gulshan-i-rāz

“ (…) But once the bombing appeared to pause, camera crews gathered their equipment and moved on to a different story. They stopped reporting. Colonial violence, however, has not stopped, nor has the resistance to it. This is true throughout Palestine, but particularly in Gaza, where Palestinians stoically build back their lives after yet another Israeli bombardment campaign and yet another year of the blockade—in place since 2007 and enforced by both Israeli and Egyptian regimes.

Our eyes, it seems, turn to the besieged Gaza Strip only in times of incursions and assaults. Our reports focus on exceptional grief. Only extraordinary death makes headlines. There is, of course, a lot in Gaza that warrants such media coverage: Between 2009 and 2021, the Israeli military launched three full-scale assaults on the Strip; years of bombings, siege, and political exclusion have created a “humanitarian” and environmental crisis, in which everything from food, medicine, water, and even electricity is scarce; and just two weeks ago, the Israeli regime finished building a billion-dollar cage around the Strip, confining 2 million Palestinians behind a dystopian nightmare of sensory-activated and remote-controlled weaponry.

And yet, inside this open-air prison, life has many more dimensions than mainstream journalism reveals. Young people gather in Internet cafes and pursue remote careers. Some people plan their weddings, and others battle a suffocating bureaucracy to study abroad. Fishermen return to a sea fraught with risk from the Israeli navy and farmers to their greenhouses, planting strawberries and tomatoes. Local reporters, photojournalists, artists, and writers manage to resist being flattened by reductionism. Literary initiatives like We Are Not Numbers, a community of “word artists” telling the “human stories behind the numbers and statistics,” and Gaza Poets Society, a spoken-word collective, show a nuanced and unnervingly beautiful side of Gaza that has long been obscured. Even so, their stories too often remain inside the Strip—obscure even to other Palestinians.

لكني أستطيع كتابة الكلمة بشفتي فوق جبينك،

بصمت وأنت نائم لتلتقطها أصابع أحلامك

I can't tell you: 'I love you.' But I can write these words with my lips upon your forehead, quietly, as you sleep. So that your dreams may catch them.

Here’s time for an unpopular opinion. 

Mourning and crying in and of itself is not something that is “innovated,” rather crying and the display of emotion is something natural, the sunnah of the Prophets (as), and crying for the tragedies of Ahlulbayt (as) is a testament to affection and one of the early stages of loving them. The rewards of crying for Imam Hussain (as) and the calamity that befell him are widely narrated, one tear the width of a mosquito’s wing is said to be enough to wipe out all your sins, but you will not find a single face that forces crying for the reward. When the heart feels an ache or a pain, it is natural and healthy for the eyes to shed tears. 

When Prophet Muhammad’s (saww) son died, he is narrated as mourning and crying. Some of his companions then asked him why do you cry? He responded, “[These tears] are a mercy. The eyes are shedding tears and the heart is grieved, and we will not say except what pleases our Lord, O Ibrahim ! Indeed we are grieved by your separation.” [Sahih Bukhari]. 

Moreover, the Quran makes explicit the “beautiful patience” of Nabi Yaqub (as) for the many years his son, Yusuf (as), was missing. Yet the father knew that his son was still alive. Yet he cried oceans until the Quran narrates that he went blind from such crying. Yet this was his beautiful patience. Patience does not mean to not show emotion- no, Islam is not there to suppress emotion, rather it is their to tame that which we have control of: our actions. Complain to your Lord as Yaqub does (Surah Yusuf, 12:86). But, as the narration above says, one must not scorn the decree of Allah- your words are what you have control of and they are the thing for which you will be held accountable.

As for the various forms of mourning and expressions of grief, from chest beating to hitting themselves with swords (tatbir/qama zani) and chains (zanjeer zani), they are a hugely controversial and contested issue within the Shia world. There are many other cultural varations and manifestations and I am not particularly interested in the fatawa from Shia Scholars discussing their permissibility or impermissibility (most scholars, just for the record, have forbidden tatbir), I am more interested in a deeper, fundamental principle. 

Here’s my proposition to anyone who supports such actions and practises it as part of their religious devotion and not just a cultural activity:

You believe Shi’a Islam to be the most correct form of Islam and the Siratul Mustaqeem.

You therefore consider it the best path for everyone to follow.

The teachings of Ahlulbayt (as) are very clear: “Preach your religion in a manner that does not require the use of your tongue,” and “Be an ornament for us, do not be a shame on us.” 

By taking part in activities such as bloodletting you are bringing Shi’a Islam into disrepute- particularly because this is the sole interaction the majority of non-Shias and non-Muslims have with Shi’ism. I mean even Richard Dawkins, who probably knows very little about Shi’ism, retweeted a picture of a baby having his head split open in India. That’s the image you’re conveying in an age where Islam is under attack from all fronts.

There is doubt and debate whether such activities are halal, haram, mustahab or makruh, but there is no doubt that you alone are alienating hundreds if not thousands of people from the correct path and giving them the impression that Shi’ism is some barbaric cult. Even members within the Shia community might find your justifcations an intellectually untenable position and become repulsed from Shi’ism.

One of the charactersitics of the believer is that he/she leaves what is doubtful for that which is certain. This is one of those instances where it is advisable to leave the doubtful, not just for the doubt of permissibility, but also for the certainty that you are alienating outsiders from Islam.

If you put forward the specious “not compromising your religion for anything” argument I will only entertain such a ludicrous proposition when you do not compromise delaying your wajib prayers and you pray all your 51 rakats of prayer every day (including sunnah prayers) and keep fast every other day outside of Shahr Ramadan (because there is no way you can argue that these forms of mourning are wajib or more fundamental than prayer and fasting). 

If you manage to do that, I will present multiple examples of the Prophet (saww) and the Imams (as) compromising their rights for the wider sake of Islam. One of the few things they did not compromise was their prayer- even in the midst of battle. Moreover, it is such a small minded argument to make- what is greater: you performing an unnecessary act or someone being guided to the path of Ahlulbayt (as)?

If you still desire to perform such acts, I leave you only what God has said: “Do you see the man who makes his desire his God, the man whom Allah leaves in error, setting a seal upon his ears and heart and drawing a veil over his eyes? Who then can guide him after Allah (has withdrawn guidance)? Will you not take heed?” (Al-Jathiya, 45:23).

To avoid such activities would be an act of wisdom.

Here is a link for a clarification by Ayatullah Sistani’s (the most widely emulated marja in the Shia world) representative on the reason he does not make a ruling on tatbir. It’s a longish article and I feel its wording is intentionally indirect, to avoid causing a storm in the Shia world, but here is my interpretation of reading between the following lines:

“The position of the supreme authority [in not making an explicit ruling] follows the example of Prophet Aaron, may peace be upon him, when he retreated and isolated himself from the people who worshipped the calf instead of God, the Glorified. He apologized to his brother Moses, may peace be upon him, who upon returning from the mountain asked him why he isolated himself from them, “He said, ‘O son of my mother! Do not hold my beard or my head! I feared lest you should say, You have caused a rift among the Children of Israel’” (Quran 20:94)” 

My interpretation of what he is saying here is that Sistani basically considers tatbir (and, i assume, similar activities) to be forbidden and clearly wrong, just as the the Children of Israel worshipping the calf was forbidden, shirk and wrong. 

Here those who partake in such activities are either ignorant or they are following their own desires (a subtle, inexplicit form of shirk as the verse I quoted earlier implies) and if Sistani said anything they wouldn’t listen; they would defy him as they have defied many scholars before him and they would defy him as the Children of Israel, who had witnessed the miracles of Musa (as), defied their Prophet and denied God and the Shi’a world would become incredibly split if he, the most emulated authority, made such a statement. Thus, his lack of words is an abstention of wisdom.

To end this section on a personal note, I will say this: I don’t particularly like the forms of mourning that involve bloodletting and as a child I was majorly freaked out by just “normal” chest beating. To this day, I feel uncomfortable taking part. I don’t want to say those who perform hardcore chest beating to mournful poetry have a superficial relationshiop with God or the Ahlulbayt (as), but sometimes, if you just listen to the poetry, the prayers, the ziyaarat and the tragedies, it pierces you so deeply, deeper than any sword or chain ever could, that you are broken by what you hear and you are left paralysed with grief. You are not left with the strength to get up and take part in matam. All you want to do is sit down and weep. I wish our culture glorified weeping and shedding tears rather than the shedding of blood.

I wanted to put this in my own words, but a similar sentiment is conveyed by Muhammad al-Tijani, who converted to Shi’ism from Sunni Islam, in a book of his. I’ve quoted the relevant section after the “keep reading” and I hope you will read it: