– GLENDALE HEIGHTS, Ill.
About 300 families attached to the Husaini Association of Greater Chicago and Muslim Education Center here gathered at the Armada Hotel and Conference Center to recollect and mourn the Shia martyrs on the eve of Ashura, Nov. 3. The majority of the faithful at this center hail from Hyderabad, India, and they were joined by fellow devotees from elsewhere in the subcontinent, including Pakistan and Afghanistan. Syed Urooj-ul Hassan Meesun Rizvi had come all the way from Lucknow, to deliver the Urdu sermon.
Ashura, or the Tenth of Muharram, which fell this year on Nov. 4 is the holiest day of the calendar for Shias around the world, including those of the Twelver orthodoxy that prevails in Iran and to which the congregation here belongs. Because their mosque was not large enough to contain the growing community, organizers said they decided to hold it at the former Ramada Inn.
The program included religious discourses on the history, drama and significance of the martyrdom at Karbala. Sheikh Ali Saadi Al-Najjar, an Iraqi from Dearborn, Michigan, spoke in English of the deeper meaning of virtues, such as giving, generosity, sacrifice and martyrdom. The sadness of the occasion was punctuated by sobbing at high points of the narrative interspersed with songs of lamentation. Sorrow peaked during the enactment of the final ritual of bearing Husain’s standard with banners and a red shroud. There was also a forenoon procession or julus starting from Daley Plaza in downtown Chicago Nov. 5.
Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar which is holy to all Muslims, began this year on Oct. 26. Within the broader Shia faith, sects are distinguished by the final Imam recognized as legitimate. South Asian shias follow the orthodoxy in Iran which recognizes 12 Imams. Devotees also commemorate Muharram at the Masoom Center in Chicago and Baitul-ilm in Elgin. The Seveners observe Muharram at their own large center elsewhere.
Ashura corresponds to the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which is likewise on the tenth of the first month of the Jewish calendar. In India, the historical martyrdom was readily assimilated to the death-and-rebirth cycle of pre-Islamic deities. During the earlier part of the last century, the majority of those who observed Muharram in many parts of the subcontinent, including the sacred city of Varanasi, were Hindus. Pre-Islamic Iran, now the epicenter of the Ashura cult, nationally observed the martyrdom of prince Siyavush.