Ihsan

This Ashoura...

This Ashoura is live from a place as vast as the continents and history itself. This is azadari from the hood, my hood of being an oppressed minority within an oppressed minority within an oppressed minority: Black, woman, Shi’a. It’s a wonder that I can raise my head and walk anywhere with dignity, what will all the centuries, all the thought and effort put into stripping me of my humanity.

I’m just a black woman trying to foment some revolution. I’m just a black woman trying to live this revelation and so today I offer an amal from the depths of history, from the depths of my soul.

As salaam alayka
Oh Grandma Hajar (as), Vanguard of the faith
Peace be upon you daughter of trial
She who faced the worst of her fears and overcame in the name of Allah.
Peace be upon you mother of faith,
A faith as strong as your powerful brown legs in the merciless Meccan sun.
Grandma Hajar we need your fortitude.
Damn those who bury your memory so that your granddaughters cannot find their way from the isolation of oppression.

As salaam alayka
Oh Grandma Khadija (as), Vanguard of the faith
Peace be upon you daughter of Khuwaylid,
She who gave all the comforts of the dunya, faced the trials of
humiliation and degradation.
Dearest grandmother we need your conviction.
Damn those who bury your memory so that your granddaughters cannot find their way from the weight of misogynist traditions.

As salaam alayka
Oh Mother of mothers, Vanguard of the faith
Peace be upon you daughter of the beloved of Allah (swt) and beloved of Allah in your own right.
Peace be upon you UmmAbiha, Fatima Az Zahra (as)
Be our spiritual guide through the murky valleys and peaked mountains of jihad an nafs.
Damn those who bury your memory so that your granddaughters cannot lift their heads from degradation.

As salaam alayka
Oh Grandma Zaynab, beloved Zaynab.
Peace be upon you oh mother of muqawama
Aren’t you the patron of the suffering, the archetypal matriarch,
The model for all survivors of horror and war?
Peace be upon you Daughter of Asadallah, Tharallah Imam Ali (as), beloved of Allah.
And you are beloved of Allah in your own right.
How many sisters in the land of Karbala see what you saw, and mourn as you mourned?
Do you weep for them, even now?
How many of your granddaughters stand on the roads of Karbala, having held the decapitated bodies of their dead brothers?
How many of your granddaughters grieve in the streets of Falluja screaming in grief over the small bodies of their sons as you grived for Aun and Muhammad?
Help us see the way through deserts of trial, through the sandstorms of doubt, to the pain and victory of Karbala.
Damn those who bury your memory so that your granddaughters forget what it means to resist.

As salam alayka
Oh nameless grandmother
Peace be upon you oh queen of survivors
You were humiliated, stripped bare, shackled, drenched in sweat and vomit and waste.
You crossed the Atlantic to a fate worst than death.
Damn those who captured you, who shackled you, who raped you,
who enslaved you and your granddaughters.
Bless you for having the strength to survive.

The spirit of Ashura is in each of you dear grandmothers, the blood of Hussain
pumps through all the fighters for freedom, in every land, every day.

Kull yawm ashura wa kulli ard karlaba. Everyday is Ashura, Every land is Karbala.

posted by Anonymous at 2/10/2005 09:33:00 PM