One feels constrained to mention here that this and other...

One feels constrained to mention here that this and other such traditions were forged by camp-followers of the Umayyads, after the martyrdom of Imam Husayn, as a part of their campaign to turn the 10th of Muharram into a day of rejoicing. These traditions are of the same genre as those which say that it was on the 10th of Muharram that Noah's ark rested on Mount Arafat, the fire became cool and safe for Abraham, and Jesus ascended to the heaven.

In the same category came the traditions exhorting the Muslims to treat 'Ashura as a festival of joy, and to store one's food-grain on this very day as it would increase one's sustenance and bring the blessings of Allah to the household. The History of the Islamic Calendar in the Light of the Hijra Hakim Muhammad Said Vol X No. 1 , Spring 1984 Reprinted, by courtesy of the editor, from Hamdard Islamicus, vol.

IV, no.3 {1981) The course of history is generally thought to be along a progressive path, but there are occasions when its progress seems to come to a standstill, and it becomes quiescent and inactive. The release of energy in such situations is converted into entropy, i.e. energy that cannot be used. Such situations and occasions are those that are opposed and are antithetical to the dynamism of history, its usual characteristic.

When man, forgetting his Creator and his Benefactor, takes to the worship of the outward phenomena of nature and begins to ascribe the attributes of Deity to man and prostrates himself before human beings who temporarily hold the reins of power, he becomes increasingly prone to the violation of God's laws, thereby generating conflict on earth and tending to ignore moral laws and ethics. He becomes, then, averse to light and takes to the worship of darkness.

The course of history, in such a situation, becomes static. Such inertia is not the one that is opposed to dynamics but represents that inactivity-as has its birth in conflict and confusion. History in such a situation seems to assume the state of a spectator gazing at this spectacle with amazement and disappointment, and in utter dejection casts a look at the sky to find out what it has further in store for it.

Perhaps, it is in such circumstances that the Heavenly Court decides how to do away with the obstacles that lay athwart the path of progress and to remove these impediments cluttering up the course of history. These impediments are represented and epitomized by regressive, retrograde and unnatural cultures.