Karbala and Beyond

Prologue: Eternal Struggle Between Right And Wrong

This is a tale of an ongoing struggle between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, piety and impiety, worldliness and spirituality. Such struggles take place in our life each and every day on different scales. Other religions, too, have immortalized the struggle between right and wrong: the struggle of Rama against Ravana, the contest between Moses, peace be with him, and Pharaoh, the challenge of Abraham, peace be with him, to Nimrud, the contest of Jesus Christ, peace be with him, against Herod...

All these are examples of the contest, the struggle, the ongoing war, between right and wrong, truth and falsehood. Falsehood appears to the eyes of most people as being very strong, armed with material power. It has the authority of the ruling government, of the veto at the "U.N. Security Council," of the awe of military might, the carriers and the cruise missiles, the satellites and the spy planes, the lackeys and the stooges, the silver and the gold, and the numerical superiority... Its ostentatious grandeur and splendour cannot be denied, nor can its glittering crowns, thrones studded with gems, palaces and dazzling swords...

And the truth! The humble truth! The meek and weak truth!

It appears helpless, handicapped, powerless... But the truth possesses the vigor of faith, the reliance on the Almighty God, and the precious asset of spiritual power. These armaments of the truth are so powerful, they smash the head of falsehood, reducing its splendour and grandeur to dust. Truth, in the end, triumphs, achieving success so splendidly that the world is awe-stricken thereat...

Such is the epic of heroism recorded on the pages of history not with the ink of the writers but with the blood of the martyrs. Such is each and every epic of heroism... Such is the epic of martyrdom of Imam al-Husayn (ﻉ).