00:03I am not even sure that Mr. Khamenei did not plan his own killing.
00:10Did Ayatollah Ali Khamenei know he was about to die?
00:14Did he choose to martyr himself anyway?
00:16He, with his wife, passed away and martyred.
00:19To get even a semblance of an answer, we will have to go back 1,300 years.
00:24So please watch this video to the end.
00:28In 680 CE, a man named Hussain ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad,
00:33marched into a battle at a place called Karbala.
00:3672 men against an army of thousands.
00:39He knew he would lose.
00:41He went anywhere.
00:42He was killed on the 10th of Muharram.
00:44His head was carried to Damascus, according to some accounts.
00:47That defeat became the emotional foundation of an entire civilization.
00:51Karbala is the one that gave Islam.
00:56The hope that we will survive against all odds.
01:03Here's the thing about Shia Islam that changes how you read everything.
01:07The central story is not triumph, it is sacrifice.
01:10In Sunni Islam, the model is the Prophet's victory.
01:14In Shia Islam, on the other hand, the model is Hussain's death.
01:17The righteous man who chose principle over survival.
01:20For centuries, this began the faith of the Marjans.
01:24Always in opposition, always mourning.
01:26Then, in 1501, the Safavid dynasty came to power in Iran.
01:30Declared Shia Islam the state religion and did something paradoxical.
01:34They took a theology built on suffering and made it the official language of an empire.
01:38Grief became governance.
01:40This Azim leader's death, we don't forget it.
01:46Ruhollah Khomeini understood this better than anyone, many experts believe.
01:50During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, for instance, he made the Battle of Karbala the prototype of any
01:55fight against tyranny.
01:57And he gave young boys keys to paradise, sending them into minefields.
02:01Now, these plastic keys detail is widely reported, but it is also disputed by some Iranian veterans and scholars who
02:07call it Western propaganda.
02:08But, here's where the story gets complicated.
02:10When Ayatollah Ali Khomeini's death was confirmed this year, people came out on the streets of Isfahan, Shiraz, Karman Shah,
02:17and they celebrated.
02:19Statues came down.
02:20The grief was not universal, not even close.
02:23So martyrdom is a story, but like all stories, it only works if enough people believe it.
02:28In Muslims, there is such a way, which is the way of Imam Hussain Alayhi Salaam.
02:35Hussain died at Karbala and became eternal.
02:38Whether Khomeini gets the same ending, that depends on who writes Iran's next chapter.
02:44And that story is just beginning.
02:46I'm Manish Adhikari.
02:47Thank you for watching The Culture Project on More.
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