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Beware of Iraq's whipping
boys
By Nir Rosen
BAGHDAD -
Every night for the past week, 26-year-old Najim Abdul
Amir, a construction worker by day, has been
moonlighting as a religious drill instructor. Lining up
dozens of boys under 14 years of age in the unlit lot
facing the Muhsin mosque, Najim sternly observes his
charges. A thin young man with a short beard, wearing
training pants and a sweatshirt, he barks orders in a
stentorian voice.
Najim is a mudarib, or
trainer, instructing up to 60 boys in the correct
performance of Shi'ite Islam's paradigmatic ritual
commemorating its central, epic, narrative: the
seventh-century martyrdom of Husain, the third imam, or
leader of the Shi'ite community.
The Muhsin
mosque is on the main road entering Baghdad's Sadr City,
a Shi'ite bastion of up to 3 million inhabitants. In
four days, when Muharram, the first month of the Islamic
year begins, hundreds of thousands of its residents, as
well as Shi'ites from throughout Iraq, numbering perhaps
in the millions, will begin their descent on the shrine
city of Karbala. They will be joined by Iranian pilgrims
and Shi'ites throughout the world. In Lebanon, Bahrain,
Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and
Azerbaijan Shi'ites will be performing similar rituals.
Celebrations will culminate and reach their emotive peak
on Ashura, the 10th day of Muharram.
Najim is a
volunteer and recognizes the historic importance of this
year's Ashura celebration. "This will be different from
every Ashura in the past," he said. "We used to observe
our traditions secretly under Saddam [Hussein]. When we
cooked in the streets, Ba'athists would overturn our
pots."
Najim's boys wear dark clothes and
military belts, where they keep their chained whips, or
zanjeens. They have been given badges which they
proudly display. Ahmad Sabah, 13, is Najim's top
student, and radud, or cantor, leading the songs
chanted in  cadence. "This is the way
of Islam and our traditions," he explains.
The
boys line up in ranks and Ahmad begins wailing his
latmiya, a lamentation. The boys beat their
chests rhythmically in a ritual called latim, and
whip the chains over their shoulders, on either side of
their backs, shouting "ya Ali!" in honor of the martyred
Husain's father, while a boy beats on a drum converted
from an aluminum cooking oil can. Their mawkib,
or procession, will march much of the way to Karbala,
about 50 kilometers southeast of Baghdad.
Unlike
most Muslims, who are Sunnis, Shi'ites believe that
after the death of the Prophet Mohammed (632 AD),
leadership of the Muslim umma (community of
believers) should have been inherited by the family of
Mohammed and his descendants, starting with Mohammed's
cousin and son-in-law, Ali Ibn Abu Talib. However, when
Mohammed died, his best friend and father-in-law Abu
Bakr became the first caliph (leader of the Muslim
community). Abu Bakr ruled from 632 until 634 and was
followed by Umar, who ruled from 634 until he was
assassinated in 644, and then Uthman, who was caliph
from 644 until he, too, was killed in 656. The tribal
council eventually elected Ali to be the fourth caliph,
starting in 656 until 661. Ali himself was killed five
years into his caliphate.
Muawiyah, the governor
of Syria and an important warrior hailing from the
Umayyad family, became caliph after Ali. The Umayyads
were enemies of Mohammed's Hashemite clan. Muawiyah had
initially opposed Mohammed's prophesy and was one of the
last Meccans to convert to Islam, finally becoming
Mohammed's secretary. Muawiyah was also an enemy of Ali,
blaming him for the death of Uthman.
Muawiyah
reached an accord with Ali's first son, Hassan, who
agreed to withdraw from politics. When the mantle of
leadership was to be passed to Muawiyah's son Yazid, he
was challenged by Husain, Ali's second son. Husain
expected the people of Kufah in southern Iraq to support
his claim, because his father's caliphate had been based
there.
Husain was accompanied by 72 male
supporters and their families. They set out for Kufah,
but while en route Yazid persuaded the Kufan leadership
to abandon Husain, who was subsequently intercepted and
forced along with his entourage to camp in the desert
outside the city of Karbala. Shemr Ibn Saad led Yazid's
army, which surrounded Husain's camp, denying them
access to the waters of the nearby Euphrates River.
After a 10-day siege, on the 10th of Muharram (October
10, 680 AD), Shemr and his men slaughtered Husain and
his followers. The women and children were sold into
captivity. Yazid became the sixth caliph, ruling from
Damascus.
Husain's followers, known as Shiat Ali
(Partisans of Ali) refused to recognize the legitimacy
of the Umayyads. Karbala became a pilgrimage destination
for the world's Shi'ites and a center of theological
study. In Twelver Shiism, the most common Shi'ite sect,
Ali, his sons Hassan and Husain, as well as the nine
descendants of Ali, who became leaders of the Shi'ite
community, are called imams. Twelver Shi'ites believe
that the first 11 imams were assassinated and the 12th
imam went into occultation in a supernatural realm in
874 AD, to reappear on judgment day as the mahdi,
or promised messiah. Shi'ites devote many days of the
year to commemorating the martyred imams, as well as
more contemporary leaders, such as the cleric Muhamad
Sadiq al-Sadr, who was killed by alleged Saddam agents
in 1999.
The stories are reiterated in countless
sermons that move the audience to anger and tears year
after year as they relive the tragedies. Ashura was
traditionally construed by Shi'ites as an act of
redemptive suffering on Husain's part. Annual ceremonies
included passion plays and mourning ceremonies in
Husainiyas, or mourning centers where Shi'ites would
congregate to mark and reenact the martyrdom, often with
acts of self-flagellation, including beating themselves
with their fists, with chains, or most famously, by
cutting their foreheads with a qama, or short
sword. Tatbir, this extreme form of flagellation,
is controversial among Muslim scholars, in part because
of the negative image it conveys to the world. Najim
reports that his mosque has received orders from radical
Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, "no swords, it is illegal
to hurt yourself".
Latmiya singers such
as Iraq's famous Bassem al-Karbalai, as well as actors,
describe in detail the thirst of Husain and his besieged
followers in the heat of the desert of Karbala, and
Yazid's cruelty in choosing the time of Muslim communal
prayer on Friday noon to slaughter his rivals. At the
Nasr cinema on Baghdad's main Saadoun street, the
featured film is called Al-Husain thairan wa
shahida, or Husain, a revolutionary and martyr.
Adult men and women weep bitterly during the last scenes
of the movie where they are reminded of the treachery
and guilt of the Kufan community, who abandoned Husain
to the evil Yazid. The virtues of Shi'ite leaders are
contrasted to the alleged immorality of early Sunni
leaders, who supposedly stole the mantle of leadership
wrongly from Husain and showed no mercy to his family,
even the children. The founders of the Umayyad dynasty
are condemned and by implication, so are their
followers, Sunni Muslims.
The self-flagellation
and mutilation in Muharram are not merely individual
acts of contrition. They are performed collectively and
publicly by the entire community. It is these Muharram
rituals more than any single belief or dogma that define
the Shi'ite sense of community. Muharram and its
accompanying rituals in the following month of Safar, as
well as the mourning processions during the month of
Ramadan to mark Ali's martyrdom, last for about two
months of the year. The subliminal messages of Muharram
are seared into the hearts and minds of participants,
forming their worldview and sense of identity.
Additionally, in a culture where saving face and
concealing failure are socially important customs, the
mourning rituals also have an important role in
providing psychological relief and release.
According to Dr Augustus Richard Norton, a
professor in the departments of political science and
anthropology at Boston University, these "rituals
provide a way of cementing people's political
identification", and have also served as a focal point
for Shi'ite political mobilization in Lebanon, Iraq and
Iran.
Contemporary Shi'ite leaders refashioned
Husain's martyrdom as the preeminent exemplar of heroism
and sacrifice for all believers to emulate in their
struggle against oppressors and as the standard by which
all acts of martyrdom are analogized. The martyrdom in
Karbala has intrinsic political content and symbolism
that found expression throughout the history of Shi'ite
oppression.
Marking Husain's martyrdom was
banned in Iraq for most of the 35 years of Ba'athist
rule. Last year's being the first "open" one for many
years. In fact, the Ottomans already started banning
Ashura ceremonies in Iraq during the 16th century. In
1974, mourning processions became angry political
protests. In 1977, police officers were met with fury
when they tried to interfere with processions half way
between Najaf and Karbala. Angry crowds took over a
police station and chanted, "Saddam, shil idak! Shab al
Iraq ma yiridak!" (Saddam, remove your hand! The people
of Iraq do not want you!).
In Pakistan, when
Shi'ites mourn Husain and ritually curse the early
caliphs revered by Sunnis, mob violence often results.
Riots are endemic, and in the mid-1960s in Punjab and
the 1980s in Karachi bloody internecine fighting between
Sunnis and Shi'ites erupted, resulting in government
restrictions on the processions, which only increased
the Shi'ite sense of oppression.
In November
1979, an uprising of the dispossessed Shi'ite minority
in eastern Saudi Arabia (Hasa) occurred when 90,000
demonstrators carrying portraits of Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini, leader of the Iranian Islamic revolution,
defied the Saudi government ban on Muharram processions.
This led to violent clashes with the security forces
stationed in the area.
Processions also carry
pictures of recently martyred members of the community.
A November 1980 procession in Bahrain carried the
picture of a Shi'ite leader believed to have been beaten
to death by the police of that Sunni state, and it is
certain that processions in Iraq this year will carry
pictures of Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim, the leader of the
Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq who
was killed last August, as well as for Muhammad Sadiq
Sadr and his relative Mohammed Baqr Sadr, killed by
Saddam in 1980.
In October 1983, during the
Israeli invasion of Lebanon, an Israeli military convoy
desecrated the Ashura commemoration in the southern
Lebanese town of Nabatiya. Lebanese Shi'ite leader Mufti
Mohammed Mahdi Shmas al-Din issued a fatwa
(authoritative interpretation of religious
responsibility), calling on all Muslims to initiate
"total civil opposition" to the Israeli occupation,
whose oppression was easily analogized by Lebanese
Shi'ites with the tyrannical Ummayad ruler Yazid. The
Nabatiya incident was a milestone in the Islamic
resistance to Israel, politicizing the Shi'ites of
Lebanon, inflaming their passion and setting off the
resistance to the Israeli occupation.
The most
important politicization of the Muharram ceremonies
occurred in late 1978. The Islamist faction of the
Iranian opposition to the shah of Iran dominated the
anti-shah protests, casting their struggle as a
reenactment of the historic battle between Husain and
Yazid. Khomeini appropriated the Muharram rituals to
establish an Islamist government in Iran in 1979 by
using Muharram rituals as an expression of the ultimate
act of resistance to injustice and tyranny.
Khomeini interpreted the Karbala events
politically, accusing the shah of acting as a modern
Yazid, and enemy of the Shi'ites, thus sanctioning the
uprising against the shah's regime. Ashura fell on
December 11, 1978 and was transformed into a political
weapon. Millions of people took part in nation-wide
demonstrations that eventually led to the shah's
abdication and Khomeini's return from exile.
In
Iraq, the long-oppressed Shi'ites have high
expectations. The removal of Saddam brought with it the
promise of greater political representation, perhaps
even domination of the country, that would surely be the
consequence of democratic elections. The stalled
transition to power and the prolonged occupation have
made them anxious, and the themes of martyrdom and
unjust usurpation of power that have run through their
history haunt them once again. They are now struggling
to redefine their community and compete for the power
that seems within their grasp.
They also fear
attacks by the amorphous and unidentified Sunni
"resistance" that have already cost Iraqi civilians so
dearly. Seyid Hassan Naji al-Musawi, the leader of the
Muhsin mosque, voiced his fear that Wahhabi Sunni
extremists might disrupt the processions. "God willing
it will be peaceful," he said from his nearby home,
adding, "but if you are martyred during Muharram, you go
directly to heaven."
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times
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