Bloodletting may seem an excessively literal act, but it should not distract from the universality of grief expressed at Ashura
Ahmed Moor
(a Palestinian-American freelance journalist living in Beirut. After graduating from university in 2006, he spent several years in New York before moving back to the Middle East. He was born in the Gaza strip, Palestine.)
guardian.co.uk, Monday 20 December 2010
"Ashura is mostly acknowledged in the west for the symbolic bloodletting some Shia communities engage in. Indeed, I witnessed a limited amount of that in Nabatieh in southern Lebanon on 16 December. But it seemed incidental to what was really going on. The people around me were mourning; they coped with loss and they turned to their coreligionists for strength like anyone else would. What I witnessed was a resonant show of community. There was nothing extraordinary about that.
Hussein was the grandson of the prophet Muhammad, a fact that played an important role in his life and contributed to his death. His supporters – the Shia – believed that he was the rightful leader of the Muslim community, or ummah, because of his matrilineal descent. Sunnis, by contrast, believe that the caliph – or leader of the community – ought to be selected from those who are capable of leading....."
Ahmed Moor
(a Palestinian-American freelance journalist living in Beirut. After graduating from university in 2006, he spent several years in New York before moving back to the Middle East. He was born in the Gaza strip, Palestine.)
guardian.co.uk, Monday 20 December 2010
"Ashura is mostly acknowledged in the west for the symbolic bloodletting some Shia communities engage in. Indeed, I witnessed a limited amount of that in Nabatieh in southern Lebanon on 16 December. But it seemed incidental to what was really going on. The people around me were mourning; they coped with loss and they turned to their coreligionists for strength like anyone else would. What I witnessed was a resonant show of community. There was nothing extraordinary about that.
Hussein was the grandson of the prophet Muhammad, a fact that played an important role in his life and contributed to his death. His supporters – the Shia – believed that he was the rightful leader of the Muslim community, or ummah, because of his matrilineal descent. Sunnis, by contrast, believe that the caliph – or leader of the community – ought to be selected from those who are capable of leading....."
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