��In the Footsteps of Martyrs 179W HAT SETS THE actions of the Penitents at Karbala apart in the
history of religions is that they offer a glimpse into the ways in which
ritual, rather than myth, can fashion a faith. This is a crucial point to
bear in mind when discussing the development of Shi‘ism. As Heinz
Halm has noted, the Shi‘ah are a community born not “by the profes-
sion of belief in dogma” but rather “through the process of perform-
ing the rituals” that sprang up around the Karbala myth. Only after
these rituals had become formalized hundreds of years later did Shi‘ite
theologians reexamine and reinterpret them in order to lay the theo-
logical foundation for what was already a new religious movement.
Karbala became Shi‘ism’s Garden of Eden, with humanity’s origi-
nal sin being not disobedience to God, but unfaithfulness to God’s
moral principles. Just as the early Christians coped with Jesus’ demor-
alizing death by reinterpreting the Crucifixion as a conscious and
eternal decision of self-sacrifice, so also did the Shi‘ah claim Husayn’s
martyrdom to have been both a conscious and an eternal decision.
The Shi‘ah claim that long before Husayn was born, the events of
Karbala had been miraculously revealed to Adam, Noah, Abraham,
Moses, Muhammad, Ali, and Fatima. The Shi‘ah noted that Husayn
knew he could not defeat the Caliph, yet he deliberately chose to con-
tinue to Kufa in order to sacrifice himself for his principles and for all
generations to come. Realizing that mere force of arms could not
restore Muhammad’s vision, Husayn had planned “a complete revolu-
tion in the consciousness of the Muslim community,” to quote Husain
Jafri. In fact, as Shah Abdul Aziz has argued, Husayn’s self-sacrifice
was in reality the logical end to the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice
of his firstborn son, Ismail—the sacrifice was not revoked but post-
poned until Karbala, when Husayn willingly fulfilled it. The Shi‘ah
thus regard Husayn’s martyrdom as having completed the religion
that Abraham initiated and Muhammad revealed to the Arabs.
Based on the way in which the events of Karbala were interpreted,
there developed in Shi‘ism a distinctly Islamic theology of atonement
through sacrifice, something alien to orthodox, or Sunni, Islam. “A
tear shed for Husayn washes away a hundred sins,” the Shi‘ah say.
This concept, called ‘aza, or “mourning,” achieved its full expression