The life of Imam Hussain (AS)

‘My two children Hassan and Hussain are leaders of Ummah (the Muslim nation) whether they rise or they sit’, the Prophet (PBUH) said.

The most important event pertaining to Imam Hussain’s (AS) life was his sacrifice and martyrdom in Karbala. The Ashura uprising remains engraved on people’s memories. Even significant events in the world are sometimes forgotten and may be marked only in history books. However, there are exceptional events that are not forgotten easily. Examples of such events are the sacrifice of God’s messengers and revolutions led by divine leaders. Because these events touch something deep in the human psyche. Imam Hussain’s (AS) movement and the tragedy of Ashura are lasting events and they have not been overshadowed by the passage of time. The Ashura uprising has three outstanding features that must be discussed:

1) the reason for Imam Hussain’s (AS) uprising;

2) the features of Imam Hussain’s (AS) movement and

3) the ramifications of the movement.

Why did Imam Hussain (AS) rise up against Yazid?
The central reason for Imam Hussain’s (AS) uprising was the deviation of the government from the Islamic rule. These deviations were visible in the way the Umayyads were ruling; the Umayyad party – led by Abu Sufyan – had pretended to accept Islam as their religion when Mecca was conquered, while nurturing disbelief and hypocrisy in his heart.

When Uthman was in power, Muawiyah told a private meeting of Umayyad seniors: ‘Now that we are in power, we must seize the caliphate and pass it to one another, and try to avoid any extinction of the Umayyad dynasty…I swear that there is no Heaven or Hell.’ The Umayyad party openly campaigned against Islam. After the capture of Mecca, this party continued its activities clandestinely. Under cover of Islam, it was trying to eradicate the religion itself.

Imam Ali’s (AS) five-year rule undermined Umayyad power but failed to fully root it out and, after Imam Ali’s (AS) martyrdom, Abu Sufyan’s son Muawiyah took power in the Muslim world and appointed his cruel agents like Ziyad, Amru As and Marwan to handle Muslims’ affairs. A large number of resisters like Hujr ibn ʿAdi, Rushayd Al-Hajrari and Maytham Al-Tammar were brutally killed for their protest against this tyranny.

During his 20-year rule, Muawiyah strengthened the basis of his son Yazid’s rule. Yazid, a symbol of corruption, came to power after his father’s death. He was fiercely opposed to Islam.

A government which was supposed to represent Muslims was taken over by a corrupt man who openly denied the prophecy of Muhammad and shared his grandfather Abu Sufyan’s view that Islam was just an illusion. (Al-Bidaya wal-Nihaya) In fact, Yazid was inclined to Christianity. He was also a decadent hedonist who lacked foresight. (Muruj Al-Dhahab)

The difference between Yazid and Muawiyah was that the father paid lip-service to Islam, but the son did not even feign piety. He openly ignored Islamic teachings and did not steer clear of any revelry. He used to organize parties and get drunk. The self-declared poet recited the following sentences: ‘My friends in drinking! Stand up! Listen to singers and get drunk. These beautiful songs make me forget the call for prayers. I am ready to exchange heavenly angels with my drink.’ (Ibn Jawzi, Tadhkirat Al-Khawass).

He openly insulted Islamic sanctities and never covered his inclination for Christianity; ‘Drinking may be forbidden in the religion of Ahmad, but you can drink under the religion of Jesus.’ (Tatimmat Al-Muntaha) Yazid’s court was the centre of corruption and sin. He did not even keep Mecca and Medina safe from his mischievous acts. (Muruj Al-Dhahab)

At that time, Hussain saw the conditions conducive to a revolution because the Umayyad rulers could no longer paint a misleading image of Hussain’s (AS) objectives in the public sphere and describe it as a struggle for power. Ordinary people could see clearly that the ruling government was flouting Islamic teachings. That prompted Hussain to call on his follower across the world to rise up. This uprising was designed to revive Islam and Islamic traditions and not seizing power and caliphate.

After the martyrdom of Imam Hassan (AS) in 670 AD, the Iraqi Shia started writing letters to Hussain asking him to unseat Muawiyah. Imam Hussain (AS) noted in response that he could not renege on the treaty with Muawiyah. However, after the death of Muawiyah in 680 AD, Imam Hussain (AS) found the conditions ripe for an uprising. He described the attributes the governor of Muslims is required to have: ‘the Imam and ruler of people is he who makes judgments based on Quran, who promotes justice, follows divine religion and exercises patients on the divine path.’ (Mufid, Irshad) In one of his speeches near Karbala, the Imam explained his revolutionary motives as follows:

O’ people! The prophet of God said: ‘Anyone who sees a tyrannical governor who breaks his pledges to God, opposes the traditions of God’s messenger, and rules with force on people, is obliged to oppose him with words and deeds. If not, God will send him along with the governor to Hell.’ O’ people! Yazid and his followers have chosen to obey to Satan. They do no longer obey God and they promote corruption and flout Islamic rules. They have seized public wealth…I am the most qualified to oppose this government. (Tarikh Ṭabari)

Imam Hussain’s (AS) conscious uprising
The important issue in the Imam Hussain’s (AS) revolution is to know if it was an uprising or an explosion. Those who always want to underestimate all sacred events describe the Imam Hussain’s (AS) uprising as an explosion. They apply the law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. Probably the most commonly cited example of this is the change of water from a liquid to a gas, by increasing its temperature. There has also been an effort to apply this mechanism to social phenomena, whereby population increases result in changes in social structure.

The society can tolerate oppression up to a certain extent. After the martyrdom of Imam Ali (AS), the Umayyad rulers stepped up their tyranny against Muslims until the society reach the point of explosion. This group of exegetes says Hussain’s (AS) uprising was the symbol of this forceful explosion. Such a judgment about the movement of Hussain (AS) is inaccurate and originates from the views of materialists. Had these exegetes studied the history of Imam Hussain’s (AS) uprising and had they been a bit more realistic, they could not have make such baseless judgment about the movement of Imam Hussain (AS).

These exegetes have accepted the principle of ‘transition from quantity to quality’ for all natural phenomena and they have had to explain the uprising of Imam Hussain (AS) within this worldview. Had they not applied this principle to all world phenomena they would not have named Hussain-led revolution an involuntary explosion in order to disparage the event. The problem with this group is that they interpret every movement on the basis of materialist concerns. Every time they see an uprising that does not meet their standards they prefer their own thesis.

In materialist logic, the explosion of a society is like the explosion of a boiler whose safety valves are fully blocked. In that case the explosion will definitely happen. An example of explosive uprising is a man filled with inferiority complexes. He will vent his frustration involuntarily and he will regret it later. In that event, an uprising lacks any moral value and the hero of such a revolution does not merit any praise because all participants in the uprising are really at the mercy of blind material forces and not active participants in their own right.

Materialist exegetes believe that conflicts in the society need to be increased so that the boiler of the society will explode much sooner and overthrow the government in power. But there are two questions to be raised here:

Are explosive battles of any moral value?
Was Imam Hussain’s (AS) uprising a conscious one or an explosive one?

In response to the first question, it would be enough to know that anything outside our control as human beings will lack any moral value, no matter how useful it may be. Consider a wild animal preparing to attack a man to maul him. At the same time, someone else who is not aware of the presence of that man kills the animal. The shooter could not be praised in this context because he was not aware of the result of his act. As far as social unrest is concerned, revolutionaries who lack any control or freedom are driven to rise up against the ruling government by blind material forces. Such a revolution lacks any moral value.

When the Muslims conquered Spain, the commander-in-chief of the corps ordered all ships to be burnt and their foodstuff to be thrown away. Then the commander told the troops that they had no option but to fight because they were surrounded by sea and enemy forces. Staying in that point had no result but death. Everyone decided to combat and they triumphed over enemy. This action of the commander drew praise worldwide as he went to the heart of the enemy, but it lacks moral value because mankind should always have two options – good and bad – and choose the virtuous one freely.

Source: Shīa Islam: History and Doctrines, Ayatullāh Jaʿfar Subḥānī, Chapter 24