180 No god but God
in the rites formalized by the Shi‘ite authorities sometime around the
mid-eighth century, and which to this day form the central rituals of
the faith.
Every year, during the first ten days of the month of Muharram
and culminating on the tenth day, or Ashura, the Shi‘ah commemo-
rate Husayn’s martyrdom through lamentation assemblies, where sto-
ries of the martyrs are read by religious specialists called zakirs, and
mourning processions, in which sacred objects belonging to Muham-
mad’s family are carried through the neighborhoods. But perhaps the
most famous rites of the Muharram ceremonies are the Shi‘ite passion
plays (ta‘ziyeh), which dramatize in detail the events of Karbala, and
the funereal processions (matam), in which participants either beat
their breasts in a rhythmic, almost mantric act of contrition, or flog
their backs with whips made of chains, all the while shouting out the
names of Hasan and Husayn, until the streets are stained with their
blood.
Despite appearances, the Shi‘ite self-flagellation ceremonies have
little in common with similar practices one finds in certain Christian
monastic orders. This is not flagellation as a solitary act of pious self-
mortification. Nor do these rituals correspond to the self-abnegation
practices of some ascetic Hindu sects, for whom pain is a means of
achieving a shift in consciousness. As Vernon Schubel, David Pinault,
Syed-Mohsen Naquvi, and nearly every other objective observer of
the Muharram ceremonies have documented, matam is meant to be a
physically painless activity: an act of communal witnessing, not a
means of scourging one’s sins. It is not pain, but the voluntary shed-
ding of blood and tears for Husayn that brings salvation. For this rea-
son, in many large cities, where the Shi‘ite funereal processions are
frowned upon by both religious and political authorities, a vigorous
campaign has been launched to replace the self-flagellation rituals
with safe and supervised donations to mobile blood banks that trail
behind the participants.
For the Shi‘ah, the Muharram rituals signify a moral choice; they
are a public statement that, in the words of one participant, “if we had
been there at Karbala we would have stood with [Husayn] and shed
our blood and died with him.” Perhaps equally important, these ritu-
als serve as an act of proselytizing. As another participant explained to