Eid Mubarak

Post date: 13-Sep-2010 01:49:17

My Eid greetings are slow in coming this year. I was delayed by thoughts of excluding some people, not from the blessings of Allah (swt), but because I wanted to turn my face away from them. My concern was not about greeting non-Muslims with a Muslim greeting since Allah (swt) greeted all humanity with His message and His messengers (as). Moreover, the Prophet (saw) said that for the bearer of good news there is a great reward, and what better way to give good news than unrestricted taslīm and tabaraka? If killing any person is like killing all humanity, then asking for Allah’s (swt) peace and blessings for anyone is an act of mission carried out in submission just as rain and retribution fall without distinction or favour. My concern was in greeting people I love.

A hundred or more Shi’i Muslims were killed in several terror attacks in Pakistan by killers claiming a dubious correctness based in their allegiance to a perverted corruption of Islamic pride. Just as perfume and soap may beautify and cleanse the body they can also cause pimples when trapped in the pores which left untreated fester and erupt as enraged boils spewing poison and disease. So to within us all, our communities, businesses, societies and religions what beautifies may corrupt. However, the simplest of us pondering upon nature recognises that pimples can be largely avoided by proper washing which guards against lancing pain filled boils.

Pimples appeared in response to the murders. The criminals claim to be Sunni Muslims, although by their beliefs and actions they appear to have rejected all family ties, and this allowed several Shi’i Muslim writers to call upon all Sunnis to condemn these acts as if there were a collective guilt established. I am tired of ill-lettered Americans and others calling upon Muslims to condemn and condemn again terrorism as a response to a guilt they feel the unconnected innocent should bear. I’m saddened that these exponents of spurious criticism and ideological grief have never found time to consider condemning the killers of tens of thousands of Shi’i victims of terror but sorrow like love is limitless so this does not lessen my sorrow for their losses or sympathy for their sense of loss. Therefore when I read Shi’i intellectuals expressing negative sentiments of reciprocity linked to moral action I’m very disappointed and wonder if there are things that we should be looking at before we sweepingly criticise other Muslims.

The Al-Quds Day protest in support of Palestinian rights is fundamentally a statement of Shi’i disapproval of injustices that does not require the support of anyone else. The validity of the protest is intrinsic to our duty to oppose oppression whoever is oppressed and whoever the oppressor is. It is the same belief that informs the mourning for Al-Husayn (as) and inspires the outrage at the attacks upon the Caliphate of ‘Ali (as). Do we need anyone’s support or approval to continue mourning or voicing opposition to enemies? However that leaves the question why do more Muslims not support our protest against injustice to Palestine?

It is far too easy and unhelpful to stir allegations against a people and paint them all with one brush. Faults are rarely one sided and even more rarely simple. Did any Shi’i leader ever ask the Palestinian Muslims how they would about taking a day out in the month of Ramadhan to join our protest? Perhaps others find it difficult to ally themselves against an oppressor that identifies itself with a theory of racial purity with a branch of Islam that tacitly supports another theory of racial purity? They hear the stories of rejected marriage proposals, the stories of heartbreak, of the autocratic role assumed in rural Pakistan and the feeble excuses of congenitally enfeebled advocacy. Perhaps they wonder if such allies might not be like siding with a Franco to teach a Mussolini a lesson. The suspicion may be groundless but for people made landless and betrayed by neighbours and international law trust is a hard and rocky place.

My concern is not with attracting people to a passing cause, albeit very important, but with the integrity of the faith which I espouse. Many of my co-religionists will say with pride that Shi’ism is founded upon revealed truth which has been preserved, verified and developed by the use of reason. Why then do we permit the integrity of revelation and reason to be derided by those who believe in old-wives stories that rationalise the morally and scientifically unacceptable? I am proud of my barbarian lineage and where it connects with the alid line but I am by Allah’s (swt) gift and by my choice to submit. It is not becoming or just to use my grandfather’s medals or my uncle’s heroism to compensate for my shortcomings. They are mine and mine alone, and all that is good is from Allah (swt) and my allegiance is to Him and those who have earned His love. Should I then criticise the pimply unwashed beggar helpless in his fate for not taking my plump hand because he fears the boils that seem to throb behind it?