Afghanistan’s minority Shiites, one of the country’s most under-privileged communities, reached the climax of Ashura commemorations yesterday hoping to send a message of peace in their war-ravaged nation.
In Kabul, where the country’s principal Shiite mosque Takia Khan Umumi stands, up to 6,000 Shiites were expected to attend the final celebrations, a bloody spectacle in which men flail themselves with chains and blades.
The Shiite community — accounting for around 20 percent of a population dominated by Sunni Muslims — is made up mainly of Hazaras, a minority of Mongolian origin.
“The Ashura is a message for the reinforcement of peace and stability in the country,” Sayed Raza Hujat told reporters.
“Unity is our only hope. None of our problems will be solved by war,” he said, referring to Afghanistan’s resurgent Taliban insurgency.
The 10-day Ashura rituals, which ended yesterday, commemorate the killing of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, by armies of the Sunni caliph Yazid in 680.
During the 10 days of Ashura, many worshippers offer their naked torsos to the martyrs Hussein and Abbas by flagellating their backs with chains fixed with sharpened steel blades.
Tradition holds that Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, was decapitated and his body mutilated by the armies of the caliph Yazid.
To express remorse and guilt for not saving Hussein, Shiite volunteers flay themselves with chains or slice their scalps during processions.
Islamic clerics in Iran have banned the custom, but in Afghanistan, as in several Shiite countries, the practice goes on.
Several similar gatherings were expected yesterday in Shiite mosques in Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif and in the province of Bamyan, which is mainly populated by Shiite Hazaras.
The Shiite community in Afghanistan, whose Hazaras have long suffered discrimination, is not involved with the insurgency fighting Afghan security forces and NATO troops.
Up to 300 Hazaras were killed in February 1993 in Afshar District, in west Kabul, the UN says.
Followers of the Pashtun Islamist warlord Abdul Rab Rassoul Sayyaf, now a lawmaker, were blamed for the massacre and also for killing Tajiks close to former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, also a lawmaker.
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