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  • 2 years ago
Muslims in T&T celebrate Muharram, a holy month marking the start of the Islamic New Year.


Urvashi Tiwari Roopnarine tells us more.
Transcript
00:00Muharram is the first month of the new year of the Islamic calendar.
00:05Muharram itself, it comes from the word Harama, and it means sacred.
00:11One of the meanings of it is sacred, and therefore it's a sacred month.
00:14So in Islam, from the Holy Quran, there are four months that are designated as sacred.
00:19The third consecutive month of those is this month of Muharram.
00:23Sacred means that Muslims are not allowed to engage in warfare and so on,
00:29especially in the time when the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him,
00:34when they would be fighting wars and so on, it was one of those months that they would be free from fighting.
00:39It's a time of reflection, and when all actions are amplified.
00:44Good deeds carry more weight in this month, and doing wrong things carry more weight as well because it's a sacred month.
00:52But it's the tenth day of the new year which holds a special significance for Sunni Muslims.
00:58So the significance of the tenth of Muharram, which is called Ashura,
01:03is that the Prophet Moses, this was the day in which he and the Bani Israel were saved from Pharaoh and his army
01:13when they were in pursuit and when they had reached the Red Sea.
01:17And Allah caused that there were twelve different paths which would form in the sea,
01:22and the twelve tribes of Israel would have passed through safely.
01:25It's a day in which we are told that if we fast on this day that you will get the reward
01:33or you will get at least one year of your past sins removed and forgiven.
01:39In TNT, the majority of Muslims are Sunni, but the Shiite Muslims resident here celebrate Ashura a bit differently, and for a different reason.
01:51Fifty years after the Prophet Muhammad established the fasting of the tenth of Muharram,
01:58there was an incident involving the grandson of the Prophet, his name was Imam Hussein,
02:03when he had been requested to come and to become the governor of a city called Kufa,
02:11which was the head of the Islamic, the center of the Islamic world at the time.
02:15When he had reached on the plains outside of the city called Karbala, he was attacked and he was killed, he was martyred.
02:23The Shiite hold that incident greater than the Sunni, therefore commemorating the martyrdom through celebrations,
02:30and it's still alive in St. James and Cedrus, locally known as Husayn.
02:36Where they would have the Tajdas, which represented Imam Husayn and Imam Hassan,
02:40where they would have the procession on the streets and they would have the beating of the drums,
02:45sometimes they would be drinking alcohol and dancing and so on.
02:47All of that is really alien to Islam.
02:49Our commemoration of the tenth of Muharram is fasting, and we will soon gather to break the fast,
02:55and it's a day of praying and so on as well.
02:57Imam says there are many lessons to recognize in this month of Muharram.
03:02It was based on an event called the Hijra, which was the movement of the Prophet of Islam from Mecca to Medina,
03:10where Islam began to flourish.
03:12There are many significant things, so for example, one is that about the Hijra,
03:17sometimes you need to make a movement in your life to see a change.
03:21Many times we're in the same situation day after day.
03:24Make a Hijra, we say, make a movement, make some changes, do something different.
03:30Take a risk sometimes.
03:32The Imam says one can also take lessons from the gallantry and heroism of Imam Hussain
03:38in the Great Battle of Karbala.
03:40Hussain was forewarned that he would be killed, but still journeyed forward in the spirit of Islam.
03:46Urvashi Tiwari, Rub Narayan, TV6 News.
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