Saturday, Bloody Saturday

This past Saturday (19 Jan) marked the Shi'ite memorial festival of 'Ashura. Meaning simply "tenth," 'Ashura is celebrated on the 10th day of Muharram and remembers the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, who died in the Battle of Karbala. He is considered the third Shia Imam. This is where the Sunni/Shia split happens in Islamic history. The Shia's believed that Husayn was the rightful successor of the caliphate and not Yazid Ibn Muawiyah, who was in power. He called for justice and a reinstatement of the true caliph (himself). He was vastly outnumbered and, to make a long story short, he lost the battle. There are a few dimensions to the remembrance worth noting:
1) The remembrance usually takes the form of a procession through the city or village with participants beating themselves on the chest and reciting poems or stories that commemorate the event. Some of the more extreme forms of commemoration include beating oneself with chains or chains that have blades attached in order to draw blood.

2) The battle between Husayn and Yazid is considered, on a cosmological level, to be a battle between good(Husayn) and evil(Yazid). Over time, it has taken on the dimension of being a battle between the oppressed(Shi'ites) and the oppressor(traditionally the Sunnis, but now the oppressor is more considered to be the west and particularly the United States). Because of this greater message of the oppressed battling the oppressor, Shi'ites consider their message to be one for all who are oppressed.



A few students and I traveled to the town of Nabatiya in Southern Lebanon to observe the festival there. The Shi'ites who take part in the celebration there tend to lean on the more extreme side of remembrance and, as you can observe in the slide show, it was a rather bloody affair. (A Christian equivalent would be the extreme versions of the Stations of the Cross during Passion Week. Lot's of self-flagellation, wailing, etc.) The atmosphere was interesting -- a mixture of excitement and mourning. The smell of blood was strong and the air was electrified with emotion. The stranger thing of it was that you could see young boys who were also taking part in the blood-drawing self-beating. It was disturbing, to say the least. Yet, there were plenty of women and children observing showing little concern for the red puddles everywhere. Needless to say, it was a rather interesting experience that I may not likely see again anytime soon.