https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WEIK5JUGb8
The above nauha, recited by the Imamia Students’ Organization a few years ago, is titled after a slogan (translated as ‘Every day is Ashura, Every place is Karbala’) which some scholars have claimed was first articulated in the lead-up to the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Given ISO’s open affiliation with the Office of the Supreme Leader in Iran, then, it is not surprising that ISO subscribes to this symbol as worldview. This is not to say that only affiliation with the Iranian-centric view of Twelver Shi’ism leads to a slogan like this- Tambar’s study of Alevi ritual commemoration in Turkey in 2006, for example, documents this slogan as one of the many appearing up in popular spaces dedicated for mourning. He writes, “The phrase expresses the promise of believers not only to maintain Husayn’s memory in the present day but also to seize on that memory at any and every opportunity.” So the slogan, in and of itself, has also spread far and wide from where it originated and certainly resonates with Shi’as at a popular level across geographically and culturally differentiated regions.
ISO’s nauha calls upon Twelver Shi’ites to treat every day as Ashura and every place as Karbala. It is not the only one to do so. In recent memory, Nadeem Sarwar recited a similarly titled nauha back in the 1990’s and there was a nauha released this year only by Qurban Jafri albiet it is not in Urdu.
Another nauha released this year, however, gives voice to an opposing point of view. Recited by Wajih Hasan Zaidi, it is titled La Youma Ka Youmik and it narrates a saying attributed to Hasan (second of the Twelver Shi’ite leaders and the elder brother of Husain) which says that the sacredness of Ashura and Karbala is unrivaled and that no time or place can ever meet that.
This sets up an interesting binary. One the one hand you have a reading of Karbala as a revolution and a way of life. Because of the inherent radicalness of the event, and because of more holistic cosmology in which the event is situated, Karbala is considered a momentous occasion. For a group like the ISO, Karbala represents the aspiration that all Twelver Shi’ites must actively work towards (but ultimately fall short of) achieving in their daily lives. However, the hierarchy integral to the structures Twelver Shi’ism is predicated on makes it impossible to transcend from a ‘being’ to a ‘maʿsūm’ and so despite a constant struggle, the aspirant will eventually be unsuccessful in reliving Karbala. It is fair to say, then, that this group argues vehemently for Karbala to be manifest in the actions of a Twelver Shi’ite by decimating the boundaries between sacred and profane until all that remains is Karbala and nothing else (even though such a goal may never be possible).
The other group uses the latter half of the above, or the implied argument as it is never explicitly stated, from groups like the ISO and argues that precisely because of the uniqueness of an event like Karbala, the Twelver Shi’ites must, at all times, remain cognizant of just how prestigious Karbala was. For this group, then, Karbala becomes a revered memory, a constant reminder of not just the imperfection of humanity, but also of the evil it creates, and how both of these must be combated with constant reference to Karbala. This daily struggle is internalized, however, and the rituals of piety seek inspiration from, but are not actively shaped by, the events of Karbala. Karbala, for this group, retains the ultimate sacredness within the universe. It represents a rupture that cannot be undone, and the closest a Twelver Shi’ite can come to experiencing it is through the ritual commemoration which is temporally finite and spatially restricting. The sacred for this group will remain eternally differentiated from the profane as, the group argues, it ought to.
Two groups, then, that self-identify as fitting within an identical overarching Twelver Shi’ite system draw differently on the same historical event. They evoke, from within the tradition, the same signifiers but interpret them in opposition to each other. They do not stop at avoiding an erroneous reading (by staying away from what they believe to be incorrect) but actively seek to achieve truth (by asserting their own worldviews above those that they disagree with). This articulates itself as a constant tension in forms like the nauha which, as I have argued elsewhere, provides us a fertile ground for investigation into this fascinating phenomenon. This, I believe, is good grounds to build an argument that religion is simply what people do…and nothing more.
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