| Benefiting from Ashura |
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| Tuesday, 15 February 2005 | |
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Page 3 of 6 These two descriptors; the lantern and the ship, apply to all the fourteen impeccable personages namely; The Prophet Muhammad (s), ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (a), Fatima al-Zahra' (a), Hassan al-Mujtaba (a), Hussein al-Shahid (a), ‘Ali al-Sajjad (a), Muhammad al-Baqir (a), Ja'far al-Sadiq (a), Musa al-Kadhim (a), ‘Ali al-Rida (a), Muhammad al-Jawad (a), ‘Ali al-Hadi (a), Hassan al-‘Askari (a), and Muhammad al-Mahdi (a). The Prophet (s) himself is the greatest lantern and ship. Allah has said: {]O you the Prophet, surely We have sent you as a witness and a bringer of glad tidings and a warner and a summoner to Allah and as an illuminating lantern]}. Humanity, living as it is in the darkness of ignorance and drowning in the depths of chaos, confusion and anxiety, has no cure available to it - if it wants salvation - other than seeking illumination by the light of those pure people and boarding their ship; for they are the complement to the wise book (the Qur'an) as the Messenger of Allah (s) has said: ‘I leave behind me the two weighty things; the book of Allah and my household. As long as you adhere to these two you will never go astray after me ever.' This points to the fact that without adherence to the household alongside adherence to the book there will be a resultant straying which, in this world means dishonour and ignominy and in the next world means hell and the inferno. The month of Muharram is the month of the sorrows of the people of the Prophet's household (a). It is the month when the religion was renewed by the uprising of the ‘ship of salvation' and the ‘lamp of guidance'. In this sacred month, a strong Islamic nation should derive great benefit from this uprising. The supreme religious authority Ayatullah Muhammad al-Shirazi believes that the benefit of this month has been confined previously to one aspect only; namely to the reviving of religious practises such as establishing prayer, and paying statutory alms and tithes along with other acts of worship, ethical practises and etiquettes, and the building of religious centres in the name of Hussein (a) and mosques and developing sites of religious interest as well as feeding the poor and providing water and the like. Two other aspects should be added to this, namely: 1. The implementation of the laws and rulings of Islam generally and fully. At the top of which comes a system of consultative government through the holding of free and fair elections to set up a government which fulfils the conditions stipulated by Islam. Next come the freedoms that Allah has ordered in saying: {]. . . and (for the Prophet) to relieve them from the heavy burdens and the yokes that were upon them]}, such as the freedom to form Islamic political parties under the supervision of the Islamic religious authorities (maraji'), the freedom to trade, the freedom to manufacture, the freedom to cultivate land, the freedom to build, the freedom to travel and settle in a place, the freedom to print and publish, the freedom of association, the freedom of expression, and all the other freedoms conferred by Islam and mentioned in the Qur'an and the sunnah or traditions and deeds of the Prophet. Next comes the abolition of taxes and customs and excise, and of all the laws that have no basis in the Qur'an and the sunnah or in the consensus of scholars or reason. Then comes the institution of Islamic unity meaning that no borders will exist between the countries of Islam and no differences small or large will be recognised between nationalities or races. For {]The believers are brothers]} and in the words of Imam Hussein (a): ‘By my life, the Imam is none but one who rules by the book and stands up for justice and equity and follows the religion of Allah and restrains himself for the sake of Allah.' |