Do modern Indian Muslims engage in self-flagellation onMuharram?
Answers
Yom Ashura or Ashura (Arabic: عاشوراء ʻĀshūrā’) is the tenth day of Muharram in the Islamic calendar.[3] For the majority of Shia Muslims, as well as some Sunni Muslims, Ashura marks the climax of the Remembrance of Muharram,[3] and commemorates the death of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad, at the Battle of Karbala on 10 Muharram in the year 61 AH (in AHt: October 10, 680 CE).[4] Sunni Muslims have the same accounts of these events, but ceremonial mourning did not become a custom - although poems, eulogizing and recounting the events were and continue to be common.[5][6][7] Mourning for the incident began almost immediately after the Battle of Karbala. Popular elegies were written by poets to commemorate the Battle of Karbala during the Umayyad and Abbasid era, and the earliest public mourning rituals occurred in 963 CE during the Buyid dynasty.[8] In Afghanistan,[9] Iran,[10] Iraq,[11] Lebanon,[12] Azerbaijan, Bahrain,[13] India[14] and Pakistan,[15] Ashura has become a national holiday, and many ethnic and religious communities participate in it.[16][17]