Dr. Amjad Karim al-Fadhil / University of Karbala – College of Islamic Sciences

When one reflects on the streets of Iraq, connected to the streets of neighboring countries, carrying millions of those who love the Ahl al-Bayt, peace be upon them, who are burdened with their miserable reality, the oppression of their governments, proxy wars that devastate them, and the suffering of sanctions, hunger, poverty, ignorance, and poor education…

And they carry their personal sins and transgressions, which almost break their backs… They are exhausted from the bitter life in the time of occultation and confusion… The streets flow smoothly, matching the innate movement without difficulty or hardship…

The observer, following all of this, knows with certainty that these streets are nothing but veins that carry the movement of these crowds, which are the blood of existence, laden with the burdens of carbon dioxide of life, to the pulsating heart of the Ummah, its guarantor, the place of its rightful vengeance, its truthful promise, and its coming dawn…

These streets are veins… The place of Imam Hussain’s shrine, peace be upon him, moves expansively to attract all those millions of tired and wounded. When they reach under his noble dome, and their sins touch his sacred shrine, the heart contracts to pump them back through the streets, which become arteries filled with people, the living blood of existence, carrying oxygen to all the cells they departed from…

They return to revive the body of the Ummah, having carried with them the nourishment of the souls trapped between occultation and confusion… Nourishment of hope for the reappearance, the prayer for hastening the relief, and the purification of souls, hearts, consciences, bodies, and minds… Purity and purity granted by Imam Hussain, peace be upon him, to everyone who visits him, acknowledging his rights… Along with his intercession, freedom from the fire, and certain entry into Paradise.

For nearly fourteen hundred years, the heart of the Ummah has been beating with life… Every individual who has failed to purify and cleanse it continuously feels the bitterness of distance, the burning of longing, the pain of separation, the weight of life’s burdens, the bitterness of sins, and the intensity of the enmity of Satan and his accursed followers…

It is Hussain, peace be upon him, the heart that the Ummah would die if it stopped visiting. When it fails to do so, it falls into its blood and cells, and the law of replacement takes place. The corrupted cell, not visiting the heart, decays in the grave of the earth’s spleen to be replaced by another alive with the heart, acknowledging its right and admitting its virtue, never leaving its visitation…

It emerges from the heart, flowing, having been purified and cleansed, knowing its function in life and acting upon it… The crowds of visitors flow back with hope, returning to their original places with love, happiness, a desire to continue, and strength in their determination and steadfastness on the straight path, bringing together the pleasure of the beloved with their own pleasure in a state of tranquility and reassurance…

The strangers who visited their stranger had their hearts at ease, and their visit increased them in faith, placing their trust in their Lord.