Shiite leaders call for bloodless commemoration
Imam Hussein’s remembrance need not be gory event
Mohammed Zaatari
Daily Star correspondent Political and religious
leaders from the Shiite community are hoping that those commemorating Ashura on Thursday
will refrain from bloodying themselves to mark the death of Imam Hussein, but devotees of
the self-flagellation rituals may defy calls to end the dangerous practice.
Speaker Nabih Berri has joined publicly for the first time the repeated calls of Shiite
religious authorities to end the gory ritual that sees many faithful enacting the
imam’s death by cutting themselves or their children.
The speaker told those gathered for a ceremony in Nabatieh over the weekend that cutting
or whipping oneself “didn’t pertain to the commemoration of the event.”
On Ashura, Nabatieh usually remembers the event by organizing a massive procession in the
city’s square, during which mourners re-enact the seventh century battle of Taff in
the Iraqi town of Karbala that saw Imam Hussein and his family slaughtered by the rival
Umayyads.
Two years ago, Hizbullah issued instructions forbidding members and supporters of the
resistance group from engaging in self-flagellation and have set up blood donation centers
to replace blood being lost during the ceremony.
The ban has also received support from a number of leading Shiite figures in the region,
including the Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Lebanon’s Sayyed Mohsen Amin,
Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah and the late Sheikh Mohammed Mahdi Shamseddine.
One religious leader has stressed the importance of celebrating Ashura “away from
exaggerations which have become irrelevant to the event, such as exaggerating the
narration of the Ashura event, by some readers of the Husseini history.”
However, the calls still face the opposition of a number of fundamentalist parties, which
categorically refuse any amendment to Shiite rituals. Those opposing the ban say no
religious text forbids the practice, only intellectual interpretations that could be
adopted or ruled out depending on the conviction of the religious authority.
The practice of self-flagellation was brought to the South by Iranian immigrants who
arrived at the Nabatieh villages of Jibsheet and Nabatieh Fawqa, after escaping the
Iranian regime in the early 20th century.
However, similar rituals and gatherings were forbidden by the Ottoman authorities,
prompting a protest that led Istanbul to restrict the practice to Iranian immigrants in
Lebanon.
But the ritual spread among the Lebanese, with locals carrying out the ritual in secret at
the old mosque near the Nabatieh Serail until the end of Ottoman rule in 1918.
In 1919, Lebanese and Iranians began celebrating Ashura publicly, with mourners shouting
cries in Farsi.
According to experts familiar with the history of Ashura, a performance re-enacting the
death of Imam Hussein and his family was also conducted in Iranian, and first took place
in Arabic in 1926 and grew into a mass ritual of wailings and beatings.
The practice declined from 1975, with residents escaping Nabatieh due to the bombing of
the area by the Israelis.
The ceremony developed later with the introduction of people wrapping themselves in white
linen stained with blood and the re-enactment of the slaughter of a baby, representing
Imam Hussein’s son, to increase the dramatic aspect.
The practice remains the same today with Shiites carrying their babies to a barbershop to
carry out a small incision on the youngsters’ heads with a razor blade.
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