As most of you know, a tragic event happened in Baghdad today. About 1,000 Iraqi’s died during a stampede in Baghdad on a bridge crossing the Tigris River. There were over 1 million Shi’a Muslims commemorating their saint, Musa al-Kadhim, as apart of an annual pilgrimage.
We often hear headlines like “1,000 people died” and we have no way to know how to wrap our minds around the fact that those are people’s children and parents and grandparents. I thought it’d be helpful if I at least wrote about the pilgrimage they were on as a way to humanize these people so far removed from us.
This is a brief history to help you understand the event:
The state of Imams leading Muslims ended not long after Prophet Muhammad’s death in 632AD. [Because every other Muslim's name is Muhammad, just calling him "the Prophet" is the most common way to distinguish him from other Muhammads.]
There was a conflict whether or not the next Muslim leader ought to be a relative of the Prophet, or just the most righteous man in the community. This was a big deal because at his death there were already about 100,000 followers of Islam.
The majority of the group elected Abu Bakr (the 1st Rightly Guided Caliph – aka Imam). Abu Bakr was a close companion, but not related. So a smaller group believed that the Prophet’s son-in-law ‘Ali should be the successor. The larger group today make up the Sunnis, and the smaller group are the Shi’as.
Among Shia’s there is another split. Whether they believe that there were 7 Imams, or 12 Imams.
Imam Musa al-Kadhim (which means one who swallows his anger) was the 7th Imam according to Shi’a Muslims. His birth is the event that Iraqi Shi’as were commemorating when the bridge broke in Baghdad.
According to the most known opinion, al-Kadhim was killed as a martyr while in prison. He had been captured by the Abassid empire’s leader Huran al-Rasheed. This was a common practice – to poison your enemy or rival. Al-Kadhim was fed poisoned dates until he died.
He had been the Imam for over 30 years when he died at age 55.
He was known for getting up every night to pray until dawn, and made sure to pray at all five of the other calls to prayer as well. Most of his lifetime he spent reciting the Qur’an and in prayer/worship. He was careful of his words because he knew that the empirialist authorities were willing to kill him at any time – so he ended up being more of a spiritual leader in terms of actions rather than words.
[photo 1: woman grieving. photo 2: bodies. photo 3: people jumping into the Tigris to save those who fell off the bridge. photo 4: the crowd in front of the shrine itself]
