Mainstream WeeklyBorn in a Shia Muslim home, we have mourned the martyrdom of Imam Husain the grandson of Prophet Mohammad in Karbala, Iraq in 680 CE, every Moharram, the first month of Hijri Calendar when Husain Ibn Ali and his band of 72 including his 6-month-old son Ali Asghar in the arms of Husain were slain by the army of Yazid the Umayyad Caliph of Syria.
Many a prophet, saints and great leaders who stood up to tyranny and torture were brutally put to death. The nailing to the Cross was the most brutal form of killing, which only Jesus Christ suffered. But the decision of Imam Husain to voluntarily kiss martyrdom by untold torture rather than submit to the tyranny of Yazid, inflicted on Husain and his small band of followers, mostly from his immediate family, just before dusk when Imam Husain was beheaded in Sijda, offering his namaz on the tenth of Moharram, after all of them including women and little children, suffered thirst and starvation, for three days from 7th Moharram and stood firm, unbending to Yazid