"To see your enemy plunging in acts of disobedience to God because of you is a sufficient victory from God to you."
Thus spoke the Victorious Survivor of the bloodcurdling tragedy of Karbala, who today on the 12th of Muharram – according to a narration – departed in triumph from the mortal world on being fatally poisoned by yet another Godless Omayyad caliph (Walid ibn Abdul-Malik), 34 years after his father, Imam Husain (AS), achieved the greatest ever victory in martyrdom when the ungodly Shimr Ziljowshan savagely severed the head of Prophet Muhammad's (SAWA) grandson while still alive.
These bestial acts of disobedience of God by their dastardly enemies are undoubtedly the most glorious victories for the Prophet's Ahl al-Bayt. True to the promise of God, the Chosen of God are triumphant in every sphere of life as their devilish opponents damn themselves to perfidy by indulging in the most inhuman acts against them.
On the late afternoon of the 10th Muharram, 61 AH, when the bed-ridden Imam Zain al-Abedin (AS), awoke to the ghastly sight of his father's head mounted on a lance, he immediately saluted the Martyr of Karbala with tearful eyes and a choking voice.
This was indeed a victory for the Ahl al-Bayt for having successfully passed the divine test of martyrdom. The evening of Ashura with all its heartrending scenes of the burning of the encampment of the Prophet's Household by the Omayyad hordes and their looting of whatever meagre worldly things the noble children and womenfolk possessed, was sufficient success in the tests ordained by God for Imam Zain al-Abedin (AS).
The next morning brought more success to the 4th Infallible Successor of Prophet Muhammad (SAWA) and his equally patient aunt, Hazrat Zainab (AS), as the cowardly enemies plunged deeper and deeper into the abyss of the inferno by chaining and fettering him and the rest of survivors of the tragedy, for presentation at the court of the despicable governor of Kufa, Obaydollah ibn Ziyad.
The sermons in Damascus, of the aunt and the nephew, who vanquished the tyrant Yazid by exposing him and his sires in their true heathen colours, are outside the scope of this brief newspaper column.
Following his return to the outskirts of Medina, for the next 34 years of his life, the 4th Imam witnessed triumph after greater triumph in spreading the Word of God through prayers, supplications, admonitions, and definition of social and individual rights, including the rights of our own bodily parts upon us, while silently suffering the suffocating atmosphere, as caliph after caliph marched into the fires of hell, by indulging in the most abominable sins that included Yazid's massacre of the men of Medina and the storming of the holy Ka'ba in Mecca.
Next followed the almost decade long terrorizing of the Muslim ummah, coupled with pressures, threats and near torching alive of the male members of the noble Bani Hashem clan by the despicable Abdullah ibn Zubayr, who masqueraded as caliph in the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq, until he died an ignominious death in 73 AH near the holy Ka'ba which was burned down in the process by the infidel Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, whose bloody crimes against humanity, revived and strengthened the demonic hold on the Muslims of the self-styled Omayyad caliph, Abdur-Rahman ibn Marwan.
Imam Zain al-Abedin (AS) had to endure more trampling of the shari'ah of his ancestor the Prophet, as Arab armies swept towards the Atlantic coast of Africa and into Spain in the west, while in the east, they burst with savagery on Sindh and the lands beyond the Jaxartes River in Central Asia, while placing a ban on the conquered people from becoming Muslim, so that the regime will not be deprive of jizya levied by them on the non-Muslims.
Could there be a greater violation of the letter and spirit of the holy Qur'an?
The regime viewed him as a thorn, and thus in the year 95 AH, the 4th Imam was poisoned by Walid.
He left the world as the victorious martyr at the age of 57, but not before ensuring that the genuine teachings of the Book of God and the Sunnah of the Prophet would be carried on triumphantly after him by his son and successor, Imam Muhammad al-Baqer (AS), who in turn would bequeath this salvaging legacy to his son and subsequently grandson and progeny, with the last of them rising in the end times – by the Will of God – as Qa'em al-Mahdi (AS) to herald the grand victory of truth and Islam by establishing the global government of peace, prosperity and justice.
