“Among the faithful are men who fulfill what they have pledged to Allah. Of them are some who have fulfilled their pledge, and of them are some who still wait and they have not changed in the least.”
As informed by the Prophet Muhammad (SAWA), who had foretold the martyrdom of his cousin, in the fasting month of Ramadhan, Imam Ali (AS) said:
"This ayah was revealed in my honour, and that of my uncle Hamzah, and my cousin Ubaydah ibn alHareth ibn Abd alMuttalib."
He said how the pledge to Allah for achieving martyrdom in the defence of Islam and humanitarian values was attained by the two (Ubaydah in the Battle of Badr and Hamzah in the Battle of Ohad), and then added:
"As for myself, I am awaiting a most painful death, when this (pointing to his beard) shall be drenched from the blood of this (pointing to his head)… and have never changed the least."
Alas, today is the eve of that tragic anniversary of the Commander of the Faithful, the Leader of the Pious, the Emblem of Justice, Imam Ali (AS).
What did Ali do to earn enmity? Who was his real enemy? Which agents did his archenemy procure against him? Why would anyone opt for the eternal fire of hell, to deprive him of his right, to spread lies against him, to harm him, or to take his life?
To find the answers to these questions, on the martyrdom anniversary of the first cousin, ward, son-in-law, and divinely-decreed vicegerent of Prophet Muhammad (SAWA), we should zoom in on Mount Noor, near Mecca, where on the 27th of Rajab, a hardly ten-year lad is all attention to the voices coming in from Cave Hera.
He hears his 40-year cousin – son of his long deceased uncle Abdullah – reciting the Revealed Words of the Lord Most High conveyed by Archangel Gabriel. Then from a distance comes the sound of moaning as if someone has everything and become despaired forever.
Prophet Muhammad (SAWA) emerges from the cave as the Almighty’s Last and Greatest Messenger, and tells his cousin that the heavy sigh that echoed following the formal entrustment of the universal message of Islam to him, was that of the devil, who has now become totally despaired of misleading the majority of the children of Adam.(Refer to Nahj al-Balagha as well as Sunni sources)
Yet Satan was not ready to give up his stratagems. He resolved to mobilize his hordes among the pagan Arabs against Prophet Muhammad (SAWA).
When the Prophet assembled the Quraish to publicly announce his message of monotheism by openly testifying to the Oneness of God, and received blank looks from the stupefied gathering, it was the testimony of the mission of Muhammad by the young Ali that sowed the first seeds of satanic sentiments in the hearts of the Arabs against the pre-teen boy.
They left the assembly mad with rage that if not for the son of Abu Taleb, the mission of the son of Abdullah would have died there and then.
The Meccans used their sons to mock and stone Muhammad, only to be frustrated by the lad Ali, who warded off the boy-assailants – most of whom returned to their homes with black eyes and broken limbs.
Satan, that Archenemy of Truth, now started working overtime to make the enmity of Ali take roots in the hearts of the polytheist Arab tramps and their sinful sires, whose plots, including the bid to assassinate the Prophet in Mecca (the Night of Hijra) and the wars subsequently imposed upon him at Badr, Ohad, Khandaq (joint venture with the Israelites), Khaybar (a wholly Israelite venture), Hunayn, etc, were all nipped in the bud – thanks to the flashing blade of Ali.
Ali not just excelled on the battlefield with his swordsmanship, but displayed his other merits as well, such as knowledge, wisdom, piety, prudence, courage, and generosity, whenever the situation demanded, be it the Peaty of Hudaibiyya, the Surrender of Mecca, the conveying of the opening ayahs of Surah Towba at the holy Ka’ba, the giving as alms of his ring while in prayer, and the Mubahela with the Christians of Najran.
The desperate Iblis made sure that the Arab pagans who now professed Islam (lip service only) and joined the company of the Prophet as Sahaba (hypocrites at heart), would keep their enmity of Ali firmly embedded in their hearts.
The climax of their enmity towards the Most Virtuous Believer (Saleh al-Mominoun) was sealed at the historic assembly of Ghadeer-Khom, where on God’s express command the Prophet publicly proclaimed Ali as his vicegerent.
Two months and ten days after this event when the Prophet left the mortal world, the former pagans now turned hypocrites, lost no time in depriving Ali of his right of political leadership by seizing the caliphate at the gathering of Saqifa Bani Sa’da. Next they attacked his house to force him to swear allegiance to their rule, and in the process smashed down the burning door of his house upon his wife, the Prophet’s Impeccable Daughter, Hazrat Fatema Zahra (SA).
They spurned Ali’s compiling of the holy Qur’an for the first time in book-form as per the order of revelation of the ayahs, and for a quarter of a century kept him away from the political affairs of the so-called Islamic state.
In 35 AH, when the Muslim masses, fed up with the corruption and anarchy of the caliphs, begged Imam Ali (AS) to take up the reigns of the caliphate, and he reluctantly took up political rule on condition to abide only by the holy Qur’an and the Prophet’s Sunnah and Seerah, the satanic enemies indulged in open warfare against him.
The Battle of Jamal, Siffeen, and Nahrawan by the pledge-breakers, the seditionists, and the renegades, are outside the scope of this column.
In short, the pledge made to God by Imam Ali (AS) decades ago was fulfilled on the 21st of Ramadhan as his soul flew towards the ethereal heavens, following the fatal blow on the head that he had received from the poisoned sword of the Satanic Ibn Muljam on the 19th of Ramadhan, while engrossed in the Morning Prayer in the Mosque of Kufa.
