Living Ashura in Lebanon: Mourning Transformed to Sacrifice

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Living Ashura in Lebanon:Mourning Transformed to Sacrifice

Lara Deeb

The slogans of Karbala are the slogans of life in its entirety. . . . Living Ashura is standingagainst oppression. Such a stand should fill our hearts and minds each time we face theoppressors and arrogant powers, whether in Muslim countries or in the whole world. It is notliving in a tragedy of tears and hitting ourselves with swords or chains . . . for swords should beraised against the enemy as we were taught by the Imam (a.s).Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlullah, sermon commemorating the fortieth memorial ofImam Husayn, 2003

As Hajjeh Rula began to narrate the final moments Husayn spent with his eldest son beforethey both met their deaths, sobs rose heavily around us, filling the room with palpable grief.Her voice cracked as she lamented poetry into her microphone, describing how Husaynlooked upon his son, who had come to him for his final blessing. This mournful parting wasfollowed by an all-too-vivid description of the sons death and how the enemy cut up his bodywith their swords, mutilating it, Hajjeh Rula repeating those details about the swords cuttinghis body over and over again, weaving in foreshadowings of Husayns death that was soon tofollow, and bringing the sounds of weeping in the room to a crescendo. Then she paused.After waiting a moment for the sobs to subside, she began a lecture, in which she explainedvery clearly what the Quran, the hadith, and the hadith of Imam Ali all say about love andresponsibility in parent-child relationships. Another pause, and the tears returned to theirplace in her voice. Taking up her poetic narration, she described the love of a parent for achild and the love of a sister for a brother, and then focused her last lamenting breaths onZaynab. Zaynab, who looked upon the mutilated corpses from the battle as though she werethe sister of each, the mother of each, with all the horrific emotion of a grieving womanlooking upon her martyred son or brother, a grief probably far too real for many in the room.Field notes, 10 April 2000

A shuraas Lebanese metonymically refer to the first ten days of Muharram1is the

Shii Muslim commemoration of the martyrdom of Imam Husayn, grandson of theProphet Muhammad and the third Shii Imam. Husayns death at Karbala in 680

This article is based primarily, though not exclusively, on fieldresearch conducted from October 1999 through July 2001 ina Lebanese Shii community located in a Hizbullah-dominatedarea of the southern suburbs of Beirut. This is a communitywhere people are religiously active, praying, fasting, and tithingregularly, and where many explicitly embrace either Shii orMuslim as a part of their identity. My field research was madepossible by a Social Science Research Council International Dis-sertation Field Research Fellowship, a National Science Founda-tion Dissertation Research Fellowship, a grant from Emory Uni-

versitys Internationalization Fund, and a PEO Scholar Award.The Center for Behavioral Research under Dr. Samir Khalaf pro-vided an academic home in Beirut. I am grateful to Donald L.Donham, Mary Elaine Hegland, Bruce Knauft, and Corinne Kratzfor their valuable feedback. Finally, my greatest gratitude is re-served for the many women and men in Lebanon who sharedsuch an important part of their lives with me and who continueto do so.

1. Ashura (from the Arabic root that means ten) is technicallythe term for the tenth of themonth, the day onwhich the battle1 2 2

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

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1 2 3CEalong with all his companions except onesick sonmarks a moment of increased fis-sure in the Muslim community, often pointedto by Shii Muslims today as the decisive rootof their separate identity.2 The rituals associ-ated with Ashura commemorate both a battleof righteousness against corruption and a keymoment in Shii historya moment so power-ful that subsequent moments were character-ized by an overriding paradigm of persecution,exclusion, and suffering.3 Indeed, both schol-ars and Shii Muslims themselves frequentlyunderstand Ashura to be an essential culturalparadigm for Shiism.4 The shared narratives,meanings, and practices associated with Ashuraare crucial to the construction of collective Shiiidentity.5

In Lebanon, Ashura commemorationshave undergone a transformation in recentdecades, from a ritual focused on mourning toone highlighting Islamic activism. This transfor-mation accompanied the Lebanese Shii Islamicmobilization that began in the late 1960s.6 Mo-tivated in part by the marginalized positionof many Shiis in the Lebanese nation-state,this movement involved multiple strains andwas continually catalyzed by a series of events,most notably the Israeli occupation of south-ern Lebanon that ended in May 2000. One keyaspect of the movement was an emphasis onreligious reform, much of which was focusedaround Ashura, and especially the explicit link-ing of the Ashura history to a contemporaryactivist discourse. In what follows, I describeboth the transformation of the ritual commem-orations and these shifts in meaning. I suggest

that a crucial part of these changes is the em-phasis on an idealized role model for pietyrepresented by Husayn for Shii men and by hissister Zaynab for Shii women.7

Zaynab, along with other women and chil-dren of Husayns family, had accompanied herbrother to Karbala. After all the men werekilled, the women and children were takeninto captivity, and Zaynab was their leader un-til Husayns sole heir was able to take his place.In the transformation of Ashura commemo-rations, Zaynabs behavior has been reinter-preted to underscore the activist elements inher role and character. As Ashura is applied tocontemporary life, pious Shii womens emula-tion of Zaynab as an activist rather than a pas-sive mourner is especially significant, becauseit is reflected in a major shift in the levels ofwomens public participation in this particularcommunity in Lebanon.While Husayn providesa model for sacrifice in blood for men, Zaynabrepresents sacrifice in sweat for women. I willreturn to this at the conclusion of this articleto consider how changes in Ashura and espe-cially these idealized models for pious behaviorhave been brought to bear on the lives of piousShii women and men in Lebanon, and how theAshura paradigm is lived today.

Commemorations TransformedCommemorating Ashura in Lebanon involvesholding and attending both private and publicmajalis, or mourning gatherings, in which thehistory of the martyrdom is retold, and tenth-day masirat, or lamentation processions, duringwhich men often perform latam, a ritualized

at Karbala took place, but Lebanese Shia use Ashu-ra to refer to the entire ten-day commemoration pe-riod.

2. Husayn was killed by troops sent by the CaliphYazid, solidifying an already existing rift over leader-ship of the Muslim community between those whofollowed the Caliphate and those who believed thatMuhammad had desired hereditary leadership afterhis death, through the Imams.

3. David Pinault, The Shiites: Ritual and Popular Pietyin a Muslim Community (New York: St. Martins,1992), 56.

4. Michael Fischer calls this the Karbala paradigm;see Michael Fischer, Iran: From Religious Disputeto Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1980). Discussions of the practice of Shiism of-ten focus onMuharrammourning rituals. For obvious

reasons, Iran has been a particular geographic focusof these studies, followed recently by South Asia, aswell as Lebanon, Iraq, and North America.

5. This is intensified by the drama and emotionalintensity of the commemorations. Studies of ethnicviolence have noted the importance of drama and,particularly, calendrical dates with salient historicalvalue in mobilizing collective identities at specificmoments. See Stanley Tambiah, Leveling Crowds:Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in

South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press,1996).

6. By Lebanese Shii Islamic mobilization or move-ment, I mean the strains of Shii Islamic activism thatbegan with Sayyid Musa al-Sadr in the 1960s andcontinued after his disappearance under the leader-ship/organization of Harakat Amal, Sayyid Muham-mad Husayn Fadlullah, Hizbullah, and others.

7. It is crucial to note that this is one of the mod-els for piety, Islamic reform, and Ashura commem-oration among Lebanese Shii Muslims. There is nouniform Lebanese Shii community. My focus in thisarticle is on those Shii Lebanese who are support-ers of Hizbullah or followers of Sayyid MuhammadHusayn Fadlullah (one of the most prominent con-temporary Lebanese Shii religious leaders). Indeed, itis their shared notions of religious reform and sharedunderstandings of piety that hold this communitytogether. See Lara Deeb, An Enchanted Modern: Gen-der and Public Piety among Islamist Shii Muslims in

Beirut (PhD diss., Emory University, 2003).



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striking of ones body in grief.8 Both the struc-ture and the meaning of Ashura and these lam-entation events have always been historicallyfluid, incorporating different elements in dif-ferent locales and reflecting the changing po-litical and social status of the Lebanese Shia.However, the recent reform-based changes thathave been taking place in Lebanon are concep-tualized as particularly dramatic. A shift can bediscerned from commemorative forms that myinterlocutors label traditional to those thatthey consider to be more authentic. I refer tothese new forms as authenticated and to thisshift as authenticationa continual processof labeling particular practices and beliefs tra-ditional (taqlidi), and distancing from them,embracing in their stead practices and beliefsthat are considered true (haqiqi) or correct(sahih).9

Ashura commemorations similar to thecontemporary type of commemoration that myinterlocutors label traditional have occurredin various forms in rural Lebanon and in whatis today the southern suburbs of Beirut sincethe beginning of the century.10 Several ele-ments characterize these traditional commem-orations, including self-flagellation that drawsblood during latam and a focus on grief (ex-pressed in weeping by both sexes) and re-gret rather than activism.11 The earliest writ-ten evidence of a clerical effort to reform these

practicesparticularly that of self-injuriouslatamdates from the late 1920s.12 At thattime Sayyid Muhsin al-Amin, a religious scholarfrom Jabal Amil (south Lebanon) who led aShii community in Damascus, criticized self-injurious latam as unlawful.13 This set off a viru-lent debate between al-Amin and the few schol-ars who agreed with him, and the major sayyidfamilies of Jabal Amil who formed a religiousand landowning elite. In the end, the elitesayyid families succeeded in rallying the ma-jority of uneducated villagers against al-Aminscalls for reform.14

The important point here for our pur-poses is that while the issue of the lawfulness ofself-injurious latam in Ashura commemorationsbecame a major debate among Shii religiousscholars in Jabal Amil, Damascus, and Najaf inthe 1920s, the issue did not attract popular sup-port or interest at that time. Decades later, asShii Muslims began to migrate to Beirut, theybrought this traditional form of commemora-tion with them.

The urban visibility of Ashura grew in tan-dem with the rapid urbanization of the Shiipopulation that took place in Lebanon in the1950s and 1960s. Many nonparticipants viewedthe commemorations as a frightening displayof the backward (mutakhallif ) traditions ofShii Muslims.15 For Lebanese Shiis, this stigmafollowed on a history marked by political and

8. For history of the Ashura mourning rituals, seeMahmoud Ayoub, Redemptive Suffering in Islam: AStudy of the Devotional Aspects of Ashura in Twelver

Shiism (The Hague: Mouton, 1978); Yitzhak Nakash,An Attempt to Trace the Origin of the Rituals ofAshura, Die Welt des Islams 33 (1993): 16181; andHeinz Halm, Shia Islam: From Religion to Revolution,trans. Allison Brown (Princeton, NJ: Markus Weiner,1997).

9. This is related to the self-conscious systematiza-tion of Islam that Dale F. Eickelman and James Pisca-tori call objectification. See Eickelman and Piscatori,Muslim Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1996). I use the term authentication because itcaptures my interlocutors emphases on textual andhistorical accuracy while hinting at both cultural au-thenticity and the idea of being true to ones self.

10. While some Lebanese Shiis held majalis intheir homes and otherwise commemorated Ashurathroughout their history, the practice of injuriousself-flagellation during latam was brought to south-ern Lebanon from Iran in the early part of the twen-tieth century or latter part of the nineteenth. SeeWerner Ende, The Flagellations of Muharram and

the Shiite Ulama, Der Islam 55 (1978): 1936. Com-memorations considered traditional still take placein many parts of Lebanon, especially in the southerntown of Nabatieh.

11. The prevalence of weeping among men andwomen alike contrasts with Lila Abu-Lughods obser-vations about the gender differences in discoursesabout death and in lamentations in the (Sunni) AwladAli Bedouin community. See Lila Abu-Lughod, Is-lam and the Gendered Discourses of Death, Interna-tional Journal of Middle East Studies 25 (1993): 187205.

12. Ende, Flagellations of Muharram.

13. Ende also notes that there were other religiousscholarswho put forth similar views around the sametime (Flagellations of Muharram).

14. Ende suggests a number of reasons for the hos-tility of the religious establishment to al-Aminsreformist views, including that the Ashura com-memorations worked to reinforce the allegianceof the peasantry and uneducated villagers to thesayyid families, so it was to the latters advan-tage to maintain the commemorations as they were

(Flagellations of Muharram). He also suggests eco-nomic factors, because the commemorations drewcrowds from the surrounding areas. Indeed, a friendof mine, a secular Shii from the Jabal Amil area,supports the traditional commemorations despiteher atheism because she believes they are necessaryfor the economic welfare of her hometown.

15. It is difficult to ascertain who participated inthese traditional Ashura commemorations. Nonpar-ticipants include non-Shii Lebanese, though politi-cal leaders would sometimes attend a commemo-ration held at the home of a prominent Shii elite,and Emrys Peters suggests the participation of Chris-tian villagers in commemorations in one Lebanese vil-lage in the early 1950s in A Muslim Passion Play: Keyto a Lebanese Village, Atlantic Monthly 198 (1956):17680. Nonparticipants also include Shii Lebanesewho did not commemorate Ashura; I hesitate to callthem nonreligious Shia because that would requirea longer discussion of the multiple valences of beingmutadayyin (religious).



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1 2 5economic marginalization: in a nation-statewhere sectarian political-economic power trans-lated to selective access to modernization forparticular areas of the country, the Shia residedprimarily in the least-developed rural regionsand did not have access to infrastructural andinstitutional developments occurring in the restof Lebanon.16

Despite the earlier attempts at reform,and the stigmatization of the commemora-tions in the urban milieu, it was not untilthe 1980s that strong opposition to traditionalforms of Ashura appeared among Shii Mus-lims who were not religious scholars. The firstsigns of this came in 1974, just after Musa al-Sadr founded the Movement of the Deprived,planting the initial seeds of the Lebanese ShiiIslamic movement. Augustus Richard Nortonnotes that under ImamMusas considerable in-fluence, religious commemorations became ve-hicles for building communal solidarity and po-litical consciousness.17 However, while al-Sadrwas the first to link contemporary Shii politicalmobilization in Lebanon with Ashura,18 prac-tical large-scale transformation of the ritual inboth practice andmeaning did not take root foranother decade.

Around that time the Lebanese civil war(197590) along with three key factors cat-alyzed the then nascent Shii Islamic movement

and prompted the formation ofHizbullah:19 the1978 and 1982 Israeli invasions of Lebanonand the subsequent occupation of southernLebanon until May 2000; the 1978 disappear-ance of al-Sadr;20 and the 1979 Islamic Revo-lution in Iran. Concurrent with these events,widespread opposition to traditional formsof commemorating Ashura began to emergeamong pious Shii Muslims. This opposition re-flected trends in Iran, where reformist and Is-lamic intellectuals had contributed to the emer-gence of a new Ashura discourse that linked itto an alternative and revolutionary Shiism, incontrast to a politically quietist one.21

Crucially, this time the debates about thecommemorations in Lebanon were not con-fined to the religious leadership. Debate amongreligious scholars is not enough to create actualchanges in practice of the scale seen in Ashuracommemorations over the past few decades.Such transformation requires the active par-ticipation of the wider community of piousLebanese Shii Muslims. Mass literacy, educa-tion, and urbanization, as well as political mo-bilization against both injustice within Lebanonand Israeli aggression, facilitated the mass par-ticipation of Shii Muslims in discussions aboutthe reforms and in the practical implementa-tion of reform of various aspects of the com-memorations. In many ways the presence of this

16. The institutionalization of sectarianism in theLebanese political system was accompanied by amore subtle process by which the category of sectbecame increasingly important to the groups them-selves. As noted by Suad Joseph, The Politicizationof Religious Sects in Borj Hammoud, Lebanon (PhDdiss., Columbia University, 1975), a sectarian politi-cal leadership supported the establishment of sectar-ian social institutions (e.g., schools, hospitals) ratherthan public secular ones so that sect became ameans of accessing resources. Shia underrepresen-tation in the government led to poverty as govern-ment funds were routed into other sectarian com-munities. Differential population growth added totheir underrepresentation so that by the late 1960sclass differentiation in Lebanon fell largely alongsectarian lines. See Helena Cobban, The Making ofModern Lebanon (London: Hutchinson, 1985); andNazih Richani, Dilemmas of Democracy and Politi-cal Parties in Sectarian Societies: The Case of the

Progressive Socialist Party of Lebanon, 19491996

(New York: St. Martins, 1998). While there were elitesfrom every sect, the majority of Shiis fell into thelower classes. For more on the history of the Shiain Lebanon, see Fouad Ajami, The Vanished Imam:Musa al-Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon (Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press, 1986); Cobban, Making of

Modern Lebanon; Majed Halawi, A Lebanon Defied:Musa al-Sadr and the Shia Community (Boulder,CO:Westview, 1992); Michael Hudson, The PrecariousRepublic: Political Modernization in Lebanon (NewYork: Random House, 1968); and Augustus RichardNorton, Amal and the Shia: Struggle for the Soul ofLebanon (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987).

17. Norton, Amal and the Shia, 41.

18. The linking of the battle of Karbala to politicshas a long history. Mayel Baktash notes that the firstpublic commemorations of Karbalasponsored bySultan Muizz al-Dawla in 963 CE/352 AH, just twoyears after he declared his opposition to the exist-ing caliphatewere allegorical affairs, redolent ofrevolution (Mayel Baktash, Taziyeh and Its Philos-ophy, in Taziyeh: Ritual and Drama in Iran, ed. P.Chelkowski [New York: New York University Press,1979], 96).

19. Hizbullah was established in the early 1980s andofficially announced in 1985. Since then it has devel-oped from a resistancemilitia to a legitimate politicalparty and organization that include several large so-cial welfare institutions, television and radio stations,severalmembers of the Lebanese Parliament, and nu-merous local elected officials throughout Lebanon.

20. The disappearance of Musa al-Sadr in 1978 whilehe was on a visit to Qaddafi in Libya catapulted al-Sadr directly into the Twelver Shii narrative of theHidden Imam, and as a result initiated a surge in hispopularity.

21. The links between Ashura and Iranian political dis-course around the Islamic revolution have been welldetailed: Kamran Aghaie, The Karbala Narrative:Shii Political Discourse in Modern Iran in the 1960sand 1970s, Journal of Islamic Studies 12 (2001): 15176; Fischer, Iran;Mary ElaineHegland, Two Images ofHusain: Accommodation and Revolution in a IranianVillage, in Religion and Politics in Iran: Shiism fromQuietism to Revolution, ed. Nikki R. Keddie (NewHaven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 21835; Heg-land, Islamic Revival or Political and Cultural Revolu-tion? An Iranian Case Study, in Religious Resurgence:Contemporary Cases in Islam, Christianity, and Ju-

daism, ed. Richard T. Antoun and Mary Elaine Heg-land (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1987),194219; Nikki R. Keddie, Iran and the Muslim World:Resistance and Revolution (New York: New York Uni-versity Press, 1995); and Moojan Momen, An Intro-duction to Shii Islam: The History and Doctrines of

Twelver Shiism (NewHaven, CT: YaleUniversity Press,1985).



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widespread debate and discussion is what ex-emplifies the continuing process of authentica-tion.

The changes that took place in Ashuraare especially apparent in three areas: the ma-jalis (mourning gatherings), the masirat (pro-cessions), and, most crucially, the meaning at-tributed to the events of Muharram. This isnot to say that the importance of Ashura haschanged; rather, the transformation involvesthe details of the commemorative practices anda reordering and reprioritization of the twoprimary emphases of Ashura commemorativepractices and meanings; with the soteriologicalthat takes precedence in traditional commemo-rations sharing primary ground with the revolu-tionary in authenticated commemorations.

MajalisDuring a majlis (mourning gathering, sing. ofmajalis),22 no matter where it falls along thetraditional-authenticated spectrum, a reciter(qari)23 narrates a part of the events of the firstten days of Muharram in a lamentation stylereminiscent of a liturgy, detailing graphicallythe suffering and martyrdom of the Imam andthose with him. Some reciters include a sermonthat explains lessons to be learned fromKarbalaand the meanings of the events. The affect ofthe audience parallels these shifts in tone, withthe lamentation liturgy evoking intense cryingthat quiets to a pensive concentration duringthe sermon sections.

While all majalis include the lamentativenarration of the masaib, the tragic events ofKarbala (lit. calamities or misfortunes), recitersthat fit my interlocutors category of tradi-tional (taqlidi) will include as much detail ofsuffering as possible in this narration, to elicitmaximum levels of emotion from the audience.Many add poetic embellishment and dialogueamong Husayn, Zaynab, and others who werewith them. The ultimate goal for a traditional-style reciter is to move people to cry as much as

possible for the martyred Imam and his familyand companions. Mourning for ahl al-bayt (thefamily of the Prophet) is believed to have sal-vatory effects, as those who shed true tears forthe martyrs of Karbala may appeal to them forintercession in the afterlife. A sheikh at SayyidMuhammadHusayn Fadlullahs office criticizedwhat he saw as an exclusive emphasis onmourn-ing, explaining that it resulted from the lack ofproper training. As he put it, The backward[mutakhallif ] ones read only to make peoplecry, but the cultured [muthaqqaf ] ones teachlessons in their recitations.24

Authenticated majalis are characterizedby longer sermons and a more restrained narra-tion of the events of Karbala. Eliciting an emo-tional response is still an important goal, but asecondary one. These majalis are primarily in-tended to teach religious, social, and politicallessons; to instruct the audience about the au-thentic meanings of Karbala; and to link the his-tory of the past to the present. Those who recitemajalis and strive for authenticity are concernedwith the historical accuracy of their narrationsand avoid including unfounded exaggerationsthat they see as being merely to heighten emo-tions and make people cry. A reciter explainedto me that all too often she felt that her audi-ence cried because her voice reminded themof their own sorrows, but not because they un-derstood the true reasons for grief. Worse, shecontinued, Husayn did not even want people tocry for him, he just wanted them to understand.This reciter still felt that emotion was importantto the majalis, but she emphasized that emotionhad to be given purpose in this life, in its revi-sion from an end to a means.

Those who have attended majalis over thepast three decades articulate the shift as well,contrasting the majalis they now attend withthose they attended in the past (which theylabeled traditional). In their comparisons, to-days majalis were often described as more rea-sonable and more accepted by our minds.

22. Majlis is a term used to refer to both majalisaza, the mourning or condolence gatherings thattake place duringAshura tomourn the death of ImamHusayn (or any other time of year to mourn anydeath), and the text that is read or recited duringthose gatherings. David Pinault calls these texts litur-gies (Shiites).

23. Theword qari can be translated as either reciter(especially of religious texts) or reader. Most re-citers of Ashuramajalis have a text to which they re-fer while reciting, often a notebook filled with hand-written notes, but they seem tomove fluidly betweenreading and recitation.

24. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes from inter-locutors are from interviews conducted in the south-ern suburbs of Beirut between January 2000 andJune 2001. All names, other than those of prominentfigures (e.g., Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlullah)have been changed.



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1 2 7As one woman explained:They are reciting the same story about Husayn. . . but the lecture differs among people. . . . Be-fore we used to just go and listen to the storyof Husayn, it was rare that you found a lecture.Now, we are not just going to cry for ImamHusayn, we are going to learn from his school.The lecture is important, it is clarifying why it isthat you are crying, and why Imam Husayn wasmartyred. It is not just about crying for ImamHusayn, it is about learning the lessons from theschool of Imam Husayn.

As noted above, while the shifts in Ashuracommemorations carry implications for bothmen and women, it is womens role in soci-ety that has been more critically redefined bythese implications. By far the most striking dif-ference in content between traditional and au-thenticated majalisand what is for pious Shiiwomen the root of the most essential aspect ofthe revolutionary lesson that emerged from thistransformationlies in the reinterpretation ofthe behavior of Zaynab during and followingthe events of Karbala:

Before they would present Sayyida Zaynab ascrying, screaming, wailing, but, no, Zaynab setthe stage . . . for revolution against tyranny. Shedidnt mourn Husayn but thought how to savethe rest and how to keep his message going. Shewas imprisoned, and yet she stood up with allconfidence and spoke her point of view insteadof feeling defeated. This changed our lives, weare now ashamed to feel weak, or to feel sorrow.Whenever we are faced with a problem, we re-member the words, and feel shamed if we com-plain. No, we instead feel strong and deal with itand move on.

Traditional narrations often portrayedZaynab as buried in grief, pulling at her hairand shedding copious tears over the dead anddying. Reciters of authenticated majalis along

with their audiences criticized traditional por-trayals of Zaynab for their exaggerated empha-sis on her tears. In authenticated majalis, re-presentations that had depicted Zaynab as aplaintive mourner were transformed into ren-derings that accentuated her courage, strength,and resilience.25 Zaynab became the personwho stood up in the face of the oppressor andtold him that she was the victor. Her role asthe leader of the community in captivity, andafterward until Zayn al-Abidin took his placeas Imam, is highlighted in these accounts. It isZaynab who carries the history of Ashura for-ward to future generations of Shii Muslims.This reinterpretation has had major ramifica-tions for the lives and community participationof pious Shii women, allotting to them a re-sponsibility for public welfare parallel to thatof men. One area where this is apparent is inchanges in womens participation in the Ashuramasirat.

MasiratThe most obvious change in the masirat has oc-curred in the style of latam (self-flagellation)that men and boys perform following the ma-jlis on the tenth of Muharram. The tradi-tional style of latambest exemplified by theAshura masirat in the southern Lebanese townof Nabatieh26involves the shedding of onesown blood. Those performing latam form smallgroups and move quickly, almost at a jog, asthey invoke the names of Ali and Husayn andhit the small wounds that have been cut at theirhairlines, so that blood flows down their facesand stains their white shirts or bare chests abright red. Women generally do not partici-pate in these masirat,27 though they make up atleast half of the crowd that lines the street andleans over balconies and from nearby rooftopsto watch.28

25. Another interesting shift is that Zaynab is em-phasized more than Fatima (the Prophets daughterand Husayns mother), who is often considered theparamount female model of piety in Shii Islam andwho is remembered not only for her piety but for herunending sorrow and weeping for her father, hus-band, and children (ahl al-bayt), which will continueuntil Judgment Day.

26. When Ashura was primarily a rural folk tradi-tion for the Shia in Lebanon, it was centered inNabatieh. Each year since the early 1900s, a passionplay reenacting the events of Karbala is performed on

the field at the center of Nabatieh, and processionsoccur around it. Today people still pour into the townduring Ashura, both to participate inmajalis and tra-ditional mourning processions and to watch whathas become a spectacle. For another description ofAshura in Nabatieh, see A. R. Norton and Ali Safa,Ashura in Nabatiyye,Middle East Insight 15 (2000):2128.

27. During Ashura in Nabatieh in 2000, I did see sixwomen who had participated in latam. My hostsin Nabatieh seemed as surprised as I was to seethis; their explanation was that these women had

probably shed their blood in fulfillment of vowsmadeearlier in the year.

28. Given the strict gender segregation seen in manyShii communities with regard to religious rituale.g., Hegland, Two Images of Husain; Hegland, Is-lamic Revival; Mary Elaine Hegland, Flagellationand Fundamentalism: (Trans)formingMeaning, Iden-tity, and Gender through Pakistani Womens Ritu-als of Mourning, American Ethnologist 25 (1998):24066; Hegland, The Power Paradox in MuslimWomens Majales: North-West Pakistani MourningRituals as Sites of Contestation over Religious Politics,



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As the revolutionary Shii Islamic move-ment in Lebanon took shape and grew in pop-ularity, the shedding of blood while performinglatam was criticized as un-Islamic because it in-volves purposely injuring oneself. This echoedthe criticisms put forth by al-Amin in the 1920s,and, interestingly, al-Amins work was repub-lished in Beirut in the early 1970s,29 just as theseeds of the Islamic movement were beginningto germinate. A few of my interlocutors knewabout al-Amins writings and referred to themas finally being implemented in the commu-nity. Eventually, following the lead of Iran,30

Lebanese Shii clerics issued fatwas condemn-ing the practice as un-Islamic, and Hizbullahbanned it outright in the mid-1990s.31

In Lebanon, this was accompanied by callsfor those who feel the need to shed theirblood during Ashura to do so for the com-munity good, by instead donating blood to lo-cal bloodbanks.32 Indeed, the Islamic HealthCommittees offices in the southern suburbsof Beirut report receiving so many blood do-nations during Ashura that they have a largesurplus each year immediately after the com-memoration and that over the past five yearsdonations during this time have increased ex-ponentially. In Nabatieh itself, Hizbullah has

set up a blood donation center on the tenth ofMuharram since 1998, attracting over five hun-dred donors in 2000.33

A sharp contrast to traditional masirat andlatam is presented by Hizbullahs authenticatedmasirat, which take place each year in severalareas of Lebanon, including the southern sub-urbs of Beirut, Nabatieh, and Baalbek in theBeqaa.34 These masirat exhibit military order:they generally begin with several large imagesand banners, which are followed by large or-ganized groups of men and boys performinglatam, scout groups carrying banners and flagswith Ashura sayings, cars, or floats depictingscenes related to Karbala or the Islamic Resis-tance, and groups of Hizbullah-affiliated reli-gious leaders, and elected officials, all of whichis followed by a general marching of men andboys demonstrating solidarity with both theparty and Husayn. Organized groups of girlsand women follow, and then comes a generalcrowd of women, many of them pushing babiesand young children, all dressed in black, in car-riages, expressing their solidarity.35

The men and boys performing latam areorganized by age and dressed uniformly asscouts or entirely in black. They march in threeneat rows behind a microphone-bearing leader,

Ethnicity, and Gender, Signs: Journal of Women inCulture and Society 23 (1998): 392428; ElizabethW. Fernea, Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography ofan Iraqi Village (New York: Anchor, 1965); Robert A.Fernea and Elizabeth W. Fernea, Variation in Reli-gious Observance among Islamic Women, in Schol-ars, Saints, and Sufis in Muslim Religious Institutions

in the Middle East since 1500, ed. Nikki R. Keddie(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 385401; Azam Torab, Piety as Gendered Agency: A Studyof Jalaseh Ritual Discourse in an Urban Neighbor-hood in Iran, Journal of the Royal AnthropologicalInstitute 2 (1996): 23552; David Pinault,Horse of Kar-bala: Muslim Devotional Life in India (New York: Pal-grave, 2001)it is worthmaking the small point herethat the less strict gendering of Lebanese society isreflected in Lebanese Shii ritual. While majalis aregender segregatedeither with womens and mensmajalis held separately or with women seated in aseparate section of the building or room (e.g., in theHizbullah public majalis, women fill the rear half ofthe tent and men sit in the front half)men andwomen mix relatively freely outside while watchingmasirat. This may be particularly true of traditionalAshura, as several older informants expressed lookingforward to Ashura in Nabatieh each year during theiryouth because of the carnavalesque atmosphereand the freedom they had to walk around the townand interact with members of the opposite sex.

29. Ende, Flagellations of Muharram.

30. Khomeini frowned on the practice before hisdeath in 1989, and Khamenei officially condemnedshedding blood during Muharram rituals in a 1994fatwa, citing not only self-injury but also the nega-tive image of Islam that these rituals project bothwithin and outside the Islamic community. SeeHouchang Chehabi, Ardabil Becomes a Province:Center-Periphery Relations in Iran, InternationalJournal of Middle East Studies 29 (1997): 23553; andPinault, Horse of Karbala.

31. Each year just before Ashura, religious leadersreiterate their opposition to traditional latam. Re-cently, even political leaders, including Nabih Berri,the leader of Harakat Amal, have taken a public standagainst it. But the practice persists, and there remainthose who support it as an appropriate form.

32. The call for people to go to blood banks insteadof shedding their own blood is also noted in Pinaultsdiscussion of local criticism to self-flagellation dur-ing Muharram in India in Horse of Karbala, and inVernon Schubel, Religious Performance in Contem-porary Islam: Shii Devotional Rituals in South Asia

(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993).

33. Nicholas Blanford, One Way or the Other, AshuraBrings Blood, Daily Star, Beirut, www.dailystar.com.lb/05 04 01/art2.htm.

34. Tensions are often high between Hizbullah andthe other Lebanese Shii political party, Harakat Amal,during Ashura in Nabatieh, occasionally resulting inviolence. Those performing traditional latam some-times wear Amal clothing or bandannas, settingthem even further apart from Hizbullah. My localhosts at the Nabatieh commemoration in 2000 ex-pressed frustration at how Ashura has been takenout of the hands of the people of Nabatieh, it hasbeen made so political. Since 2003, there has beenan agreement forbidding political signs and symbolsat theNabatieh processions, which have instead beenorganized by an independent local nonaffiliated or-ganization.

35. In some cases, particularly if a child is ill, a womanmay vow to walk with her child in the procession ifher supplications for the health of her child are an-swered.



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1 2 9who initiates nadbat, lamentation songs or ele-gies, and chants, and ensures that the groupsperform latam in perfect unison so that it pro-vides a percussive accompaniment. Crucially,the style of latam performed does not involveblood;36 instead, those performing it begin byswinging both arms downward, then up, thenout away from their bodies, and finally in tostrike their chests with their hands.37 This isdone to a four-count rhythm so that on everyfourth beat the sound of hands striking chestsresonates loudly.

Another striking difference is that womenare no longer relegated to an observationalrole. In addition to condemning traditionalforms of latam, the mobilizing Lebanese Shiimovement, in typical fashion, called on womento participate actively and publicly in Ashuracommemorations, as well as in the communitymore generally.38 Authenticatedmasirat includewomen and girls, dressed in full abaya (Iranian-style long black robe and head covering) andorganized by age in ordered groups similar tothose of the men. The womens groups do notperform latam, but each group is led in chants,or nadbat (elegies), by a leader. Young girlsmay carry photographs of martyrs, generally as-sumed to be their fathers or brothers, floweredwreaths with martyrs names on them, or handsrepresenting the cut-off hands of Abbas.39 Of-ten, one group of young women will walk to-gether, sometimes in chains, with their facescompletely covered, representing the women in

the Imams party who were taken captive by theCaliph Yazids army. Like the authenticated styleof latam, the active participation of women inthe masirat is viewed by many Shii Muslims asmore authentic with regard to both history andIslam. It is also an apt symbolic representationof the reverberations of Zaynabs example inthe lives of pious women, a point that I returnto below.

MeaningAs can be inferred from the descriptions oftraditional-style majalis and latam, the emotionssurrounding Ashura commemorated in this wayexpress both grief and regret. Tears shed for themartyrs of Karbala are tears that are mustahabb,or religiously commendable. It is believed thatboth evoking these tears and shedding themare acts that bring ajr (divine reward)40 andthat may increase ones chances of enteringheaven.41 Blood spilled in memory of the eventsof Karbala is similarly an embodied demonstra-tion of grief and an empathetic expression ofsolidarity with the Imams pain and sorrow. Itcan also be an expression of regret or remorse.42

Some of those who perform the traditional styleof latam explain that this demonstrates their re-gret for not being at Karbala with the Imamareference to those Shiis who originally calledon the Imam to come and lead their revolution,but who then failed to arrive at Karbala in timeto either protect the Imam or stand and die withhim.

36. Some of those who view self-bleeding as un-Islamic only use the standard Arabic term latam torefer to the authenticated form of the practice, tofurther distinguish between styles that do and donot involve the shedding of blood. They then referto the style involving blood only by the colloquialphrase hitting haydar. Also, in spoken Arabic, au-thenticated latam is often simply described by theverb nadab, to mourn or lament, with context indi-cating the specific act that is referred to (e.g., strikingoneself versus singing an elegy).

37. This specific style of latam is a hybrid of faster-paced Iranian and slower Iraqi styles and seems tohave become the dominant style of latam for Hizbul-lah as well as followers of Fadlullah since 1995.

38. The classic examples of womens mobilizationas part of larger national or religious revolution-ary or resistance movements are Iran and Algeria.See also Julie Peteet, Gender in Crisis: Women andthe Palestinian Resistance Movement (New York:Columbia University Press, 1996), on women and the

Palestinian national resistance; and Hegland, PowerParadox, on women in the Pakistani Shii Islamistmovement.

39. Abu al-Fadl Abbas is the brother of Husayn andZaynab, whose hands were cut off when he was mar-tyred at Karbala. The majlis commemorating him isone of the most moving and holds special meaningfor women and girls who have lost male kin in theResistance, as Abbas was the special kafil (supporter)of Zaynab.

40. As used in common parlance in this community,ajr denotes divine recompenseafterlife credits onecan accumulate through good deeds, among themmourning Husayn, that will be added up on Judg-ment Day.

41. For detailed discussions of the redemptive and in-tercessory importance ofmourning the events of Kar-bala in Shiism, see Ayoub, Redemptive Suffering, andPinault, Shiites andHorse of Karbala. See also Aghaie,Karbala Narrative, and Schubel, Religious Perfor-mance.

42. Forms of latam that draw blood, including flagel-lation, are often seen as embodiments of grief lead-ing to intercession or as the demonstration of solidar-ity with the Imam. Vernon Schubel, The MuharramMajlis: The Role of a Ritual in the Preservation ofShia Identity, in Muslim Families in North America,ed. Earle H. Waugh, Sharon McIrvin Abu-Laban, andRegula Burckhardt Qureshi (Edmonton, Canada: Uni-versity of Alberta Press, 1991), 11831, expresses thisclearly: This is part of the reason behind such actsas flagellation and firewalkinga desire to demon-strate physically the willingness to suffer the kinds ofwounds that would have been incurred at Karbala.I would add regret to these meaningsregret stem-ming from an identification with the Shia from Kufawho did not stand with Husayn, but also encompass-ing a generalized remorse for all the times in ones lifethat one did not live up to Husayns example.



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In the context of pre-1970s Lebanon,when Shii Muslims were the least politically or-ganized group in the country, all of these mean-ings can be seen as stemming from the generalpolitical quietism ofmost of the Lebanese Shia.Even al-Amin, in his attempts at reform in the1920s, did not criticize weeping (though hecriticized blood) and in fact encouraged it asan expression of grief, regret, and identifica-tion with Husayn and the Shii collective, aswell as for its salvatory effects.43 The emphasisduring Ashura was on individual religious ex-periences of mourning and regret, embodiedthrough tears and blood, as well as on the re-inforcement of a sense of community identitybuilt around collective mourning and sufferingrather than political activism.44 While at firstglance the association of blood and quietismmay seem contradictory, in this instance, theshedding of blood is directed at the self, ratherthan outward, implying a personal expressionof grief, an internal struggle with regret, and thepotential for individual salvation, rather thancollective political or social action.45

It is less clear whether traditional com-memorations since the Shii Islamic mobiliza-tion carry the same connotations of quietismcertainly for some participants they do, whilefor others tears and blood demonstrate theirreadiness for self-sacrifice for the community.The latter view was expressed by some who de-fend the traditional form of commemorationtoday. I watched the Ashura masira in Nabatiehin 2000 from a friends very crowded first-floor balcony. Many of the people watchingand participating with their tears around mecommented that the display of self-injuriouslatam was a demonstration of the readiness oftheir youth to defend the community and fightagainst the Israeli occupation.

Yet from the perspective of those who ad-vocate for authenticated meanings and prac-tices, the blood and tears of traditional Ashuracommemorations are both un-Islamic and pas-sive: Too much crying leads to personalitieswho crythe Shia will become equated withcrying, the Shia will take on crying as a culturaltrait, and this is not a good thing, it is wrong.Emotions are necessary, but they should be un-derstood as a way of arriving at learning thelesson of Husayn. The heart should be used toreach the head, not as an endpoint in and ofitself.46

For many in this community, this is a re-flection of Fadlullahs views on the matter. Asexplained to me by another sheikh at Fadlul-lahs office, the Sayyids campaign to reformAshura involves several issues. First, he empha-sizes choosing appropriate, that is, educatedand cultured (muthaqqaf ), reciters and ap-propriate (logical and without mythology andexaggeration) material for majalis.47 He alsosuggests considering alternate forms of com-memoration, moving beyond the recitations toinclude plays and art that teach the lesson ofImam Husayn. Basic to the Sayyids reforms arethe discouragement of the shawaib (defects orimpurities) of Ashura, referring to the sheddingof blood during latam. The final aspect of hisreform, and one that Fadlullah is one of thefew religious leaders to espouse, is a criticismof the act of crying itself, as reflected in theabove statements of some of the participants inauthenticated Ashura.

Fadlullahs views on these issues are lo-cated toward the far end of the authenticationspectrum and are seen as too extreme by somewho advocate authentic Islam, especially someHizbullah members (who often cited the view-point of Hizbullahs secretary-general Sayyid

43. Nakash, Attempt to Trace the Origin of the Ritu-als.

44. A comparison can be seen here with the contem-porary Armenian case inwhichArmenian ethnic iden-tity is in part constructed around a shared sense ofsuffering related to the unacknowledged trauma ofthe Armenian genocide.

45. Contrast Heglands observation in Islamic Re-vival? that in the community where she did researchin Iran, practices of self-injurious flagellation usingchains were revived during the revolution as a formof political resistance.

46. It is possible that Fadlullahs de-emphasis onweeping (for men and women alike) is related tothe notion Abu-Lughod discusses in Islam and theGendered Discourses that too much lamenting isnot an Islamically appropriate way of approachingdeath, because one should accept Gods will with-out protest. If so, this may be another aspect of Shiireformers concerns with how their community isviewed by outsidersin this case, Sunni Muslims.

47. In this Fadlullah is in agreement with al-Amin. De-spite al-Amins encouragement of weeping, he alsowanted to reform themajalis, calling for well-trainedreciters who could lead them without quoting falsetraditions, spreading superstitious legends (cited inEnde, Flagellations of Muharram).



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1 3 1Hasan Nasrallah in contrast).48 Their critique isthat Fadlullah has overintellectualized Ashuraand placed too much emphasis on knowledge,understanding, and application. As one Hizbul-lah member put it, Its not just a philosophy,its not just knowledge, its not just a phenom-ena, it is a feeling, an emotion, the embodiment[tajsid] of meaning. Its not just mind [aql] itis also emotion [atif ]. People have to feel withHusayn.

But Fadlullahs critics also noted that thedifference was one of emphasis, that Hizbul-lah also valued knowledge and understandingof Ashura more than those who espoused tra-ditional commemorative forms. In the view ofFadlullahs critics (who were also Hizbullahmembers), however, they sought a more equalbalance between mind and emotion. As I willshow, this may be in part because of the verypractical links between Ashura and HizbullahsIslamic Resistance.

Accompanying the discouragement of tra-ditional latam, and the historical verificationand shift in emphasis of the majalis, was a redi-rection of the message of Ashura outward, shift-ing the meaning from one of mourning, regret,and salvation to a revolutionary lesson that em-phasized action against oppression.49 This is notto say that notions of ajr and personal salva-tion have been stripped from Ashura, or thatthere was no element of community identityin the traditional commemorations, but ratherthat the primary emphasis and tone of the com-memorations have undergone a fundamentalalteration. Indeed, those who espouse authen-ticated forms of Ashura insist that ajr comes

from attending or holding majalis and remem-bering Husayn, Zaynab, and those who werewith them, but not from the act of crying itself.The affective and the collective coexist in allAshura commemorationsthe former locatedin the private emotional experience of piety,and the latter bridging the common groundof culturally mediated shared experiences andmeaningsbut their proportion and orderingare being shifted.

In the context of war and deprivation, asthe Lebanese Shii Islamicmovementmobilizedsocially andmilitarily, the message of revolutionin the events of Muharram was highlighted.50

The energy and emotive power located in thecommemorations were redirected and focusedonto a shared set of goals. The emphasis onthe importance of historical accuracy and evi-dence was key to this process. When the mythswere stripped away and only the authentic his-torical record remained, the liberatory messageof Ashura was highlighted. Authentic historydemonstrated that the battle and martyrdom ofthe Imam took place in a context of revolution.

As understood by pious Shii Muslims, therevolution of Imam Husayn was a moral rev-olution, one in which the fundamental lessonwas that one must always stand up to ones op-pressor and that only through resistance is free-dom possible. Hajjeh Fatima, a reciter, definedthe revolutionary lesson of Karbala to me asin every era there is an oppressor and an op-pressed. This lesson was explained to me againand again, often in terms that exploded spatialand temporal boundaries, asHajjeh Fatima con-tinued:

48. More evidence of Fadlullahs views on Ashuracan be seen in his sermonswhich revolve aroundAshura during the commemoration each year, onthe fortieth memorial of Husayns death, andat other times as well. These are available (inArabic and sometimes English) on his Web site:www.bayynat.org.

49. Fischer describes this process in detail for the Ira-nian revolution, which he characterizes as the ulti-mate passion play of the Karbala paradigm, shift-ing from a passive witnessing of weeping for Husaynand waiting for the twelfth Imam to an active wit-nessing of fighting and working for the overthrow oftyranny (Iran, 183; see alsoHegland, Islamic Revival?Interestingly, in the context Hegland discusses, self-injurious forms of flagellation were revived as part

of the process of transformation of Shiism to revolu-tionary). Fischer goes on to argue that after the rev-olutions success, a shift occurred away from the em-phasis on Husayn as the symbol of protest againsttyranny to Ali as the symbol of constructive govern-ment and Muhammad as the symbol of universal-ism (Iran, 213). It remains to be seenwhat, if any, sim-ilar changes occur in Lebanon with the liberation ofmost of the south from Israeli occupation in 2000.

50. Again, the success of the Islamic Revolution in Iranand what Hegland calls the Imam Husain as Exam-ple framework (Two Images of Husain) fueled thisreinterpretation in the Lebanese context. Support-ers and members of Hizbullah persist in using theterm revolutionary to discuss their goals as well asthose of Husayn at Karbalathis despite Hizbullahs

official disavowal of the goal of establishing an Is-lamic state in Lebanon during the 1992 election cam-paigns. The revolutionary or political meanings anduses of the Karbala paradigm in various contexts havealso been discussed by Aghaie, Karbala Narrative;Mary-Jo Delvecchio Good and Byron J. Good, Ritual,the State, and the Transformation of Emotional Dis-course in Iranian Society, Culture, Medicine, and Psy-chiatry 12 (1988): 4363; Hegland, Two Images ofHusain; Momen, Introduction to Shii Islam; Ked-die, Iran and the Muslim World; Roy Mottahedeh,The Mantle of the Prophet: Religious and Politics in

Iran (New York: Pantheon, 1985); Peters, Muslim Pas-sion Play; and Gustav Thaiss, Religious Symbolismand Social Change: The Drama of Husain, in Keddie,Scholars, Saints, and Sufis in Muslim Religious Insti-

tutions, 34966, among others.



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They [themajalis] remind us also that there is al-ways something called the oppressor and some-thing called the oppressed. And this history al-ways repeats itself, throughout all the eras, therewas never a time when there wasnt an oppres-sor and people who were oppressed. . . . So theremembrance of Ashura reminds us of this al-ways, so that we will never forget . . . that peo-ple should always have the spirit of revolutionagainst oppression, in all its faces, no matterwhat its identity. . . . Oppression doesnt have aspecific identity, it is general, it exists all overthe world, in all the confessions, in all the reli-gions, it is not limited. People should have thisspirit of revolution against oppression becausetime repeats itself, history repeats itself, and inevery age there is injustice.

In the words of another of my interlocu-tors, a member of Hizbullah: Ashura is theenlivening/revival [ihya] of revolution. Thisman, Hajjeh Fatima, and every single pious ShiiMuslim with whom I spoke emphasized the uni-versality and the importance of the message ofAshura. Abad karbala tarikhiyya [the dimen-sions of Karbala are historical], the Hizbul-lah member said passionately; without Karbalathere would be no revolution! Karbala is for allthe world, what Husayn did was stand againstoppression!

The shift in the meaning of Ashura fromthe soteriological to the revolutionary suggestsa parallel shift in notions of temporality. Tra-ditional Ashura commemorations involve reex-periencing the battle of Karbala each year, asthough one were there with the Imam; in asense, time is captured at this essential and es-sentializingmoment in Shii history. In contrast,the emphasis of authenticated commemora-tions on the revolutionary implies lineal tempo-ral change, lessons to be learned from historybut applied toward the future. To apply theselessons, one must actively participate in the bet-terment of ones community. I will return to thisactivism-oriented stance, after first touching onthe emergence of authenticated Ashura and itsaccompanyingmessage in public spaces and dis-courses.

Living Authenticated AshuraAshura in Public Spaces and DiscoursesAuthenticated forms of Ashura commemora-tion have become the standard in the south-ern suburbs of Beirut among Shiis who followFadlullah as their marja al-taqlid or supportHizbullah.51 These include both privately andpublicly held majalis, usually accompanied byloudspeakers and microphones that guaranteethat they will be heard throughout neighbor-hoods. The numbers and levels of attendance atboth have increased dramatically over the pastten years. In addition to public majalis held inmosques and husayniyyat, since the mid-1990smajalis have been held in tents constructed byHizbullah andHarakat Amal in parking lots andother empty spaces around Beirut and its south-ern suburbs. Most prominent among them isthe main Hizbullah tent from which eveningmajalis have been broadcast over the partysAl-Manar television station since 1995, andwhere Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah speaks on alter-nate nights. Additionally, according to Hizbul-lahs weekly newspaper, no less than fifty-oneofficial Hizbullah-sponsored majalis were heldin Beirut alone in 2001.52 While it is difficultto estimate attendance at these majalis, ma-jor Lebanese newspapers agree that severalhundred thousand persons participated in the2000 and 2001 tenth-day processions, while Al-Manar television estimated 200,000 attendeesin 2001.

The visual environment of the southernsuburbs is markedly altered during Ashura aswell. Black banners hang from buildings andbalconies and are strung across roads and at-tached to streetlights and electrical poles. Writ-ten on these banners are texts commemo-rating the martyrdom of Husayn: sayings ofthe Prophet, Quranic verses, or quotes fromKhomeini and other important figures, all ofwhich highlight the importance of Ashura andsometimes relate this history to the Israeli oc-cupation of Lebanon and Hizbullahs Islamic

51. Each ShiiMuslimmust choose a religious leader tofollow as hismarja al-taqlid, or source of emulationin religious matters. Fadlullah is the most prominentmarja in Lebanon today. Authenticated Ashura is notuncontested in the southern suburbs of Beirut or inLebanon. See note 5.

52. Majalis aza fi beirut wa al-junub wa al-Bekaa,Al-Ahd, 30 March 2001, 10.



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1 3 3Resistance.53 An aura of mourning is palpable;people speak quietly, and laughter is frownedupon. Many make an effort to dress in blackor other somber colors; indeed, the prepon-derance of black everywhere strikingly distin-guishes the southern suburbs of Beirut from therest of the city during Muharram.

The spread and growth of Ashura com-memorations indicate a broader public expo-sure to and participation in the articulation anduse of authenticated Ashura discourses as wellas in the production of authenticity itself. Oneaspect of this involves new Shii religious andpolitical mass media, includingHizbullahs tele-vision and radio stations and the radio stationaffiliated with Sayyid Fadlullah. While these me-dia provide wider access to the officially pro-duced discourses of sayyids and sheikhs, theyalso afford wider participation in the produc-tion of Ashura discourses, through a plethora ofcall-in radio shows for both adults and childrenand television ranging from Karbala-inspiredserials to documentaries to specials about po-etry devoted to Ashura. For example, one ra-dio program addressed to children asked ques-tions about the Ashura history, for example,how many people went with Imam Husayn toKarbala? Children then called in and receivedprizes for correct answers.54

Another crucial component of the artic-ulation of authenticated Ashura discourses in-volves informal conversations, daily talk amongpious women and men. These conversationscontributed to the authentication of particu-lar Ashura narratives. For women in particu-lar, participation in the authentication processis in keeping with Zaynabs reformulated roleat Karbalathat of bearer of the message ofrevolution to others. Whether over coffee in aneighbors kitchen, or en route to or from amajlis with a cousin or friend, women often de-

bated the historical accuracy of details of theevents of Karbala.55 For example, sitting on thebalcony one afternoon, Aziza and her neighbordiscussed at length whether it could be corrobo-rated thatas the reciter of a majlis the day be-fore had depictedHusayn had indeed givenhis young daughter Ruqayya a cup before hisdeath, telling her that it would turn black insideif he were killed. Some of these conversationswere sparked by a listeners skepticism toward aspecific reciter, others triggered by discord be-tween the version of an episode recited in a ma-jlis just attended and the version broadcast overthe radio in the car on the way home.

Conversations like this one were com-mon and confirmed the continual process bywhich authenticated Ashura is shaped. Herewe again see the difference between authen-tication linked to the Shii Islamic movementand the attempts at reform made by al-Aminin the 1920s. Public participation in the au-thentication process is one way in which ImamHusayn remains alive for my interlocutors.Another way is through the translation of themessage and values taught in the commemora-tions into models for contemporary daily life.Yitzhak Nakash notes that in Ashura the worldas lived and the world as imagined are fusedtogether.56 The conclusion of this article ex-plores that fusion, especially the manifestationof the models of Husayn and Zaynab in the livesof pious Shii men and women today.

Sacrificing Blood, Sacrificing SweatThe most obvious parallels between Ashura andcurrently lived experience for many pious ShiiMuslims in Lebanon are with the Islamic Re-sistance. Indeed, the history of the battle ofKarbala is explicitly linked to contemporary in-stances of injustice and oppression in Lebanon,

53. Despite Israeli withdrawal in May 2000, the bor-der is still disputed by Hizbullah, Lebanon, and Syria;Israeli planes continue to break the sound barrier overLebanon; and both sides held prisoners until the ex-change that took place in early 2004. However, activeviolence along the border has subsided significantly.

54. As Eickelman and Anderson discuss, these me-dia become more participatory as the asymmetriesbetween producers and consumers are reduced andthe boundaries between public and private com-munication that once seemed clear become blurred

(Dale F. Eickelman and JohnW. Anderson, RedefiningMuslim Publics, in New Media in the Muslim World[Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999], 4). Inthis case, this blurring occurs as telephone calls bringconversations that were once privately held into thepublic arena via radio call-in shows.

55. While some of these conversations no doubt wereprompted by the necessity of assuring that the an-thropologist present recorded the correct version ofthe Imams martyrdom, as indeed I was urged to do,heated conversations during which I was not presentwere frequently related to me after the fact, and onseveral occasions I entered into discussions ofmajalisdetails already in progress.

56. Nakash, Attempt to Trace the Origin of the Ritu-als, 162.



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especially the Israeli occupation.57 While de-scribing her experience of the day that formerhead of Hizbullah Sayyid Abbas al-Musawi wasmartyred along with his wife and young son,one of my interlocutors unequivocally articu-lated her association of Ashura history with thepresent:

I was in the South, and it was a beautiful day, coldand sunny, like today. My son was a baby, andthey told me it was good to walk him in the sun-shine, so I went outside to walk with him. ThenI saw a plane. It was normal in that area, the Is-raelis flew over us many times a day, and theywere bombing regularly. But this plane flew outtoward the coast, and, I dont know why, or whatwas different about it, but suddenly, suddenly, itoccurred to me that this plane was from Yazid!That this was Yazid, and how Yazid didnt careabout children; how he killed Sayyida Zaynabsyoung child without caring. And suddenly, whenthis occurred to me, I dont know how it did,but I held my son close and ran back into thehouse quickly with him. I felt so scared for him,as though this plane was going to kill my son.And later that day I learned that that same plane,the same plane that I had seen was the plane thatkilled Sayyid Abbas and his son.

Just as Yazid was equated with Israelanassociation made even more real in 1983 whenthe Israeli army disrupted the Ashura commem-orations in Nabatiehthe Islamic Resistancewas equated with Husayn. The most blatant as-sociations were the direct ones made by Hizbul-lah. For example, at the end of a play depict-ing what happened to the women at Karbalaafter Husayns martyrdomperformed by stu-dents at one of theHizbullah schools in the areaand sponsored by the womens committee ofHizbullahsegments of video from Al-Manartelevision were shown. Aside from clips of theAshura masira and of Nasrallah speaking, therewere scenes of Islamic Resistance operations,with a booming voice-over that stated, This isour Karbala, this is our Husayn, we live on, Kar-bala lives on in the Lebanese Resistance.

My interlocutors who were not in Hizbul-lah also noted the importance of Ashura tothe Resistance. One woman explained that just

as Husayn fought Yazid, the Resistance wouldbe able to defeat Israel, the largest occupyingpower in the world. This statement was echoedby a pious man in an anecdote he told about hisresponse to a radio journalist who once askedhim, What did Husayn do?:

In that way, a skeptic, he asked me, What didHusayn do? I was silent for a while, I said, letsfinish our coffee first. And I said to him after wefinished our coffee, If I want to tell you on theair what I know about who Husayn was, it willtake hours, and if I want to go and do somemoreresearch and then tell you, it will take threemonths. But you are asking what Husayn did?I said, He made Jabal Safi and the Western Be-qaa, he is sitting up there. And he shut up. Andthey all applauded me.

The two places this man mentionsJabalSafi and the Western Beqaawere Israeli out-posts taken by the Islamic Resistance. All thesestatements linking or even equating the battleof Karbala with the Resistance explicitly high-light the overlap of Husayn and the Resistancefighters. For pious Shii men, Imam Husayn isthe ideal role model. What that means may dif-fer by context, but in Lebanon since the early1980s it has clearly meant participation in theResistance. This participation may be eithermilitary or in a supportive rolewhether re-building homes destroyed in Israeli attacks orteaching in a hawza (theological school), just tocite two of the many possibilitiesdependingon ones age, abilities, and disposition.

My field research did not include di-rect participation-observation of Resistance ac-tivities and none of my interlocutorsto myknowledgewere currently fighters with theResistance. The perspective I am able to providehere is rather that of the wider community of pi-ous Shii Muslims and other supporters of theResistance in the southern suburbs of Beirut.My interlocutors held martyrs and their fami-lies in the highest esteem and frequently spokeabout how they had made the greatest possiblesacrifice for the freedom and integrity of theircommunity. Martyrs names are announced and

57. Another highly relevant parallel can be seen in thecurrent U.S. occupation of Iraq. In his speech on thefortieth-day commemoration of Husaynsmartyrdomin spring of 2003, Nasrallah stated, Why are these

millions going to Karbala? To be inspired by Husaynsspirit of revolution to fight injustice (quoted in theDaily Star, 23 April 2003).



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1 3 5known in the community. They are memori-alized in photographs that line the streets ofthe southern suburbs of Beirut, special exhibi-tions and newspapers, and on radio and televi-sion. Every day Hizbullahs radio station lists thenames and basic information for those who diedon that day in history. Al-Manar television corre-spondents interview martyrs familieswho al-ways speak of their pride and faithand thestation sometimes broadcasts video messagestaped by the martyr before his death. Exhibitsdisplay writings and other artifacts of martyrs,which are collected by a special department atthe Martyrs Association.58

None of this is very different from theesteem in which members of the U.S. armedforces are held when they too give their lives fortheir community. The names and photographsof soldiers killed in action are broadcast on lo-cal television, and their families are sometimesinterviewed, speaking of them with pride. Lo-cal memorial ceremonies are held, as well as na-tional ceremonies in Washington, DC. Becausethe wars fought by the U.S. armed forces takeplace in faraway places, and because of the scaleof the United States more generally, it is easyto forget how personal war is. In the southernsuburbs of Beirut, and Lebanonmore generally,the places seen on television are familiar andthe faces are often recognized.

Two small differences that could be sug-gested are the scale and boundaries of the com-munities and the motivations underlying thesoldiers sacrifices. In the first case, it could beargued that the community of the U.S. armedforces is a nation-state, while that of the IslamicResistance can instead be defined on either alocal or a transnational level. However, the ulti-mate goal of the Islamic Resistance is the libera-tion of an occupied nation-state, and especiallyin recent years it has cast itselfand been castby the Lebanese stateas a national resistancemovement.

The other potential difference, and theone emphasized most often in Western media,

involves the fundamental motivations for self-sacrifice and the notion of going willingly andknowingly to ones death. This is not the placefor a detailed comparison of soldiers who diein wars and those who sacrifice themselves inmartyrdom operations, commonly referred toas suicide bombings, so I limit myself to a cou-ple brief points. First, not all Resistance martyrsdie in martyrdom operations. Those who wantto do a martyrdom operation volunteer, and,if chosen, they are eventually instructed as towhether and when they will conduct their at-tack. Most martyrs, however, are killed in ac-tion and not as part of a planned martyrdomoperation. In the past, there were multiple mar-tyrs from some families, but in recent years,once one son dies, his brothers can no longerfight with the Resistance.

Second, the issue of religious motivationis complex. For fighters with the Islamic Re-sistance, the model of Imam Husayn providesinspirationbecause it is believed by many thathe went to Karbala with foreknowledge of hisimminent death and yet went unafraid and withfaith, knowing that his death was part of agreater victory.59 Pious Shii men who chooseto sacrifice themselves inmartyrdom operationsdo have absolute faith in the value of theirdeaths and in the afterlife. I do not know aboutthe faith of those in the U.S. armed forces,though I imagine that it varies widely. However,it is important to note that within Lebanon,fighters with the Islamic Resistance are not theonly people who have undertaken martyrdomoperations. As we are seeing in Palestine today,resistance fighters with secular organizationsalso sacrifice themselves for their nation. InLebanon, martyrdom operations against Israelimilitary targets have been carried out by Pales-tinian resistance groups, the Syrian Social Na-tionalist Party, the Lebanese Communist Party,the Arab Socialist Baath Party, and the Progres-sive Socialist Party, in addition to Hizbullah andHarakat Amal.60

58. This department is filled with binders that holdmartyrs last statements, letters, essays, journal en-tries, philosophical writings, and poetry. Most of thedocuments were handwritten, some were typed, anda few had been published. One martyr had written aplay.

59. Many Shii Muslims believe that Husayns martyr-dom has been preordained from the time of Adamand tell the history as such.

60. Asad AbuKhalil, Ideology and Practice of Hizbal-lah in Lebanon: Islamization of Leninist Organiza-tional Principles, Middle Eastern Studies 27 (1991):390403.



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While some martyrs in both the Lebaneseandas highlighted in recent news reportsthe Palestinian resistances have been women,the translation of Husayns martyrdom into amodel for military participation in HizbullahsIslamic Resistance in Lebanon is directed ex-clusively at men. This is not to say that Husayndoes not also provide a model for women withregard to the sacrifice he made for the Muslimcommunity. However, for women, the paragonof piety and sacrifice that emerges from Ashurais embodied instead in Sayyida Zaynab.

In the reformulation of Zaynabs behav-ior at Karbala described above, three charac-teristics are emphasized: her strength of mind,her compassion and dedication to others, andher courage to speak. The first of these is espe-cially important to womens expected roles asthe mothers, wives, or sisters of martyrs. My in-terlocutors who had lost loved ones to the Re-sistance frequently pointed to Zaynabs abilityto endure the loss of all the men in her family.They explained that they coped with their griefby emulating the equanimity of Zaynab duringand after the battle of Karbala. They comparedtheir losses to hers and, in so doing, expressedfeeling that they had lost little in comparison:We didnt lose everyone, like Sayyida Zaynabdid. We have to say, if she could go on, why cantwe? And we at least have role models; there isacknowledgment in society for the mothers ofmartyrs, the Sayyida had none of that.

Being the motheror the wife or sisterof a martyr is valued among pious Shii Mus-lims and supporters of the Resistance, andmanywhose male family members are martyred carrytheir loss as an honor. Yet although the modelof Zaynab provides strength for women who

have lost loved ones to the Resistance, this isnot the area in which Zaynabs positive qualitiesare most frequently stressed. Significantly, themodel of Zaynaband particularly her compas-sion and her outspokennesswas understoodto be a model for public activism among my in-terlocutors, an important addition to the rela-tively passive role of mother of a martyr oftendelegated to women in nationalist and religiousstruggles.61 Women are utilizing the salient ex-ample of Zaynab as an outspoken, strong, andcompassionate activist to push the boundariesof what is acceptable and expectable for piousLebanese Shii women.62 We have seen this newemphasis in the active participation of womenin the authenticated Ashura masirat (proces-sions). Women are also contributing to the au-thentication process itself through their dailyconversations and debates about the Ashurastory and its commemoration.

However, the primary vehicle throughwhich pious Shii women live Ashura in theirdaily lives is through public community-serviceactivities. The reinterpretation of Zaynab asable to act despite her grief and the turmoilof her surroundings plays an important rolein inspiring hundreds of women in the south-ern suburbs of Beirut to volunteer their timeand energya sacrifice of sweatfor the wel-fare of their community.63 More than merelya role model, Zaynab has become an idealizedstandard of behavior to which many of my in-terlocutors aspired. Those who are active par-ticipants in the welfare of the community areseen to embody the very qualities in Zaynab thatare emulatedemotional strength, outspoken-ness, and dedication to others.

61. For more on the emphasis placed on womens roleasmothers ofmartyrs, see Peteet,Gender in Crisis, onPalestinian women; and Zahra Kamalkhani,WomensIslam: Religious Practice among Women in Todays

Iran (London: Kegan Paul International, 1998), on Ira-nian women.

62. For discussions of how women use ritual settingsand activities to open new social and cultural spacesfor themselves, see Hegland, Power Paradox andFlagellation and Fundamentalism, elegant workon Peshawar womens utilization of participation inMuharram rituals for self-expression and empower-ment; and Torabs Piety as Gendered Agency, ananalysis of how Iranian women use prayer meetingsto transformgender constructs. For discussions of the

limits and expectations of gendered activism, seeSondra Hale, Gender Politics in Sudan: Islamism, So-cialism, and the State (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996);and Peteet, Gender in Crisis.

63. This is not to say that both womens participationin the community and the example set by Zaynab donot remain clearly bounded, in keeping with beliefsabout the essential nature of women as nurturing.Yet when clarifying the different natures of the sexes,Lebanese Shii women always emphasized that differ-ent did not mean differently valued. They actively es-poused gender equity (adala) as opposed to genderequality (masawa), with the former term embracing

difference and the latter entailing sameness. In do-ing so, they promoted feminist interpretations of Is-lam that emphasized what Leila Ahmad,Women andGender in Islam: Historical Roots of aModern Debate

(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), calls theethical egalitarianism of Islam. See also AnnabelleBottcher, Im Schatten des Ayatollahs: SchiitischeFeministische Theologie in Libanon am Anfang (Inthe Shadow of the Ayatollah: Shii Feminist Theol-ogy in Lebanon at the Beginning), Neue ZuericherZeitung, 7 March 2001, 5.



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1 3 7For both women and men, living authen-ticated Ashura by striving to embody the qual-ities and examples set by Zaynab and Husaynhas become a crucial aspect of piety in thiscommunity. Demonstrating ones sense of so-cial responsibility and solidarity and ones un-derstanding of the values represented in Ashurais critical before self, others, and God. From aritual emphasizing passive mourning and com-munity identity based on shared oppression,Ashura has been transformed into a commemo-ration inspiring active engagement in bringingabout social, political, and religious change. Asthis activist reminds us:

In the majalis we become renewed, we are re-minded. Society might be asleep, in deep sleep,and this school, these lessons enter them, andwake them up, say get up, help others. Get upand see the corruption, get up and see the op-pression, be careful of your society, take care ofit, become aware of your society, of yourself, ofother people, of your nation. See where yourcountry is, it is occupied! See the people of theSouth how they are suffering, how people fromall sects are fleeing, are being bombed, theirhomes are being destroyed. What is going to beyour position with regards to this? This is theschool. This is Ashura.



Living Ashura in Lebanon: Mourning Transformed to Sacrifice

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