An interesting initiative for Arbaeen 2013

A 17-million people gathering. Only few days to Imam Hussein (as) Arbaeen (the 40th day of his martyrdom), still collects the greatest congregation of Imam’s mourners as the world’s greatest gathering; a gathering much larger in scope, the distance walked, and the population participating than the Hajj pilgrimage itself.

According to estimations by Karbala governor, the number of population travelling the city for pilgrimage was 17 million, showing a 400 per cent rise compared to that in 8 years ago. This is almost 4 times greater than the number of Muslims congregating during Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. But the thing is that, a congregation so large, and a ceremony so grand in scope, has found little coverage in web and social networks; even, in some cases, has found disproportionate coverage. To examine this fact, go and search in Google for words like ‘Arbaeen,’ ‘Mourning,’ and ‘Shiite.’ You would find a great host of pictures depicting people cutting their head using cutlass; bloodshed, and other abominations released on the web with the objective of defile Shiite image around the world by the extremist groups.