on the war, there would be just two probabilities; either he would be the victorious and Mo'awiya be defeated, though this was somehow impossible due to the conditions and circumstances surrounding Imam al-Hasan (a.s) then, and this would make people incline to the Umayyads who would appear as wronged and oppressed saying that: yesterday, they killed Uthman the choice of the Umayyads and Ameerul Mo'minin (as they said), and today they killed Mo'awiya the choice of the Umayyads and the uncle of the believers, and so a second shirt would be prepared for the Umayyads to raise beside the shirt of Uthman, and people were rabble cawing with every cawer without thinking and reasoning. In this case, what would be the situation of Imam al-Hasan?
But as for if he was the defeated one, then the first word that would be said was that al-Hasan had thrown himself into perishment, for Mo'awiya had invited him to peace that would spare the bloods but he refused and wronged. Then, what Mo'awiya and Abu Sufyan wanted in plotting against Islam and taking people back to their first age of ignorance and idolatry would be realized for them. Besides, that Mo'awiya would not let alive anyone from the Ahlul Bayt (a.s).
In fact, the thought of Imam al-Hasan (a.s) in accepting the peace was more accurate than this and that. He wanted to do away with Mo'awiya, through the peace, and reveal what was concealed in his inners before thinking of victory or defeat, and without throwing people in a war and forcing them to do what they hated of the bloodshed.
We have mentioned that Mo'awiya the apparently Muslim and the truly enemy of Islam deceived people, because there was a competitor to him, with a very thin membrane under which he committed major sins and vices and tried the best to pluck out the roots of Islam and put out its light. He concealed all that for fear of the love of people to Imam al-Hasan (a.s) and his father (Imam Ali) before. Imam al-Hasan (a.s) wanted to clear the field to Mo'awiya, hand the matter (rule) over to him, and remove the enmity so that he (Mo'awiya) would show what he had hidden, reveal his disbelief, and remove from his face that membrane, and then people would know his reality and hidden secrets. And really it was so. On the day of the peacemaking, Mo'awiya ascended the minbar before great masses of Muslims and said, ‘I have fought you neither to fast nor to offer prayer, but I have fought you to be the emir over you. I have undertaken some stipulations for al-Hasan but all of them are under my foot.’
See how impudent, shameless, and bold-faced he was! By Allah, if the accepting of the peace (by Imam al-Hasan) had no result except these words of Mo'awiya, it was a sufficient proof to disgrace him and make people know his disbelief. However, he kept on that plot of disbelief, clear sin, resisting Islam, and trying to tear down its basics openly.
Without al-Hasan’s peace Mo'awiya would not ascribe (illegitimate) Ziyad to Abu Sufyan (Mo'awiya’s father) who was his illegal child, and so he brushed aside the Prophet’s tradition: “The child is to the bed (to be ascribed to the woman’s husband on whose bed adultery is committed) and the adulteress is to be stoned”. However, Mo'awiya stoned the Prophet’s tradition and brushed it aside with no fear or care.
Except for the peace, Mo'awiya would not kill Hijr bin Adiy, the master of the true believers, and ten men from the best of the Prophet’s companions and successors. He killed them in Marj Athra’ for no guilt.
Except for the peace, Mo'awiya would not kill the great Prophet’s companion Amr bin al-Hamq and carry his head to Sham. And it was the first head that was carried in Islam.
Except for the peace, Mo'awiya would not insert poison to Imam al-Hasan (a.s) through his (Imam al-Hasan) wife Ja’dah bint al-Ash’ath.
And except for the peace, Mo'awiya would not force the good remainder of the Muhajireen and the Ansar to pay homage to his son Yazeed who was very famous for disbelief, debauchery, and countless vices to a very far extent.
See who the winner was and who the loser was!
See what Imam al-Hasan (a.s) caused to Mo'awiya by the peace and how he destroyed all his efforts and tore down what he built until the truth appeared and falsehood vanished, and then who follow vanity will lose!
Peace, in those circumstances, was required and inevitable for Imam al-Hasan (a.s) just as fighting against Yazid was required and incumbent on his brother Al-Husayn (a.s). All that was due to the difference between the two periods and the difference between the two men.
Except for the peace of Imam al-Hasan (a.s) that exposed Mo'awiya, and the martyrdom of Imam al-Husayn (a.s) that did away with Yazeed and did away with the Sufyani rule quickly after no long…except for the sacrifices of these two grandsons of the Prophet (a.s), the efforts of their grandfather (a.s) would disappear in the twinkle of an eye, and the religion would be the religion of Abu Sufyan full of deceit, wiles, debauchery, and vices…would be religion of
bars and wines…religion of adultery, and playing with tigers and monkeys…religion of killing the good, benevolent believers, and retaining the vicious unbelievers.
May Allah reward you, O the two masters of the youth of the Paradise, with the best of reward on behalf of Islam and its people. By Allah, no worshipper worshipped Allah, no monotheist believed in the oneness of Allah, no obligation was performed, no sunna was followed, and no nation turned from deviation to guidance, except for that you had the favor, proof, and clear authority in that after Allah and His messenger.
The messenger of Allah (a.s) brought guidance, light, good, and blessing to all mankind with no difference between a color and another, a race and another, a nation and another, and a folk and another. He brought Islam with clear light for all, and he built and firmed its bases and made perfect with no defect or crook. Abu Sufyan and the cursed tree (in the Qur’an), Mo'awiya, Yazeed, and Marwan came and carried the picks of disbelief and polytheism and attacked those bases and pillars trying to pluck out their roots and put out their light (They desire to put out the light of Allah with their mouths, and Allah will not consent save to perfect His light, though the unbelievers are averse). So the two grandsons of the Prophet (a.s), with all their power and authority, stood against that structure of evil (of the Umayyads), and they could not restore the Sharia of their grandfather except by the great sacrifice through offering their lives, monies, men, children, and all the blessings and pleasures of this life. They offered all that for the sake of Allah and to retain the religion of Allah. Were it not for this sacrifice, the religion of Islam would be one of the legends in the books that history mentions as it mentions any incidental event or extinct nation.
Glory be to Allah, Allah is great, and praise be to Allah. Hence, you know and must know the secret behind the great care and extreme reverence that the greatest Savior met his two grandsons (al-Hasan and al-Husayn) with… care and reverence that was not ordinary and was beyond the limit of reason. This great Prophet and the most beloved one to the Great Creator, this great personality that had been filled by the Lord with greatness, gravity, and dignity that neither storms could shake nor could emotions attract…due to this gravity and solemnity that someone, who never seen him before, might come to him shaking of fear but the Prophet (a.s) said to him, ‘Do not fear! I am but a son of a woman from Quraysh who ate jerked meat (just like others)’ so that Muslims would not say about him as the Christians said about Jesus Christ (a.s). This great Prophet (a.s) carried al-Hasan and al-Husayn, who were young children, on his shoulders, and walked before Muslims saying loudly (addressing al-Hasan and al-husayn) so that Muslims could hear him,
‘Your camel is the best camel, and the best riders your are!’ How often that al-Husayn came and ascended the Prophet’s back during his prostration and the Prophet (a.s) did not raise his head until al-Husayn got down willingly. Once, the Prophet (a.s) was making a speech in the mosque and al-Husayn was toddling in the mosque. When he stumbled, the Prophet (a.s) stopped his speech, hurried to him, embraced him and said, ‘May Allah kill Satan! Children are as seduction. When my son stumbled, I felt that my heart had sunk down from me.’ Many many examples like this happened showing the great love of the Prophet (a.s) to his tow (grand)sons that cannot be counted here. I say: this infinite love was not because they were his daughter’s children only, but definitely there were secrets and reasons deeper and profounder; spiritual secrets that were above these bodily relations. Do you not agree with me that the Prophet (a.s) might go high over the horizon of time and through his sacred spirituality he looked at the book of creation from its A to Z, and he saw the past, the present, and the future and saw the future events in the page of existence that would happen to his two grandsons? He saw what they would suffer in the way of defending his religion and protecting his Sharia. He saw that they would sacrifice their lives, properties, and children. He saw that al-Hasan would be poisoned by Mo'awiya many times until he would die in the last time when he vomited his liver a piece after another. Then, al-Husayn gave the highest example in sacrifice to guard his grandfather’s Sharia. He received swords, spears, and arrows and made his chest, neck, head, and lungs as guards before the picks that the Umayyads had held to tear down Islam and pluck out its roots. He put himself, children, and supporters as a target to protect Islam that its pillars not to be collapsed and its bases not to be demolished by the attacks of the Umayyads, until Islam was saved, its lights shone, its facts were revealed, the unbelievers were perished, the followers of falsehood lost, the word of Allah was the highest, and the word of His enemies was the lowest. Every Muslim, since the beginning of Islam until now and until the Day of Resurrection, is indebted to these two imams, that without their sacrifice, which history has never narrated the like of, people would be taken back by the efforts of the Umayyads to their first ignorance and even worse.
Then, would you find strange that love, care, and reverence of the Prophet (a.s) to them when they were two young children where he knew and saw with his eye of sight and insight those calamities and that bitter struggle for the sake of and in the way of him? He smelt and embraced them saying, ‘They are my sons and sweethearts.’ Definitely, he smelt in them the divine scent and saw in them the Godly light. Hence, we know and must know that al-Hasan and al-Husayn were one light that no one of them would be preferred to the other inasmuch as a hair. Each of them had achieved his duty, and fulfilled his
mission as been determined by his grandfather and father, and according to the covenant he had received in the first day of his imamate.
If you want elaborately to know about the greatness, bravery, courage, full-heartedness, strong argumentation, inadvertence to the splendor of rule and the pomp of authority of al-Hasan (a.s), you may ponder on his words and arguments in the meeting of Mo'awiya with the heads of polytheists and the chiefs of unbelievers and atheists whom Mo'awiya involved with al-Hasan (a.s) to laugh at them like Amr bin al-Aas, al-Mugheerah bin Shu’bah, Marwan and the like of them from the clients of the Hell who had never believed in Allah in the twinkle of an eye. See these words and arguments and wonder at them as you like. There, you see greatness in its summit, and courage in its apex. If you want more, see his words at the time of dying and the moment of setting out from this prison to the better world; the words that he said to his brother Muhammad bin al-Hanafiyyah concerning his brother al-Husayn (a.s). There, the locks of the secrets of imamate will open to you, and the lights of prophethood and leadership will shine to you, and you will know the Prophetic custody, and the absolute guardianship…there the guardianship is to Allah, (the Prophet is closer to the believers than their selves), “whoever I am his guardian Ali is to be his guardian”, and(Only Allah is your Gurdian and His Messenger and those who believe, those who keep up prayers and pay the poor-due while they bow down (in prayer)).
My pen has crept beyond the limit, and leapt away from the path of intention and the intention of the path. The least thing that I wanted to say in my this word is that the enmity between the Hashemites and the Umayyads was spontaneous and deep-rooted. It was the enmity between guidance and deviation, and between light and darkness. What proves that is that if you review the lives and conducts of the Umayyads since the first of them Abd Shams until the last one Marwan the donkey, you shall not find in the pages of most of them except treachery, wiling, breaking of covenants and promises, sins, debauchery, adultery, obscenity, and all kinds of vices.
And if you review the lives and conducts of the Hashemites since the first of them until this day, you shall not find in the pages of most of them except virtue, loyalty, truthfulness, bravery, chastity, pure birth, honor, high determination, sacrifice for the sake of ideology, and all good morals. Suppose that there is someone who excuses the Umayyads and justifies their enmity to the Hashemites by saying: they took it as a means that would take them to the rule and authority. But, what is the excuse of the followers of the Umayyads in this age? What is the justification of the modern Umayyadism? They shall neither be lucky in this world, nor shall they have any share in the hereafter.
(Say: Shall We inform you of the greatest losers in (their) deeds. Those whose effort goes astray in this life, and yet they reckon that they do good work).
(He loses this world and the hereafter; that is the manifest loss).
Praise be to Allah Who has gouged the eyes of disbelief and hypocrisy, and delighted the eyes of Islam and faith with al-Hasan and al-Husayn and the pure progeny (of the Prophet). We pray Him, as He has favored us with knowing and following them, to resurrect us with them, and grant us with their intercession and disavowing their enemies and enmity.
Indeed, Abu Muhammad az-Zakiy (Imam al-Hasan) (a.s), during the short period that he lived after his father, tolerated calamities and disasters that no prophet had tolerated, and they were not less than those which his brother Abu Abdillah al-Husayn (a.s) faced on the day of at-Taff (Kerbala). The painful calamity and the sinful strike of the two brothers were the same though the ways and the means were different. As al-Husayn (a.s) faced his calamities with patience that the angels of the Heavens were astonished at, al-Hasan as well fought his enemy and faced his sufferings and calamities with unequalled patience and endurance. He did never become weak a day, nor did he beg or submit to anyone. He did not take from his wealth that Mo'awiya had plundered and been as a play in the hands of the Umayyads. He did not take even one of thousands or, in fact, hundreds of thousands of dinars.
As there is no filed for comparing between these two lights (al-Hasan and al-Husayn), it cannot be said that the patience of al-Hasan was less than the patience of al-Husayn, or that his calamity was easier than his brother’s.
Peace from Allah be on you O the two Imams of guidance and the offspring of Ali and Fatima (peace be on them all) as long as virtue shines and vice darkens.
These words have been written with weak fingertips and sick pens improvisingly and flowingly in some hours the last of which was on the twenty-first of Ramadan the anniversary of the martyrdom of the master of guardians and the imam of the truthful Ameerul Mo'minin (thousands of blessings, greetings, and peace be on him) in the year 1373 AH.
Muhammad al-Husayn Aal Kashiful Ghita’
in his Seminary (hawza) in Holy Najaf.
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Author: Baqir Sharif al-Qarashi
