Each year, as Ashura returns, I am drawn back to the windswept plains of Karbala, where the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad (s), Imam Hussain (r), stood with a handful of companions and uttered a cry that has never faded: “Hal min nasirin yansuruni? “Is there anyone to help me?”
It is a question that echoes not only through the centuries but through the shattered homes of Gaza and the West Bank, the hunger-ravaged bombed villages of Yemen, the fractured streets of Libya, the bloodied alleys of Sudan, the Rohingya refugees from genocide, the Uighur Muslims of East Turkistan and the millions of orphans and displaced people in Afghanistan and the Central African Republic.
I think of the people of Kufa, so close to Hussain (r), who turned away in fear, in betrayal, or in silence. Today, I see the same silence—this time from rulers whose palaces gleam with oil wealth, whose alliances are sealed with Western arms and investments.
The amount is staggering more than $3.8 trillion promised to an American tyrant to American coffers, money that could have rebuilt Gaza and the rest of Palestine, healed Yemen’s wounds, fed Sudan’s hungry, and restored dignity to so many across the Muslim world. Instead, it has been spent on weapons and spectacle, on reinforcing the very systems that crush the oppressed and embolden the powerful.
Yet, the tragedy is not confined to the Arab world. The bombs that rain down on Gaza, the drones that circle over Yemen, the airstrikes that scar Iran, Sudan and Syria—these are not just engineered in the West, but paid for, protected, and justified by Western governments.
It is easy to point fingers at distant rulers, but what of those who live in the comfort of the West, whose taxes and silence help sustain these injustices? The lesson of Karbala is not for one people or one time. It is a mirror, held up to every generation, asking: Will you speak? Will you act? Or will you, too, turn away?
I am reminded of Sami Hamdi’s words, which cut through the fog of political calculation and self-interest. He addresses the powerful directly: “Ya Bin Salman, you are 36 years of age—you could be the hero of the age. You could be the new Salahuddin if you just harnessed the power you have. No one is asking for democracy; they are asking for justice and righteousness.”
And then, turning to Erdogan: “People are looking at you for hope, that maybe you might stand for a just cause when everyone else has abandoned it. But once in power, you become a Turkish nationalist, flirting with racist ideologies just to hold on to your seat.” The heartbreak, he says, is not in our powerlessness, but in our refusal to use the power we have.
What, then, is Ashura, if not a reckoning with our own moral failures? Hussain did not die for his family alone, nor for a sect, but to prevent Islam from becoming a tool of tyranny. His stand was against the silence of the masses, the betrayal of religious leaders, and the greed of those who had lost their way.
Today, that betrayal is evident in the pulpits that do not mention Gaza, in the sermons that dare not name Hussain, and in the regimes that choose palaces over people.
Ashura teaches us that silence in the face of injustice is itself a crime. It teaches us that piety without courage is hollow, that faith is not just in ritual but in resistance to oppression. It calls to all—Sunni and Shia, Arab and non-Arab, believer and fellow human being—to remember that God desires justice, dignity, and freedom for all His creation.
We are not meant to mourn Karbala only with tears. To truly honour Hussain is to act: to speak, to organize, to resist, and to refuse complicity in the erasure of Gaza, the fragmentation of Yemen, the burning of Sudan, and the silence that so many leaders—Arab and Western—have chosen.
Let us not raise another generation that knows only the slogans of faith but not its spine. Let us not repeat the treachery of Kufa. The blood of Hussain cries out still: “Those who are silent when others are oppressed are guilty of oppression themselves.” His stand reminds us that true leadership is not found in power, but in principle, not in wealth, but in witness.
Ashura is not over, and Karbala is not past. It lives in every moment we are called to choose between justice and comfort, between truth and silence. May God give us the strength to choose rightly, and the courage to make our remembrance of Hussain not just an act of mourning, but a call to action.
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