Like
stars in the sky, the Muslim holiday of Ashura and the Jewish Day of
Atonement/Yom Kippur have aligned this year, and it won't happen again
until 33 years from now.
The first nine nights of this month, Shi'a Muslims hold Majaalis to honor their martyred; tonight, it culminates in the memorial of the day Muhammad's grandson Husayn was starved and assassinated on Ashura (literally means "tenth"). "The first Majlis al-Husayn was started by [Husayn's] sister, Bibi Zainab," who began to weep, rend her clothing, and beat her chest in grief with the other womenfolk who heard about the news. Some people say they slap their chest now (matam) in imitation of her devotion, others say matam is in imitation of those who felt remorse for having declined to join Husayn in what would be his final journey; some women observe a ritual of symbolically being with Husayn in his lonely time of death, like the Hand of his deceased mother Fatimah which supposedly cooled his head from the hot sun. Such action is "nothing but seeking forgiveness and repentance," according to holy figure Imam al-Sadiq. The location of this martyrdom? Karbala, Iraq. Karbala can be broken down into two words- karb, meaning grief or sorrow, and balaa, meaning affliction.
For Jews, the first nine nights were solemn days of repentance and offering apologies for forgiveness, culminating in a fast and sacrifice for forgiveness. Together with Yom Kippur, they are the "ten days of penitence" and involve giving extra to charity. In the Hebrew Bible, Moses decrees this as a day for self-affliction.
Here is a narration from the Sunni collection describing Muhammad's first encounter with Yom Kippur after he first fled from Mecca to Medina:
The first nine nights of this month, Shi'a Muslims hold Majaalis to honor their martyred; tonight, it culminates in the memorial of the day Muhammad's grandson Husayn was starved and assassinated on Ashura (literally means "tenth"). "The first Majlis al-Husayn was started by [Husayn's] sister, Bibi Zainab," who began to weep, rend her clothing, and beat her chest in grief with the other womenfolk who heard about the news. Some people say they slap their chest now (matam) in imitation of her devotion, others say matam is in imitation of those who felt remorse for having declined to join Husayn in what would be his final journey; some women observe a ritual of symbolically being with Husayn in his lonely time of death, like the Hand of his deceased mother Fatimah which supposedly cooled his head from the hot sun. Such action is "nothing but seeking forgiveness and repentance," according to holy figure Imam al-Sadiq. The location of this martyrdom? Karbala, Iraq. Karbala can be broken down into two words- karb, meaning grief or sorrow, and balaa, meaning affliction.
For Jews, the first nine nights were solemn days of repentance and offering apologies for forgiveness, culminating in a fast and sacrifice for forgiveness. Together with Yom Kippur, they are the "ten days of penitence" and involve giving extra to charity. In the Hebrew Bible, Moses decrees this as a day for self-affliction.
This is no coincidence?
Here is a narration from the Sunni collection describing Muhammad's first encounter with Yom Kippur after he first fled from Mecca to Medina:
Abu Musa reported that the people of Khaibar (most of this tribe were Jewish) observed fast on the day of 'Ashura and they treated it as Eid. The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: You observe fast* on this day.
* sawm (identical to the Hebrew word for a fast, tzom)
*The enemy: a suggested explanation is below, concerning it as PharaohWhen the Prophet came to al-Madinah he found that the Jews observed the fast of Ashura. He inquired about this and was told that it was the day on which God had delivered the Children of Israel from the enemy* and Moses used to keep a fast on it as an expression of gratitude to the Almighty. The Prophet thereupon remarked that "Moses has a greater claim upon me than upon you," and he fasted on that day and instructed his followers to do the same.
Abu Qatadah narrated that :
the Prophet said: "Fast the Day of Ashura, for indeed I anticipate that Allah will forgive (the sins of) the year before it."
“Fasting the day of ‘Ashura’, I hope, will expiate for the sins of the previous year.”
The
"gratitude" referred to in related Ashura narrations regards how G-d is
not a negative G-d but a positive one who forgives sins. According to the Orthodox Judaism website, chabad.org, "The day is the most solemn of
the year, yet an undertone of joy suffuses it: a joy that revels in the
spirituality of the day and expresses the confidence that G-d will
accept our repentance, forgive our sins, and seal our verdict for a year
of life, health and happiness."
And for Sh'ia Muslims, there is gratitude in the idea that Husayn died to
save us (to preserve the integrity of true religion, not co-opted religion). The nightly gatherings are "To thank Imam Husayn, his family
and companions for the great sacrifice in Karbala’ for saving us and
Islam. Bibi Fatimah [Husayn's mother] comes to Majaalis [gatherings] al-Husayn. Though we
cannot see her, she prays for us and our families' safety." Like for the
Jews, it is an inward period of self-examination- "She [Fatimah]
collects our tears when we cry for Imam Husayn and his family. On the
Day of Judgement she will return all those tears we have shed for her
family. These tears will protect us. Examine your deeds and see if they
are good enough for you to face Bibi Fatimah on the Day of Judgement." "Imam Husayn has saved Islam from oblivion by offering his timely
sacrifice to draw the line of demarcation between Truth and Falsehood,
between good and evil."
Not to cover over the tears for Husayn, but each Muslim who doesn't feel like crying for him has their own frame of reference, and so it can be said we cry tears for Husayn any and every time we mourn for someone losing in an oppressive situation for trying to live with integrity. I am not talking about
people simply killed by oppressors (I am against spiritualizing the deaths of innocent victims by calling them "martyrs" when they lacked agency in their death), but by people who choose to suffer knowing they could have had comfort if they had
just "played the game;" there is a difference. Husayn refused to legitimize the rule of Yazid, who was one of those who saw in converting to Islam an "opportunity" for power-over. Husayn's death is supposed to
snap us into consciousness about what is really important, to know that even if no one is watching we will be held accountable, and that is
to look inside ourselves and see how much of the enemy, Pharaoh, is in us.
" The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us."
"Forty
years after Mohammed passed on, a king ruled in the guise of a Caliph,
arrogating himself to powers Muslims judged pharaoh-like. (There's no
greater Quranic symbol of tyranny than Moses' nemesis.)
"Rather than rule in a simple, egalitarian fashion, like his predecessors and
the Prophet whose memory was still alive and well, the fifth caliph,
Muawiya, built palaces and shut himself off from his people.
"To add insult to injury, he appointed his own son, Yazid, to succeed him on his death.
"Hussain,
who saw his grandfather's legacy almost undone, journeyed to southern
Iraq
Hussain
was David. Yazid's army was Goliath. There would, however, be no
slingshot. No parting of the waters. On the same day Mohammed asked
Muslims to remember God's rescue of their forefathers from Pharaoh, the
Caliph's army crushed the revolt of the Prophet's grandson and secured
his dynasty for decades more." - Haroon Moghul, a Sunni, on the scene in Karbala where Yazid massacred the House of the Prophet
"Every day is Ashura, everywhere is Karbala," says Dr. Su'ad Abdul-Khabeer, a feminist scholar who writes about the importance of Blackness and American Islam. I believe this is because every day, the vulnerability of the oppressed is exploited by the unaccountable. Trauma destroys notions of linear healing, and thus in a way transcends linear time.
We gather together to keep making meaning of the exploitation of vulnerability, to strategize fighting it, to find ways to recite words of truth to oppressors, to do so again and again. We find new people like Husayn willing not to accommodate to power and thus legitimize it despite the risks- Malcolm, Fred Hampton, we find ourselves recontextualizing our understanding of Karbala based on the text of our current frame of reference.
"Every day is Ashura, everywhere is Karbala," says Dr. Su'ad Abdul-Khabeer, a feminist scholar who writes about the importance of Blackness and American Islam. I believe this is because every day, the vulnerability of the oppressed is exploited by the unaccountable. Trauma destroys notions of linear healing, and thus in a way transcends linear time.
We gather together to keep making meaning of the exploitation of vulnerability, to strategize fighting it, to find ways to recite words of truth to oppressors, to do so again and again. We find new people like Husayn willing not to accommodate to power and thus legitimize it despite the risks- Malcolm, Fred Hampton, we find ourselves recontextualizing our understanding of Karbala based on the text of our current frame of reference.
So who of us will "Examine your deeds and see if they
are good enough for you to face Bibi Fatimah on the Day of Judgement?" We all have a bit of oppressor, of Pharaoh, in us which we have internalized from Dominant Culture.
I believe that as long as we are aware of our unique oppressor, and trying to mitigate it, that Fatimah's hand will calm and cool our foreheads from the Fire, rather than grab us by the forelock and throw us down. Because we will have the resilience someone who can be humble enough to admit our inner oppressors and dance with the shadows of our psyche,
rather than have the defensiveness and dismissiveness of those who live in fear of touching harsh truth, afraid they'll no longer be worthy of love if the admit their flaws which have perpetuated oppression.
We can destroy our innocence with humility, or face the humiliation of being so frail that we erupt when people say we benefit from oppression, or have some of the oppressor in us when we say something. This choice of humility and humiliation (a distinction I learned from 12-step recovery groups) I believe is the difference between heaven and hell- the objective experience is the same - the destruction of our ideas about ourselves - but the subjective experience depends on whether or not we submit to the process or clinging to our attachments and fight for them.
"Come, willingly or unwillingly" (Qur'an, 41:11).
I believe that as long as we are aware of our unique oppressor, and trying to mitigate it, that Fatimah's hand will calm and cool our foreheads from the Fire, rather than grab us by the forelock and throw us down. Because we will have the resilience someone who can be humble enough to admit our inner oppressors and dance with the shadows of our psyche,
rather than have the defensiveness and dismissiveness of those who live in fear of touching harsh truth, afraid they'll no longer be worthy of love if the admit their flaws which have perpetuated oppression.
We can destroy our innocence with humility, or face the humiliation of being so frail that we erupt when people say we benefit from oppression, or have some of the oppressor in us when we say something. This choice of humility and humiliation (a distinction I learned from 12-step recovery groups) I believe is the difference between heaven and hell- the objective experience is the same - the destruction of our ideas about ourselves - but the subjective experience depends on whether or not we submit to the process or clinging to our attachments and fight for them.
"Come, willingly or unwillingly" (Qur'an, 41:11).
In Judaism, Jews are to turn inward and repent in this season, that they find themselves a part of the creative Life force for eternity. A greeting for the first 10 days of this
month is G'mar Hatimah Tovah, "(have) a good inscription and
sealing!" In where? The Book of Life, as opposed to Death, or what I would call, Stagnation.
Our capacity to develop as humans, to not stagnate, depends on our ability to systematically and ritualistically examine ourselves, finding where the oppressor hides.
********
Method for Searching Out the Inner Oppressor:
Here is a sample method for a ritual I came up with for fellow whites, but you can apply it to anything- gender, class, not necessarily just race. You can be any race to do this because it relates to the politics of respectability.
For every example of injustice (in this case, racism) we call out, let us find the root of it within us, our dormant or derivative versions of it. We might do it do people in our own lives on a smaller scale. "A leaf turns not its colors without the hidden will of the entire tree" Khalil Gibran.
Yesterday I said that Trump hates Black people because he was selling them out on the campaign trail for the Governor in Alabama, calling them SOBs, but what about me? While I do not dislike all or most Black people, if hating someone actually means that you are willing to sell them out, than what do white leftists like myself need to account for?
From this angle, many liberals who are too afraid of being divisive by using race-based policy *hate Black people* because they continue to tell them to "wait."
A question I need to ask myself and my fellow whites I wish you would please join me: When have I made a decision that Black people had to focus on "the real issue" (usually class or power dynamics, seeing racism as ultimately a distraction), when have I de-prioritize fighting anti-Blackness despite saying it was a priority of mine and I sidelined it, when have I made a Black joke to fit in...when have I essentially sold out Black people?
Our capacity to develop as humans, to not stagnate, depends on our ability to systematically and ritualistically examine ourselves, finding where the oppressor hides.
********
Method for Searching Out the Inner Oppressor:
Here is a sample method for a ritual I came up with for fellow whites, but you can apply it to anything- gender, class, not necessarily just race. You can be any race to do this because it relates to the politics of respectability.
For every example of injustice (in this case, racism) we call out, let us find the root of it within us, our dormant or derivative versions of it. We might do it do people in our own lives on a smaller scale. "A leaf turns not its colors without the hidden will of the entire tree" Khalil Gibran.
Yesterday I said that Trump hates Black people because he was selling them out on the campaign trail for the Governor in Alabama, calling them SOBs, but what about me? While I do not dislike all or most Black people, if hating someone actually means that you are willing to sell them out, than what do white leftists like myself need to account for?
From this angle, many liberals who are too afraid of being divisive by using race-based policy *hate Black people* because they continue to tell them to "wait."
A question I need to ask myself and my fellow whites I wish you would please join me: When have I made a decision that Black people had to focus on "the real issue" (usually class or power dynamics, seeing racism as ultimately a distraction), when have I de-prioritize fighting anti-Blackness despite saying it was a priority of mine and I sidelined it, when have I made a Black joke to fit in...when have I essentially sold out Black people?
Like this? See also "Can Jews and Muslims celebrate Rosh Hashanah together?"
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