Ashura: Reminder of History’s Great Stories

Muslims revere Ashura like they respect other months of the year with religious rituals specific to them. The day of Ashura is a sacred day and is a reminder of great days in the history of Islam.
It appears that Ashura is erroneously regarded by most Muslims as an auspicious day due to Shia’s disregard for certain traditions and not nullifying those Hadith which denote the holiness of Ashura; while Imam Hussein’s martyrdom has nothing to do with inauspiciousness and it is not clear why some Sunnis have maintained in their sources and articles that Shi’as treat Muharram as an unlucky month.

Concurrent with Imam Bagher (peace be upon him) (5th Muslim imam), many of the Bani Umayyad and Bani Marvad clans lived in Sham (modern Damascus). After the Ashura event, the disclosure of the truth by the captives in Sham, compelled the two clans to wash off the truth from the public minds by urging mercenary wits to fabricate Hadith about the holiness of the Ashura. It was then that Imam Bagher issued one of the greatest Shia Hadith about the day as the Ziarat Ashura; even many hold that the Hadith is divine.

“O, God! This is the day Bani Umayyad considers auspicious,” reads a part of the Ziarat. Compiler of Shafa Al-sodour mentions some eye-opening facts in his book about Ashura attributing to the misleading environment of Imam Bagher’s lifetime. In his book Mafatihol Janan (keys to heavens), Sheik Abbas Qomi has brought a brief argument about the case: Bani Umayyad believe that this day is auspicious owing to several reasons and they consider saving food in the day a tradition and kept the food until next year as an omen for betterment of their lives.

Meisam Tammar once said this nation (Bani Umayyad) will kill the progeny of the prophet in Muharram 10 and enemies of truth will celebrate the day as a day of mercy, Sheik Sadough quoted Jabele Makiyeh as saying. “I asked Meisam how is Hussein’s day of martyrdom celebrated by the people as a day of bliss, and he replied in tears that they will fabricate a Hadith claiming it was on that day that God forgave Adam.

Our Sunni brothers celebrate the day as an auspicious day following the Hadith recorded in their trusted sources, while Bani Umayyad’s mercenary counterfeiters forged most of them.

If we track down the trace of documents about these forgeries in Sunni resources, Umayyad and Marvani Hadith fakers can be evidently found. Our Sunni brothers should be wary of such Hadith about the auspiciousness of the Ashura day as our imams, who are widely revered by Sunni clerics to be honest in their sayings, debunk such Hadith and attribute them to the Umayyad clan.

What is more, imam Hussein’s actions, behavior and uprising has been lauded by many Christian thinkers; Anton Bara (Christian thinker) has said: “if Hussein was one of us, we would have raised a flag for him in all our lands and every village would hold a sermon for him and with his name Christianity would disseminate among the people.”

All these indicate that the fact that in our current era there are still some who oppose the prophet’s progeny. If the Bani Umayyad covered only Sham, today their progeny are ruling several nations in the visage of Vahhabis.