Husain

The Savior of Islam

by :
S.V Mir Ahmed Ali

INTRODUCTION

A small Book of about twenty-five pages The King of Martyrs' was published in 1925 and since then, it was reproduced four times and every time in several thousands and yet the demand for it had been on the increase, and this is the Fifth enlarged edition.

With the increase in the standard of literacy among the masses, the demand for the Islamic literature in its original purity is growing steadily. Today, more than ever, the awakened intellect of the human world, is seriously in quest of the invaluable knowledge which Islam alone can provide. The pity is that .most of the great muslim scholars, who are the stores of knowledge about the original teachings of Islam, do not care for the modern western languages, and those who have mastered these languages have never had the benefit of a serious study of Islamic literature through the original sources. Whatever knowledge, about Islam and the Islamic literature, these scholars of the modern languages possess, they could have it from the prejudicial translations into those languages mostly by the missionary class, brought out with the exclusive purpose of spreading prejudice against Islam, and the Holy personalities of the Faith to secure the unearned glorification for their own heroes and enlist believers in their own respective creeds. Unfortunately some of our own brethren get the information from such hostile sources and present it as the genuine truth and never care to scrutinise with reference to the original sources of the knowledge. The kind or the degree of knowledge about Islam and the Islamic affairs which some of these men possess is disclosed from their talks and writings.

Particularly in regard to the great event of Karbala which has been termed in the very Word of God, i.e., the Holy Qur'an, as 'Zibhe Azeem' or the Great Slaughter, most of our muslim brethren either do not know it at all or they have been misinformed or have grossly misunderstood it. One thing very gratifying which has been often noted, that is when such ill-informed ones are

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rightly informed, they immediately acknowledge the Truth, the glory of Husain, the Holy King of Martyrs, the divinity endowed in his Holy Personality and the important part the devotion to the Holy Imam, plays in elevating the human soul to the heights of heavenly glory.

This book is intended just to give a glimpse of the divine plan implemented in the enactment of the great heart-rending tragedy and the unique and the glorious position of its Holy Hero and the Godly Band of his faithful comrades.

Uninformed or misinformed of the original teachings of Islam and the actual position of its great Heroes, some of our brethren have unwarrantedly and unreasonably criticised certain acts of devotion on the part of the devotees of the Faith and its Great Heroes, terming it polytheism. A very brief clarification of the matter has also been given at the end of this brief work for the information of those who would like to have it.

It is earnestly hoped that the learned readers will mind the matter, graciously by-passing the mistakes, if any, in the printing matter. This book needs reprinting and it is under contemplation, and God willing the next issue will be free from such shortcomings.

I am indebted to the following devotees of the Holy King of Martyrs who helped the publication of this humble work :-

I. Muhammad Abdullah Al-Husainy (Our American Brethren in Faith and a staunch Devotee of the King of Martyrs and the one whose attachment to the Holy Ahlul-Bait is ideal).

I have to helplessly restrain myself from mentioning the names of the devotees of the Holy Imam who have helped this publication, for their expressed desire not to have any publicity of their names.

Karachi 1-6-64
S. V. MIR AHMED ALI.

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Husain: THE KING OF MARTYRS
The Importance of the Context

It is a fact acknowledged by one and all in the world of intelligence that things isolated from their natural set-up away from the connected events, without the necessary reference to their original context, can neither be properly studied nor correctly understood nor duly judged. The great heart-rending martyrdom of Husain, the second grandson of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, was not a casual event of an ordinary sacrifice of any ordinary saint. The divinity endowed in the gruesome tragedy, can be correctly viewed only when it is studied along --;*h the background concerned with its genetic factors. If any one has failed to understand the real value of the great event of universal import to the human race as a whole, it must be due to the wrong angle from which it would have been viewed. What a world of difference, the difference in the point of view a reader creates, can very well be seen from the various opinions which the readers of one and the same holy scripture, form, for the view of one and the same object, naturally differs a great deal from angle to angle. Taking for instance the example of the Holy Qur'an which being the unmistakable and the unchallengeable Final Word of God; it is understood differently by different people who study it from the different points of view, away from the correct one. Some are rightly guided by the Holy Qur'an but from the very same Holy Book of God, some draw a different meaning altogether misleading, and get themselves beguiled to criticise its teachings and to attack the Holy Prophet Muhammad. The Holy Qur'an has itself declared this aspect of its study saying:

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Thus to have a correct view of the great sacrifices offered by the Holy Prophet and the divinely chosen members of his family, more particularly the invaluable sacrifices offered by the Holy Imam Husain, the second grandson of the Holy Prophet, it is essential to view the events in their proper context connected with their causative factors and the other important environmental background. It is only to serve this unavoidable demand for the correct understanding of the Great Events that some of the important factors connected with the Great Tragedy, arc herewith given with the maximum possible brevity, leaving the other details for a deeper study of the subject by those interested in it.

The Whole Human Race-One Family

HUMANITY OR THE human race as a whole, was originally one family, consisting of the children of one and the same parents, which fact had long been forgotten and even today, in many parts of the world, it is totally neglected and has become practically unknown. Leaving aside the wild tribes of the wilderness of Africa, -me cannot help sorrowfully and disgracefully citing the living instance of the treatment which the coloured members of the human family, receive from the white ones of the same lineage, inspite of the latter's lofty claim to the high standard of civilization and culture. The truth about the unity of the human race as a whole was declared to the world, most expressively and repeatedly, for the first time by the Holy Qur'an:

No other scripture prior to the Qur'an and no leader of any

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Faith before the Holy Prophet of Islam, had so expressly and emphatically preached this Truth.

How the Human Family Got Divided

GROUPS OF THE members of the human family moved in various directions, searching for a better living for themselves and their livestock and inhabited the various parts of the globe as they found them helpful to their interest. According to the kinds of places they occupied, the need of one settlement naturally differed from the other. The various climates of the different places, gradually affected the original features and the complexion of the different groups in the aifferent places of their respective habitations. The ways and the means of living also, of the group in one place naturally differed from that of the others in the other parts of the earth. Those who settled in the tropical zones got their skins sun-burnt and grew to be black, and those in the cold climates remained white in their complexion. New things and new situations that each group had to adjust itself with, needed new words to be coined to name the new objects. These new names peculiar to each group, put together brought forth a separate language of each group as its own, according to the needs peculiar to it, quite different from that of the others. The lack of the means of conveyance and communication, with the natural barriers of high mountains, the deep seas, the wide rivers, the vast p1ains and the dense forests full of wild beasts, was not helpful for easy and frequent visits between the different groups settled afar from each other. Gradually with the passage of time, the groups of the members of one and the same human family, got permanently separated into different units by themselves, separating each other by virtue of the differences in their physical features, complexion, language, dress and the ways of living. To identify itself, distinguishing and differentiating from the others, each group got itself known by a particular name like the Aryans, the Mongolians, the Semites, the Dravidians, the Saxons, and with the various other names as the different tribes in Africa and elsewhere have chosen for themselves. As time passed on, each group began priding over the other and looking down upon them, with its own fanciful distinctions. Thus gradually the universal family interest got divided into group interest, and this sectional feeling developed into group selfishness which generated group quarrels and tribal wars which separated the various groups from each other furthermore. Each group got interested in destroying the other group

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altogether, to own their properties and to kill or capture the men, women and even the children to serve them, or to make money by selling them to the others as slaves. Thus started the shedding of the blood of the human family by its own members. With the dissensions getting more and more intensified, the hatred between the groups becoming deeper still, the gulf of the differences separating each other becoming wider and wider, and each group losing its interest in the other, the feeling of mankind belonging to one and the same family was altogether lost, and each group treated the other as the alien one, unknown to it, without any bonds of affinity at all. Thus man became the enemy of man, and lived a beastly life in the jungles he occupied, each group preying upon the other.

The Man-Made gods and Deities

THE INHERENT CONSCIOUSNESS of the individual weakness, physical, moral and spiritual, in each human being, forced him to seek a supreme protector with superhuman powers to secure his life and his life-interest, against his antagonists, both human as well as imaginary demons and devils. Owing to his own enmity and hatred against the others, man feared man and at the same time believed in all sorts of evil spirits, and dreaded their haunts. To protect himself against his enemies, real and imaginary, and for the success in his efforts, in his interest and against the interest of the others, man coined his own fanciful gods and imaginary guardian deities and began worshipping them, offering all sorts of sacrifices to them. To please his own fancifully coined gods or to appease the wrath of his own fantastically dreaded imaginary demons and devilish beings, man used to offer sacrifices of not only animals but also his fellow human beings. Thus came forth not only tribal gods but also the favourite family gods and the gods of each member of a family, who were fancied to be powerful patrons and protectors. A particular form of each such imaginary deity was fancied and it was idolised, and thus began idolatry in the world. Besides the innumerable idolised man-made gods, whatever was found to be huge or awesome to him, man began worshipping it, thinking that by paying homage to such things, the harm or the hurt which those objects were fancied to effect, could be averted. Thus fire, the mountains, the seas, the huge rivers, the venomous serpents like the cobra and other similar fantastically dreaded objects, became the objects of worship.

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Similarly, whatever was found to be beneficial to him and serving his purpose, man began worshipping the things, thinking that by his worship he was pleasing those objects viz., the sun, the moon, the various planets and the stars, the animals like the cow which gives milk and the bull which ploughs the field etc.

The Guidance from God

ALTHOUGH THE ALL-MERCIFUL Creator Lord of the Universe has endowed each living creature with the instincts and senses necessary for its proper behaviour to exist, yet man having been stationed amidst the temptations of the various impulses from within his own self and the other objects of attraction from without, needed the extra mercy of the All-Merciful to be guided through some divinely inspired agencies. The correct guidance to the creatures, can only come from none but the All-Knowing, All-Merciful Lord Himself. Man, left to himself without any guidance from his Creator, could never have any ray of the light of knowledge of the things and the energies in the midst of which he has been placed. With the advent of human life on earth, started also the divine guidance from God, through God's own inspired and divinely conditioned messengers. Some of these apostles were adhered to, by man, some suffered the worst of tortures and miseries at the hands of the people, and some were even mercilessly killed. Very rarely was any prophet listened to, and rarer still was any prophet safe among the people, and the rarest is the case of any of the heavenly messengers having been honoured in this world. When in this modern age of ours, the age of the wonderful advance of human intellect, to the extent of the successful flight of man round the earth several times within a few hours, and when man has hit the moon and there are the efforts with prospects of success, to reach the other planets and the stars, we have on our earth, in millions, human beings still worshipping stone-gods, animals, serpents, mountains, rivers and even trees and many other similar objects, it can easily be imagined in what an abyss of ignorance, degradation and barbarity, the souls in human frames were lying in, and what a beastly and brutal life it would have been thousands of years ago. Prophet after prophet, the All-Merciful continued to send to each unit of the human family in the different parts of the earth, and inspite of the brutal treatment man meted out to the apostles of God, no people were deprived of the divine blessing of proper guidance. This fact also was announced for the first time to the

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world, by the Holy Qur'an:-

No scripture prior to Qur'an and no religious leader prior to the Holy Prophet of Islam, had ever declared this so impressively and so repeatedly. And every prophet that was sent to a people, was sent with the respective language of the people and this fact also was for the first time declared to the world by the Qur'an:

Thus, through His infinite Mercy, the All-Merciful Lord did not cease His guidance to man, although man was not tired of his torturing and murdering of messengers from God.