Yā Abā ʿAbdillāh! Indeed the calamity has grown vast and awe-inspiring, and the affliction that has befallen us because of you, and upon all the people of Islam, has become immense and exalted. Your calamity in the heavens has likewise become great and exalted for all the inhabitants of the heavens.
May Allah curse the nation that laid the foundation of oppression and tyranny against you, O People of the Household.
May Allah curse the nation that drove you from your station and removed you from the ranks in which Allah had placed you.
May Allah curse the nation that killed you, and may Allah curse those who prepared the ground for them, granting them the power to fight you.
I disassociate myself before Allah, and before you, from them, from their partisans, their followers, and their allies.
The Immensity of the Calamity
The calamity of the slaying of Imām Ḥusayn (a) is colossal in both its spiritual and material dimensions.
Spiritually, Imam Ḥusayn (a), as the heir of all prophets, successors, and virtues, embodied them all; in his martyrdom, every prophet, successor, and virtue was struck down. Imām Ḥusayn (a) is the manifestation of the Supreme Name of Allah on earth and His vicegerent; to wage war against him is to wage war against Allah Himself. He is the Master of the youth of Paradise, one of the People of the Household whose love Allah made obligatory in His Book and the recompense for the Messenger’s mission. He belongs to the People of the Cloak, about whom the Verse of Purification was revealed; he is among those for whom the Verse of Mutual Imprecation and Sūrat al-Insān were sent down.
The Messenger of Allah (p) said of him: “Ḥusayn is from me and I am from Ḥusayn.” 1 He is the son of ʿAlī and Fāṭima, accompanied by a select company of his household and companions, some of whom had met the Prophet (p).
Thus, no calamity more grievous than ʿĀshūrāʾ has ever befallen Islam; it surpassed the bounds of this world and reached the heavens.
Materially, the atrocities committed were so heinous that even an infant’s hair would turn white. Our Imām Sajjād (a) states, in meaning: “Had the Messenger of Allah (p) instructed people to assault and harm his household, they could not have done more than what was done at Karbalāʾ.”
Each individual catastrophe that descended upon Imām Ḥusayn (a) was, by itself, tremendous; how then when they gathered all at once? Any one of them, if it befell a person but once in a lifetime, would be crushing; yet they descended upon Imām Ḥusayn (a) and the People of the Household in mere hours. The calamities struck old and young alike, even the suckling infant, and extended to women and children. After the slaying of the Prophet’s family, their heads were hoisted upon lances; worse still, the noble women of the Messenger of Allah (p) were paraded as captives from land to land, the sanctity of the Prophet violated. So great is this calamity that the Awaited Imām (aj) weeps for it tears of blood, and Allah Himself is the Avenger of this blood.
Directing the Curse toward the Nation
A nation (ummah) is a body of people united by creed and shared interests. A crime the magnitude of Karbalāʾ cannot be committed without the concerted efforts of many. Hence the curse must be directed at the entire nation, not only its leaders, for without the helpers who sold their religion for another’s worldly gain, those tyrants could not have achieved their aims. The phrases of cursing, and the groups they target, clarify who bears responsibility, who deserves our accusation, and upon whom our full wrath must fall.
The beginning is with the foundation: those who first violated the sanctity of the People of the Household, legitimising that violation in the name of religion. They emboldened others and paved the way for subsequent assaults, stripping the Imāms of their divinely ordained positions and depriving the Islamic nation of god-given leadership. In doing so they nullified the labours of the Messenger (p) and led the nation astray; they therefore merit the curse.
Though the killing was carried out by individuals, without the groundwork laid by the ummah and the provision of preliminaries, those individuals could not have executed their crime. Thus the crime is ascribed to the nation as a whole, just as in the story of Prophet Ṣāliḥ’s she-camel: the slayer was one man, yet Allah attributed the act to them all, “They hamstrung her”2, and the punishment descended upon them collectively, “So their Lord crushed them for their sin, levelling them.”3
Cursing and Disavowal
After cursing comes barāʾah (disavowal). Cursing alone, without dissociation, is insufficient and profitless; one may curse Allah’s enemies yet still embody their traits. Many curse tyrants in secret but stand with them publicly for expediency, their curses serving only personal grudges rather than Allah or the triumph of truth.
Therefore, for cursing not to be mere lip-service, it must be followed by disavowal of the accursed—leaders, followers, and partisans, both in word and in deed.