These doings are but habits...

These doings are but habits, traditions and emotions that overcome some people and make them behave unusually and little by little these habits become part of the folklore inherited by one generation from another in blind imitation and without sense. In fact, some ordinary people feel that the shedding of blood by beating oneself is a deed that brings man closer to Allah and that whoever does not do that does not love Imam al-Husayn (a.s.).

When I ponder with myself and in spite of my being Shia, after knowing satisfactorily that Shiism is the true creed - I am not satisfied with those ugly scenes that alienate souls and sound minds, especially when someone unclothes himself and beats himself with an iron tool in crazy movements shouting out too loudly: Husayn, Husayn!

The odd thing in this matter that makes you doubt it is that you see those very persons, who behave unusually and whom you think that the sorrow for Imam al-Husayn (a.s.) has affected terribly, a little after the end of the rituals, jest, laugh and eat sweets as if everything ends with the end of the rituals. The oddest of all this is that most of these people are not religious or pious.

Therefore, I have permitted myself to criticize them directly many times and say to them that what they did was just folklore and blind imitation.[^1] May Allah have mercy on the martyr Muhammad Baqir as-Sadr who helped me much in this calamity when I asked him before my converting a Shia. He said to me, “ The beating of bodies and shedding of blood that you see is from the practices of ordinary and ignorant people. No one of the ulema ever practices it.

In fact, they always prevent and prohibit it .” I hate heresies and fight them wherever and with whomsoever they are. We must make the Shia aware to be able to give up heresies and make the Sunni understand that these practices cannot be obstacles preventing them from knowing the truth and following the Ahlul Bayt (a.s.). They do not have to observe the practices of ordinary and ignorant Shia which are unfounded in true Shiism.

Anyhow, we have to imitate our great example the Messenger of Allah (S). When his uncle and protector Abu Talib died, he felt great sorrow for him. He felt this when his most beloved wife Khadijah died. And then he suffered the terrible loss of his uncle Hamza who was martyred and maimed and his body was found torn into pieces with no liver which had been taken out and chewed by Hind, the wife of Abu Sofyan.