This is the first inevitable issue and Imam Husayn (as) had...

This is the first inevitable issue and Imam Husayn (as) had stated it in his letter to his brother Muhammad in these words: “Any one who joins me will be martyred.” 2- Certainty Of Victory This is the second unchangeable aspect of the uprising led by Husayn (as) which he declared with the same decisiveness with which he declared the first.

It is the converse of the second statement “and anyone who does not join me will not attain victory.” The direct meaning of this statement is obvious and the converse is: anyone who joins him attains victory, which is no less obvious than the direct meaning.

The Imam (as) declared this fact before he left al-Hijaz for Iraq, and it is very rare for a leader to firmly assert, even before the battle starts, that he would be victorious, except for a rash statement or where it is intended to boost the morale of the fighters. But certainly, Husayn (as) was not the type to make rash promises, and he was not intending to boost the people’s morale, in view of the known outcome of the battle.

In his movement, the Imam (as) was openly inviting the people to their death which was obviously incompatible with vain propaganda or a psychological boost for the fighters both in the theatre of battle and during preparations for it. So what was the sure guarantee which the Imam had for this matter? What did victory mean in the Imam’s political dictionary?

By victory, the Imam did not mean a military victory on the battlefield and it was impossible that he intended what military leaders seek in wars. We do not doubt this fact, nor do we consider his statement to have been simply arbitrary; the Imam was too well informed of the political and psychological state of the people in Iraq to have expected a military victory or to have been deceived by the people.

The Imam had seen that the Umayyads had tried to revive, as part of Islam, the jahiliyyah (pre-Islamic) system along with its ideas and concepts. Even the political and social positions which Islam had liberated from jahiliyyah influence had been re-incorporated into their sphere of influence.

The Umayyad clan had now occupied the positions of power and influence, and the wealth and the propaganda machinery of the new Islamic society was in their hands exactly as their ancestors had occupied these positions in the small pre-Islamic Meccan society. All this happened without any fundamental change having taken place in their jahiliyyah stands and concepts.