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Muharram

Last Friday, January 19, 2007 was the first of Muharram, the beginning of the New Year according the Muslim Hijri Lunar Calendar. It is also significant because on the 10th of Muharram the Prophet’s grandson, Husayn ibn Ali ibn Abi Talib, was martyred at Karbala. The day is know as Ashura, and while commemorated mostly by Shi’ah, Sunnis take part, and the Nizari Isma’iis, because they have a present Imam, do observe the sanctity of the time, but do not commemorate it in any particular way. The famous Anglo-Indian dictionary, Hobson-Jobson, got it’s name from the author mis-hearing the chanting…

Hindu followers of Imam Husayn

Yoginder Sikand, a scholar whose transnational work on Islamist movements is what I’m most familiar with, has an interesting article on Hindu followers of Imam Husayn. The piece is mostly historical, but the last paragraph is interesting: The Hussaini Brahmins, along with other Hindu devotees of the Muslim Imam, are today a rapidly vanishing community. The younger generation abandoning their ancestral heritage, often now seen as embarrassingly deviant. No longer, it seems, can a comfortable liminality be sustained, and ambiguous identities seem crushed under the relentless pressure to conform to the logic of neatly demarcated ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ communities. And…

Yom-e Ali – Foundations (Poem)

Two foundations has Islam the Qur’an, and Dhu’l-fiqar. Muslims do agree with that and the pagans do it too. As there is in human speech no light but in Ahmad’s word, thus there is in no sharp sword fire, but in Ali’s sword. Ahmad, Chosen, is the sun, Haydar, ‘the Attacker,’ light Light cannot be without sun, sun cannot be without light. Firmest handle is for all love of Ali’s children dear: Shia are those who are not wav’ring in their bond to him! On the treasure which God High placed in Ahmad’s heart, there is not a treasurer but…