Ashura: Islam gone catholic!

Balatarin
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David ET
by David ET
22-Jan-2008
 

The following is part of an article by Navid Kermani , a writer and commentator on Iranian and Islamic affairs in Germany, on the ancient roots of the tale of Hussein’s martyrdom:

The Safavids expanded the rituals of mourning for Hussein – not least for reasons of power politics. As the majority of the Iranian population at that time were Sunnis, the Safavids aimed to bind them more closely to the Shi’a and to shore up hatred against the Sunnis. In order to ensure the legitimacy of the Iranian-Shi’ite dynasty, it was important that Sunni Islam should be identified with the Arabs. The cult of suffering surrounding Hussein offered the best means of accomplishing this – as the passion and martyrdom of heroes is the outstanding theme of Iranian national tradition.

According to ancient Iranian legend, Gayomart, the first human being, died a redemptive death and his martyred body is said to have given birth to the whole of humanity. In Shi’ite folk religion, Hussein’s martyrdom too has a redemptive function.

Ancient Iranian legends, as well as Zoroastrian ceremonies and hymns of mourning, became associated with the cult of the Third Imam. A death cult featuring processions and magicians’ chants had already existed around the pre-Islamic hero Siyawusch (indeed in the Iranian province of Fars ‘The Revenge of Siyawusch’ is still performed today as a folk ritual). And various motifs which recur in the passion plays can also be found in the Shahnameh, the Persian national epic of the twelfth century – for example the motif of the bloodstained river or the corpse trampled by horses. The motif of ritual murder was a feature not only of authentic Iranian culture but also of the Babylonian culture that exerted an influence on Persia. Certain key motifs from the passion story can already be found in the Babylonian cults surrounding Adonis and Tammuz, such as the flag, the hand, the water, the blood, and the ‘animalisation’ of Hussein’s murderer Shimr who, according to a Shi’ite legend, had a “muzzle like a dog and bristles like a pig”.

Although one cannot speak of a direct influence, it is important to note that by promoting the cult of mourning around Hussein, the Safavids were making use of a ritual form that was already rooted in the culture. The speed with which the Shi’a established itself as the dominant faith in Iran may be accounted for by the Ashura’s combination of Shi’ite religious themes with Persian national themes.

As the Safavids repeatedly stressed, Husseinwas not only the grandson of the Arabian Prophet, but was also said to have been the husband of a Persian princess. According to Safavid ideology, his fate was identical with the fate of Iran.

The Shi’ite folk piety which is now widespread in Iran and Southern Lebanon, with its passion plays, processions of flagellants, icons and music, is a development of the modern era, beginning only in the late sixteenth century. Muslim intellectuals such as Ali Shariati have sharply criticised the transition from a ‘red’ to a ‘black’ Shi’a, from a religion of active protest to a religion of passive lamentation.

But this cannot alter the fact that the Shi’ite religion is now dominated by black flags and veils, the ubiquity of mourning, penitence and death, a conspicuous enthusiasm for selfsacrifice, the celebration of suffering, the reverence for martyrdom and the veneration of individual martyrs.

Shi’ite, Sunni and Christian: points of contact and distance

Unlike the Shi’ites, the Sunnis do not ascribe a central significance to suffering which is far more a feature of Christianity, the similarities of which to Shi’ite Islam have often been noted. In the Festival of Ashura, the motifs of pre-natal guilt, penitence and possible redemption have a firm place – although they are more familiar to Christianity than to the Koran.

While expressing grief for the death of Hussein, these rituals are equally a sign of penitence for the original failure of the community to stand by the Imam in Karbala. This introduces a post-Koranic notion of inherited guilt to Islam which has no concept of original sin as such. According to the Koran, man is born good; God has onferred on him the responsibility of doing good, while allowing him the freedom to perform evil. It is thus impossible to derive a theology of redemption from the Koran itself.

Mohammad’s revelation discloses an almost mathematical relationship to sin which is frequently communicated metaphorically in images deriving from the language of commerce: not that God reckons like a shopkeeper – as the All Merciful he is prepared to balance many sins against one good deed, but nonetheless there is a clear ratio: only through good deeds can evil deeds be forgiven. Faith alone cannot be a key to Paradise, nor can repentance. On the Day of Judgement, man’s actions will be weighed in the scales, especially his acts of charity, justice and kindness.

In Shi’ite folk religion, by contrast, is rooted the concept that while each Shi’ite shares in guilt for the death of the martyrs, one can nevertheless find redemption through a properly repentant attitude above all through the intercession of an Imam, that is to say: a martyr. And naturally also by following Hussein into martyrdom itself.

In the Christian world self-flagellation has survived to the present day in southern Europe and Central America, but also in the Opus Dei. If one compares pictures of the Holy Week processions in Guatemala or Sezze Romano with the Shi’ite Muharram rituals, the resemblance is startling. Indeed, similarities in the sequence of events of the processions and passion plays, as well as in symbols such as the accompanying chair and banner, have led some researchers to conclude that the sixteenth century cult of suffering was imported directly from Europe.

They point to the similar natural phenomena surrounding the deaths of Christ and Hussein and the way in which both stories feature a murderer who recoils, as well as the dividing of the garments of the murdered Saviour. Finally, too, there are the words of Christ: “Father, I thirst.” Notwithstanding, there is little to indicate that Catholicism had a direct effect on the Shi’a, let alone any concrete historical evidence. Precisely because it has not been adequately explained, the similarity between the two horizons of belief, in each of which martyrdom plays a prominent role, remains puzzling.

Although this fact is sometimes forgotten, it was Christianity, along with the Shi’a, that developed the most distinctive theology of martyrdom. “(We are) always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body,” says Paul. “For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’s sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.” (Corinthians II, chapter 4, verses 10-12).

The early Christians took these words literally: there are countless legends which tell of confrontations between representatives of the Roman Empire and fearless believers who laughingly bore repeated agonies of torture. During the Middle Ages, the penitents’ rituals in southern and western Europe became mass phenomena, and until the modern period flagellation was a widespread practice of Catholic piety, generally accompanied by the recitation of Psalms.

“I bring myself before the Court, I pronounce my own punishment, I myself requite my crimes.” Thus, in the eleventh century, St Peter Damian formulated the creed of the active penitents. By contrast with Christianity, the Shi’ites’ notion of inherited guilt has its roots on Earth – not in the heavenly origins of humanity. Guilt is not an essential part of humanity’s earthly existence, but belongs rather to the history of Islam. It comes not at the beginning of the Revelation, but appears long after its end. But just as Christian flagellation promotes the experience of suffering, the imitation of Christ, while also serving as penance for one’s own sinfulness, so Shi’ite ritual is not only the re-enactment of the initial suffering but also the collective penance of a community whose origins were marked by a failure in duty. And even if mainstream Shi’ite theology has not derived any model for worldly action from the concept of original sin, Shi’a ritual has repeatedly inspired its followers to compensate for their failure not only symbolically, but also through concrete political activity.

to read the full article click here

 

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David ET

Anon3

by David ET on Tue Jan 22, 2008 11:39 PM PST

Have you thought what would have happend to Ibrahim if he was caught doing that in this day and age in the west? He would have been arrested and imprisoned for attempted murder and child abuse.

Not to mention the lifetime effect on Ismail of such horror of seeing his father trying to kill him at the alter.

People of books celebrate this story !! Things we get used to or should not question!!


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default

Sacrificial lamb=

by Anon3 (not verified) on Tue Jan 22, 2008 06:49 PM PST

Sacrificial lamb= martyrdom=Shedding of some kind of blood=sacrifice of some kind

When Isaac became a young boy, God spoke to Abraham and commanded him to take his son to Mount Moriah and offer him as a sacrifice to God. This was God’s test of Abraham’s faith. But I think it even predates Christianity and Judism:

Incas (pre-Colombian) fattened their children before they sacrificing them for the Volcano.

From wikipedia:

Child sacrifice is the ritualistic killing of children in order to please, propitiate or force supernatural beings in order to achieve a desired result. Similar in concept but different in meaning is the blood libel, in which groups (such as the Jews or Roma) are untruly accused of killing children and drinking their blood. The blood libel was then used as an excuse to attack these groups (pogrom being a Slavic term for this kind of attack).

The practice has been believed to be central to some religions, made to a wide variety of gods, goddesses and spirits. These religions often depict the practice in myths as absolutely necessary to save the world from "chaos".
//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sacrifice


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jamshid

Interesting comparisons, I

by jamshid on Tue Jan 22, 2008 05:19 PM PST

Interesting comparisons, I never thought of them...


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Rosie T.

There are many problems on the site...

by Rosie T. on Tue Jan 22, 2008 05:19 PM PST

and I'm really feeling registration should be mandatory. Now some people (or one enterprising lunatic?) have figured out how to go in as chickens using registered names. They do it a lot to Kouroush, they did it once to Mazloom Ast, and now they're starting to do it to me. I told jj it's a kind of hacking but he doesn't believe me. It has to be. I can't do it. If I try the system tells me the name belongs to a registered user and stops me. So that's a problem. The time factor is a HUGE problem. I think jj should go AT LEAST twice as slowly moving material, especially the blogs. Is it my imagination or as shortly as a couple of months ago blogs used to stay up for about two days and now it's only one? At least with two days you can get some kind of discussion going and then the people involved witll return to it, but with one day most of the time there just isn't much you can do. It's all too FAST, it's too fast. I mean most people don't check the site every day! How can you get exposure in ONE day? The site LOOKS beautiful but it isn't really a forum for serious discussion, you kind of have to have the serious discussions IN SPITE OF rather than because of the site.

I am sorry to hear you don't write articles because you don't have "red carpet" treatment. YoThis is very disturbing to me.u are certainly one of the more thought-provoking and better writers on the site. I remember over the Christmas holidays one time there were TWO articles on the home page by Curious Joe. The second one way okay kind of but the FIRST one was so quickly and poorly writen and short, it wasn't even long or as carefully written as a typical rPOST of say Jamshid, Q, Arezu, or Zion (regardless of ideology, those people really WRITE). And the topics..well..CJ tends to invoke people's ire anyway with his statements so the threads are not too pretty, and with half a million hits PER MONTH, and we being #3 that time I googled Bakhtiar, after wiki and sb.org..I was like WHAT IS THIS? And I told him...I really think a lot of the best authors have defected because of the threads and now any threader thinks they can write...there has definitely been a drop in quality from even less than a year ago. Even the PHOTOS submitted are not what they used to be. There used to be some BREATHTAKING stuff...I just don't see it anymore. I see cute, personal photos but not the magic that was...

I'm glad SCE is getting featured. My hair stood on end when you told me they didn't used to. I was trying to figure out a way to get SCE more prominent on the site. You see I think you should have your own little space on the front page...but I am very pessimistic about it...

Now there is a writer who always gets featured blogs, ALWAYS, and writes the most simplistic things called poems...and then deletes them! But they're about sex so they get featured. I understand jj wants to break the tabu om women writing explicit erotic poetry but I mean man, these are Iranians...there's GOTTA be Iranian women writing AMAZING FANTASTIC erotic poetry...but they don't WANT to post it here, you see? And it KILLS me to see these things featured EVERY TIME when very good blogs are not featured. I'm glad jj at least features your blogs. I think you should give a shot at submitting the articles again, I think he'd publish them, but why he didn't before...who knows? As I clearly demonstrated to you during our phone conversation, he does things that seem to have no explanation.

No I DON'T think your stuff didn't "measure up". There is this guy Antolak, I think it's a Polish name, he writes the most amazing stuff and I was just websearching something about religion and stumbled on a website on ancient Iranian studies and on a whole cache of his writings about ancient Iranian religion. He is a real lay scholar but also very poetic and accessible! But he never posts that stuff here, he only posts contemporary stuff. And very rarely...sigh...oh I am venting...what can be done? Should we be blogging about some of this stuff? I am close to several people here. If we agreed to make a little campaign, maybe...? But I'm pessimistic...

I did read your post about Internet communities and popular governance. It is very visionary. I never thought about it in those terms and it has to sink in. But I DO have a vision of the Buddhist emptying the ocean with a teacup philosoph...I've had real successes. The guy I convinced to be against capital punishment, the blogger I convinced never to say Nazi state of Israel and to be careful using the Nazi analogy, Kouroush starting to write poetry, these things are gratifying. I see the Internet not only as a vehicle for change in the world but possibly the ONLY hope...the people's global collective mind...the possibility of using technology to counter the impasse where technology has brought us...but here it is discouraging...

discouraging. I think the most important thing is to make people register. Then the quality would go up again, the best writers would return. And tjen slow down the traffic of the submissions to foment debate.

Well those are my almost random thoughts on the situation. I'd welcome feedback...the god thing...let's save it for next time. :D


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David ET

Rosie: On another note

by David ET on Tue Jan 22, 2008 04:35 PM PST

This post and also the the "new world order" in my recent blog could have been good threads for discussions but considering that it was in a blog , it dropped faster than it could reach a wider audience.

It has been a while that I have given up on sending the articles to be featured on main page since I have learned over time that I do not have the same red carpet treatment as some others do, or may be jj is right in his decision making that my writing or views just do not measure up to the main page levels  ..but I must say I have seen some worthless "stuff" there ! meanwhile HERE I take and APPRECIATE what I get!  which are some featured blogs of mine intended for civil exchange of ideas:-)

On the other hand most of SCE posts (which are inputed by Mojgan) nowdays get the feature blog which we at SCE are very thankful for.

I look forward to your article. Just remember that spirituality and pacifism are not to be mistaken with one another ;D

As for GOD I sent a question about HER , to a female friend writer yesterday and I hope I get the answer that I need about GOD, whatever that might be !

I am still a student awaiting the teacher to appear...

pleasure as always

D


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Rosie T.

Thanks, David!

by Rosie T. on Tue Jan 22, 2008 03:18 PM PST

It makes sense that with the Christians that were there there would simply be influence. It CANNOT be a coincidence! I already told you about when I saw the Martyr's Fountain photo of Mashad when I FIRST started studying this, I thought "Iran is a Catholic country..."

Yes it is true, it is an "interesting" turn of events how martyrdom has become martyrdom/murder...As Shamlou says, "These are strange times, my dear." (dar in bonbast...)

 

Of course not just martyrdom but religion in general has been the cause of so much trouble in the world, wars, hatred, etc. but spirituality is another story...the problem is where do you draw the line? I keep thinking about what you said, "God has no religion and neither do I." It was so powerful and moving.

I told Rashidian weeks ago that I was going to write an article about spirituality in order to initiate a discussion about it. But I didn't get to it for reasons you're aware of. I am trying to work on it now and hopefully I will finish it. All I seem to be able to finish right now is stuff related to my poems. I hope when I do it you'll participate.

 

I am very concerned about how the discussion on this website is degenerating. It got better for a while and now it's gotten a lot worse....at least what I've seen....


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David ET

I try a little

by David ET on Tue Jan 22, 2008 02:04 PM PST

Unfortunately my reading about the subject predates to long time ago and I do not have the detail references or symbols . Others may be able to provide more data or you may have to do own research if you need more specifics.

The reference is to the many symbols, signs etc that are often carried by Catholics and Shia sect in their ceremonies as well as the similarities of catholic rituals to Shiites which do not have as many parallels in Islam (Sunni's).

Safavid dynasty (family) Shi'iasm did not rise out of vacuum and it started with sheikh Safi-ad-din Is'haq Ardabili in WESTERN part of Iran (Azerbaijan). There were many Christians in that part of Iran. He lived in the same time as the Christian Flagellantism movement in Europe. The exact timing is NOT coincidental nor are the similarities with the Christians carrying of their symbols and signs or their religious CTRL + Click to follow link">ceremonies ,  CTRL + Click to follow link">practicing of CTRL + Click to follow link">self injury , self beatings and other rituals.

On martyrdom as Kaveh puts it : " For those who see martyrdom as their release from an earthly vale of sorrows, death holds no terror – and that is something with which political rulers simply could not and cannot deal – death and torture being the ultimate means" and that is the common message of the ideologies which promote martyrdom as the ultimate sacrifice as opposed to previous practice of scarifying OTHERS at the alter of the GODS, self sacrifice being the ultimate form of submission to the Gods.

But as we witness today like any other weapon , the martyrdom too can be used by religious and political rulers as alternative weapons to further their powers and that is why Shia mullahs need Ashura just as the Pope need the cross !!


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Rosie T.

David, can you please explain...

by Rosie T. on Tue Jan 22, 2008 11:35 AM PST

Unless I'm missing something the article doesn't post a direct influence of martyrdom rituals from Christianity into Shiism, it just says the resemblances are startling. They are more than startling. Can you comment on this?

I am glad to know about the ancient roots. It is very edifying.


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Kouroush Sassanian

Interesting read!

by Kouroush Sassanian on Tue Jan 22, 2008 09:35 AM PST

Sepas!


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