Sometimes I sit quietly and ask myself whether we have understood the sacred memories we inherited, or whether we have merely learned how to repeat them with beautiful voices and tired souls.
Eid al Adha comes every year with prayer, greetings, movements, meat, fragrance, family warmth, and the public joy of sacrifice. Yet beneath all that ceremony, a harder question keeps troubling yours sincerely. What exactly have I sacrificed? Kjalilul-Lah, Prophet Ibrahim (AS) did not merely raise a knife over his son. He raised a knife over an attachment, ownership, pride, and the illusion that what we love most belongs to us and no one else. The ram was not the centre of the story. The heart was. The ego was. The command of Allah (SWT) was. If Eid does not cut into my ego, my greed, my arrogance, my vanity, my love of applause, and my habit of excusing myself, then perhaps the knife has missed its real target.
Then I think of Ghadir that follows suit.
I do not see Ghadir as a casual stop on a difficult journey. I do not see it as a minor historical moment later enlarged by theology. The setting itself says something too heavy to ignore. On the day, the holy Prophet did not whisper to a private circle. He did not leave the matter to rumour, interpretation, or convenient forgetfulness. The caravan was stopped. Those ahead were called back. Those behind were awaited. Saddles were gathered and arranged into a raised platform so that the Prophet could be seen and heard.
In my own mind and from what I heard from some schorlars, I translate that scene into the language of today. It is as if a modern convoy of pilgrims is halted in the heat of the road, and all the keys to the buses, cars, trucks, and caravan vehicles are collected so that nobody drives away before the sermon ends. Nobody is allowed to say, “I was there in spirit.” Nobody is allowed to say, “I caught the opening part.” Nobody is allowed to wander off while the central message is being delivered. The point is not attendance as decoration. The point is presence with attention. In body and soul. Stay. Listen. Hear the matter to the end.
That detail alone unsettles me. If the message of Ghadir was light, why stop a moving Ummah in the scouthing heat? Why gather the scattered? Why build a pulpit out of saddles? Why make sure people were not only nearby, but available to listen? There are moments in history when the structure of an event speaks almost as loudly as the words spoken in it. Ghadir was one of those moments.
For those of us who look at history through _mawadda_ of the Ahl al Bayt, Ghadir was not a ceremonial compliment to Imam Ali (AS). It was a covenant. It announced that power after the Prophet must not be separated from knowledge, justice, purity, courage, and nearness to Allah. Ali was not merely a brave man, a cousin, a son in law, or a warrior per excellence. He was the living grammar of prophetic mission of justice and what not.
The tragedy, as I see it, began when the Ummah accepted the possibility that leadership could move away from that grammar. The issue was not only a name. It was not merely Imam Ali against saqiyfa. Read _Shaqshaqiyya_ in Nahjul Balagha. It was a question of what Islam would become when authority detached itself from divine legitimacy. Once that door opened, politics discovered that it could wear religion as clothing without carrying its weight. The tongue could recite the Qur’an while the mind calculated power. The mosque could remain standing while the palace quietly became the centre of decision.
From there, the road darkened.
Jamal showed how quickly a community can be torn apart when old wounds, personal claims, public confusion, and political ambition grow under religious language. Siffin showed something even more frightening. It showed how the Qur’an itself could be raised on spears by men who needed revelation not as guidance, but as a bargaining chip. That image still disturbs me. The Book of Allah, lifted not to obey Allah, but to delay justice. Scripture turned into a political instrument. Revelation used as a trap for the very man who embodied its justice.
Then came Nahrawan, and another sickness revealed itself. Religious extremism without wisdom. Certainty without mercy. Piety without depth. Men who could recite, fast, pray, and condemn, yet lacked the fragrance of the Prophetic spirit. “Pious” fools indeed. They were not ignorant in the ordinary sense. They were worse. They had “knowledge” bereft of discernment. They had zeal that had not become humility. They had religion, but not the heart of religion which is mercy.
I cannot treat these events as dead history. They are still alive in different clothes. Jamal lives whenever personal ambition tears a community apart. Siffin lives whenever religious texts are used to protect injustice. Nahrawan lives whenever angry men mistake harshness for faith and reduce Islam to accusation. Karbala lives whenever truth stands alone while the crowd waits to see who will win before deciding where conscience belongs.
Karbala, for me, is the moment history stopped pretending. Imam Husayn did not rise for a throne. He rose because the moral fabric of the Ummah was being stolen in broad daylight. Yazid was not only a ruler. He was a symbol of what happens when power loses shame. Karbala exposed the danger of a society that fears disorder more than injustice, that values survival more than dignity, that knows the truth but waits for a “safer” time to support it.
Ashura is therefore not just a day of grief. It is a court in which every generation is summoned. We are asked where we stand when truth is lonely. We are asked what we do when the Yazid of our time speaks with polished language, controls institutions, rewards silence, punishes courage, and surrounds himself with men who know better but prefer comfort. We are asked whether our tears for Husayn have entered our politics, economy, families, scholarship, activism, and daily conduct.
This is where the social meaning becomes painful. Eid teaches sacrifice. Ghadir teaches rightful guidance. Ashura teaches moral resistance. Karbala teaches dignity at any cost. Together, they form one complete school. A Muslim society that celebrates Eid but refuses to sacrifice greed has not understood Eid. A society that praises Ghadir but tolerates corrupt leadership has not understood Ghadir. A society that mourns Ashura but fears speaking the truth has not understood Ashura. A society that chants Husayn while serving Yazidian habits has turned memory into theatre.
The Muslim Ummah today is not short of emotion. It is short of discipline. It is not short of crowds. It is short of moral clarity. It is not short of sermons. It is short of courageous souls. We have wealth, youth, mosques, scholars, books, history, markets, oil, minerals, institutions, and numbers. Yet, _taron tsintsiya ba shaara_ Yet, we remain wounded because we keep separating worship from justice, leadership from ethics, wealth from responsibility, and mourning from reform.
Perhaps the way forward begins with honesty. We must stop treating sacred history as decoration. Eid must return as the slaughter of ego. Ghadir must return as the insistence that leadership is a divine trust, not a tribal prize or political trophy. Ashura must return as a school of courage. Karbala must return as a daily refusal to bow before falsehood.
Then I must turn the warning inward. My own soul must not escape the courtroom it has so easily built for others. It must not sit as judge, prosecutor, witness, and innocent citizen all at once. That would be the oldest fraud in the book. To condemn the sickness of the Ummah while nursing the same sickness inside myself is not wisdom. It is hypocrisy wearing _eau de toillette_.
If I speak of Jamal, I must ask where _ragabza_ still lives in me. If I speak of Siffin, I must ask where I still raise sacred words to defend selfish motives. If I speak of Nahrawan, I must ask where my certainty has become dry, harsh, and proud. If I speak of Karbala, I must ask where truth has stood alone in my own life while I waited for a “safer” time to support it. The danger is not only in palaces, governments houses, sects, mosques, parties, and institutions. It also sits quietly inside the chest, wearing my own face.
So I must get busy. All day. Every day. Not with the noisy business of correcting the world while excusing myself, but with the harder work of holding myself to account. Let me inspect my intention before I inspect another person’s failure. Let me question my anger before I call it courage. Let me question my silence before I call it wisdom. Let me question my comfort before I call it patience.
There is a small comedy in this, and perhaps every bitter medicine needs one spoon of humour. I remember childhood and the great secret of many kitchens. The child who never stole meat from his mother’s pot was probably not a saint. Maybe his mother was simply not a good cook. Had the soup been fragrant enough, had the meat been tender enough, had the aroma travelled through the house like a secret invitation, many a young moral philosopher would have failed his first examination before midnight.
Then comes the crude defence of the guilty child. He tiptoes to the kitchen when everyone has slept, opens the pot with the caution of a thief and the appetite of a _mai-jego_, fishes out one piece of meat, then another, and says, “It is because my mother cooks too well.” What a desperate way to dress bad conduct as compliment. What a clever little theology of appetite. What an attempt to justify the unjustifiable by turning theft into appreciation. What an irony.
That child is not far from anyone of us. We steal from the pot of truth, then praise the cook. We break the discipline of the cause, then call it zeal. We excuse our ego, then condemn another person’s arrogance. We soften our own faults with poetry and sharpen other people’s faults with knives.
So I return to the beginning. Eid must cut my ego before it cuts the ram. Ghadir must force me to stay, listen, and obey guidance before I claim loyalty to guidance. Ashura must make me brave in private before I perform courage in public. Karbala must enter my habits before it enters my speeches. The Ummah will not heal by remembering alone. It will heal when memory becomes character, when tears become reform, when love of Ali becomes justice, and when mourning for Husayn becomes courage.
