his brother and his grandfather the Greatest Messenger (s), because he said about himself (a)—he said, when he went forth denouncing the arrogant tyrant of his time, Yazid—he said: “I did not go forth in arrogance or in insolence; rather, I went forth seeking reform in the nation of my grandfather Muhammad (s).” Through these humble lines I wished to invite everyone sincere to al-Husayn—the Imam, the human being and the reforming revolutionary—to look upon Abu ʿAbd Allah al-Husayn (a), and to embrace al-Husayn in his mind, his heart and his movement, because the title of Islam, “al-Husayn,” is in these days exposed to an attempt at distortion, and his course and his revolution are what the pseudo-learned of this time seek to portray as an ijtihad on the part of al-Husayn, no more and no less, such that the wrongdoer of his time becomes a deviant sultan and the story ends—just as his father was dealt with at Siffin and his brother in the peace treaty. Al-Husayn has not been spared historical injustice, for in the name of Islamic culture the horizons of al-Husayn's revolution are distorted, because the reading that lacks justice, or that sets out from ignorance, or that springs from the collective mind dominating the Islamic cantons—all of these are unable to read the course of Imam al-Husayn (a) with breadth, truthfulness and objectivity, and within the comprehensiveness, depth and horizons of authentic Islam, which is embodied in its most splendid, purest and most immaculate images in the suras and verses of the great Thaqal, the Noble Book of Allah, the counterpart of its twin, the Ahl al-Bayt (a)...Al-Husayn revolted with a gleaming-white Islamic truth—how could it be otherwise? And who among the people dares to dispute with al-Husayn over his going forth against the tyrannical sultan of his time, who made lawful what Allah had made sacred, broke the covenant of Allah, contravened the Sunna of the Messenger of Allah, and acted among the servants of Allah with sin and aggression? None but one who is blind to knowing al-Husayn, and one who does not respect al-Husayn and does not want al-Husayn to expose the hypocrisy of reality and history. Al-Husayn is the exposer of all deviation throughout history, for we understand that whoever does not accept the title of al-Husayn—with his revolution, his culture, his reformist horizons and all of him—and rejects grief over al-Husayn, that grief which produces true Islamic awareness: such a one fears closeness to purity, clarity and authentic Islam, and so he seeks, with all foolishness and equivocation, to flee from meeting al-Husayn, and makes ʿAshura a joy! I wonder, which narrations are closer to Islamic awareness: the narration reported about the deliverance of Allah's Prophet Moses (a) on the day of ʿAshura, or the narrations strong in chain and text in the volumes of hadith and history, which cry out throughout all of Islamic time that al-Husayn was killed by the most wretched of the wretched, who took captive the womenfolk of the Messenger of Allah? By Allah, I ask you, which of the two is closer? Sufficient for us, in the reply of our lady, the great woman, the daughter of the Messenger of Allah, al-Hawraʾ Zaynab, the sister of the martyred grandson, the learned one who was not taught (a), is an exemplar in steadfastness of certainty, constancy of uprightness, the mine of patience and contentment with the decree and destiny, as we say to whoever made ʿAshura the day of joy: Scheme your scheme, strive your striving and exert your effort, for by Allah, you will not erase the remembrance of al-Husayn and the children of al-Husayn, and you will not kill the lessons and the tears of history...The history of al-Husayn and the Ahl al-Bayt (a) and their remembrances: for us, we receive in them lessons and morals. We want to connect with the past on the basis of the past's role as teacher regarding some of what this past has produced; we benefit from the past, offer to the present and lay foundations for the future, and thereby we will have benefited from the three times; and al-Husayn is from the Messenger of Allah: whoever loves him loves the Messenger of Allah, and you cannot love the Messenger of Allah and not grieve over al-Husayn; and whoever does not weep for al-Husayn as the Messenger of Allah wept over him while he was alive before him, his heart is sick and his Islam is shackled by ignorance and whim..?! O Allah, I ask You by the right of the pioneer of ʿAshura, and by the right of his grandfather, the Noble Prophet Muhammad (s), to make us equal to the level of ʿAshura, benefiting from it in its dimensions and drawing from its dimensions the lessons that bring us benefit in our present and in our future...and Allah is behind the intent
(*) An Islamic writer and researcher
