These days, all around the Shia world, Muslims mourn for the martyred Imam, Hossein the son of Ali. While this event is one of the essential pillars of Shia, it is also one of the sources of inspiration for political Islam. Khomeini called Moharram, this month in the Arabic calendar, “one of the two months which have kept Islam alive.”
The mourning starts at Moharram the first when Hossein is stopped in Karbala and reaches its peak in the tenth, when he is killed. That’s the reason behind the name Ashura, which means ten in Arabic. For the outer world, Ashura is a weird collection of craziness and brutality, thanks to the black suites, the slaughtered animals, and the strange music. These feelings turn into disgust when people see the suicidal scenes where people scratch their heads with daggers [called Ghame-Zani in Persian].
Fortunately, Ghame-Zani is no more practiced in Iran (although, I saw recent pictures of Ghame-Zani in Iraq). Forgiving the lust for blood and the exaggerated scenes of pretending to be very sad, Ashura is a big Iranian carnival. It has its own music and dance. I read recently in a blog that Iranian youth give and take the most number of phone numbers in Ashura nights, when people can freely spend the night in the streets.
Does anyone not like a crowded fun carnival, which if you attend, there is a chance Allah will forgive that tiny sin you have committed and thus you may have the chance to be accepted in the university entrance exam?
As it is Iran, everything is related to the politics; the blue banner reads “nuclear energy is our definite right”.
Below is a huge collection of Ashura images. Courtesy of ILNA, ISNA, FARS, MEHR, and these blogs: Test of Democracy, On The Orbit of The Life, Sepantra, Jozeph, and Futurama.
p.s. Please let me know if the title is not a valid English Sentence.
Update: Thanks Freida for correcting the typo in the title. (more…)