Pareshaan khayaalaat

Someone has put up a post on unplugged calling "Moharram" a cult phenomenon. I don’t understand what is so especially occult about Moharram? I do not understand.

There are few people I know who are openly for sectarianism, yet there is this troubling trend among some people to demean the Shi’ah directly or indirectly. On Chowk I can point to Sheikh Chilli’s post on unplugged, and Temporal’s call to celebrate "Happy New Year" on Moharram. Then there is this relative of mine who just remarked to me on instant messenger that the "nahoosat of Moharram" has just started. How can people be so crudely bigoted? And these are all "educated" people. Why don’t they understand that one can always find something in religions that looks occult and ridiculously irrational to outsiders. Such is the nature of religion itself.

The story of Moharram might be completely apocryphal, like the story of Jesus, or Moses, or Mohammad himself. But it is a great human -- super-human, in fact -- story; with timeless lessons for all of humanity, regardless of your religious persuasion. It is no wonder that it has stimulated the creative instincts of poets and writers through centuries; the whole genre of marsiya is dedicated to the description of Hussain’s tragic struggle against Yazeed.

So while my relative whined about the "nahoosat" of moharram, I was delighted to catch a Moharram mushaa’ira on PTV Prime, and later in the evening, a short marsiya recitation by Zia Mohiyuddin.