Buried Like Seeds: The Four Roots That Kept Us Alive

🩸 A People Who Should Have Vanished

For centuries the Shia have been hunted. Persecution, killing, and the constant promise of being wiped from the earth — and yet, again and again, it ends with the Shia standing as the victors.

The names roll out like a roster of would-be exterminators. Al-Mutawakkil al-Abbasi. Yazid ibn Muawiyah and his father Muawiyah ibn Abi Sufyan. Banu al-Abbas. The Seljuks, who burned Baghdad to the ground because it was Shia and destroyed Shaykh al-Tusi's library — they say the Euphrates ran black from the books they threw in. Among what was lost was Madinat al-Ilm, said by al-Majlisi himself to be larger than his own Bihar al-Anwar. Salahuddin al-Ayyubi, championed elsewhere, who thought nothing of slaughtering the Shia at al-Azhar in Cairo. Suleiman "the Magnificent" of the Ottomans, who decreed: find me a thousand of those who call themselves Shia every day, to slaughter.

And it never stopped. Abdur Rahman Khan in 19th-century Afghanistan made it state policy — if the name is Ali, Hassan, or Hussein: idhbah, slaughter. The Hazara persecuted for nothing but their sect. Saddam. Then al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, riffraff that crawl out of nowhere, hijack this deen, and make killing the Shia their central agenda.

Any group ground down this hard would have evaporated from history. Look at al-Waqifa — gone. Look at the Mu'tazila worldview — gone. Sect after sect that splintered off after the Prophet simply did not survive.

A note worth keeping: the Shia are not only in Iraq, Lebanon, and Iran. Millions are in India and Pakistan; there are communities in Afghanistan, the Gulf, Azerbaijan, Russia, China, Malaysia, and the very south of "down under." The Shia of Amir al-Mu'minin are everywhere.

⚖️ "The Sect Belongs to the Victor" — A Lie We Refuse

Some say the secret sauce belongs to the majority because they are the ones who "won." There is even a famous line for it:

الْمَذْهَبُ مَعَ مَنْ غَلَبَ
Al-madhhab maʿa man ghalab
The (prevailing) sect is with whoever holds power.

But survival by force is not victory. When a ruler can dictate by law how people pray, whom they praise, and whom they condemn, then of course his way becomes the "standard." That proves nothing except that he took control unprincipled — he forced it.

Consider Malik ibn Anas, imam of one of the four Sunni schools, who himself prayed with hands at his sides as the followers of Ahlul Bayt do. His Muwatta was commissioned by the caliph Abu Ja'far al-Mansur al-Diwaniqi — the same caliph known for poisoning Imam al-Sadiq (a). Al-Mansur wanted a chief judge and the first Islamic constitution outside the Qur'an, and his condition was blunt: avoid the hard hadiths of Ali ibn Abi Talib. The result is a book of jurisprudence, theology, and law that does not contain a single narration from Imam Ali — but plenty from Abu Huraira and Anas ibn Malik. Were all of Ali's narrations too hard to follow? It was agenda. Raise a generation never hearing a word from Imam Ali, and they grow up thinking that to follow Ali is to belong to some foreign sect. A crime against the truth itself.

The same playbook ran in living memory. Saddam banned publishing houses that carried a worldview other than his. As the lecturer notes: why fear books being published, unless you know what you believe is not true, and the truth — if it comes — puts your power at risk? The Minhaj al-Salihin of the martyr Sayyid Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr was illegal to own. The lecturer's own father, needing his marja's ruling for something as ordinary as how to do wudu over a cast, would bury the risala ʿamaliyya in the backyard, then dig it up with a shovel whenever a question arose.

So no — being in charge is not a sign of success. It is a show of abuse and a lack of principle.

🕊 Principled Even in Retaliation

Do not let anyone tell you that you are weak for the way you fight back.

They strike your people directly. They hit schools, hospitals, homes, whole residential areas, and find it normal. "How come we never see you do the same?" Because to do it I would have to stoop to hitting schools, hitting hospitals, hitting homes. I could play that dirty game — but the reason I despise you is precisely that this is not me. We would rather die than become unprincipled in how we retaliate.

What is power worth anyway? Imam Ali (a) compared the caliphate to the worth of the water dripping from the nose of a goat — worthless. He would shoulder its obligation when it came to him, but he never chased it. We are not power-hungry. We will not let a day come where we turn into our enemy for the sake of ruling.

Worth remembering: until recently, even the things we now take for granted were forbidden. From 1975 to 2003 you could not walk to Imam Hussein; under al-Mutawakkil they would cut off the legs of pilgrims. The freedom of the Arba'een walk and great gatherings is recent. Do not take it for granted.

We survived not because we abandoned principle, but because we held four of them — four roots no other group possesses.

📿 The First Root — Marjaʿiyya: The Vision

Our leaders give us direction and help us understand the vision rightly, drawing their legitimacy from the true leaders of this ummah — Muhammad and the family of Muhammad (a). The criterion for following such a scholar, as the saying of the father of our late Sayyid (Ayatollah relating the well-known standard) describes him:

فَأَمَّا مَنْ كَانَ مِنَ الْفُقَهَاءِ صَائِناً لِنَفْسِهِ، حَافِظاً لِدِينِهِ، مُخَالِفاً لِهَوَاهُ، مُطِيعاً لِأَمْرِ مَوْلَاهُ، فَلِلْعَوَامِّ أَنْ يُقَلِّدُوهُ
Fa-ammā man kāna min al-fuqahāʾ ṣāʾinan li-nafsih, ḥāfiẓan li-dīnih, mukhālifan li-hawāh, muṭīʿan li-amri mawlāh, fa-lil-ʿawāmmi an yuqallidūh
As for the jurist who guards his soul, protects his faith, opposes his own desire, and obeys the command of his Master — the laity may follow him.

These leaders gave us a spine. In times of panic and turmoil, you wait for their wisdom. You can still reason for yourself, but rooted in the heritage of the Bayt — not from you or me, but from those who poured their whole lives into understanding the law of God down to a single letter from the lips of the Prophet.

When the 2006 sectarian fire broke out in Iraq — Zarqawi and Jolani cutting heads and enslaving women, the dome of the al-Askari shrine in Samarra blown up, Sunnis and Shia at the edge of all-out war — it was a marja who stepped in and said:

لَا تَقُولُوا السُّنَّةُ إِخْوَانُنَا، بَلْ قُولُوا أَنْفُسُنَا
Lā taqūlū al-sunna ikhwānunā, bal qūlū anfusunā
Do not say the Sunnis are our brothers; say they are our very selves.

And the fighting stopped. Our people will obey their scholar even against their own fury. They wish they had a Sistani. They wish they had Najaf al-Ashraf and Qom al-Muqaddasa. It was the absence of such leadership that left others with beheadings.

🔥 The Second Root — Majlis al-Husayn: The Fire

If the marjaʿiyya gave us the vision, the gatherings of Hussein gave us the flame — the fire to resist and to keep standing.

There is a man — Ben Gvir — who boasts that for every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. I thought you were a man. Instead you chase mothers and hunt women. Go and face just one of them — the lady in her Zaynabiyya abaya who stands before the tank and the tank does not dare move, because what it sees in front of it is a woman who will not bend.

And did you forget? It is precisely the tears of Karbala and Ashura that made us stronger. We will cry — and we cry for Aba Abdillah — and those very tears are our strength. We do not avoid weeping; it is the weeping in Majlis al-Husayn that has kept us alive.

Wherever the Shia are scattered, they raise a Husayniyya. There is a Husayniyya named for Sayyida Zahra (s) in Hyder, Alaska — at the pole of the earth — where the lecturer's father recited the majlis of the pure Siddiqa. Across fifty American states, in Brazil where the Lebanese diaspora outnumbers Lebanon, in India's billions, in Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, China, Malaysia, Australia — the gatherings continue. What caused us to survive? Majlis al-Husayn.

When we read of our Imam taken captive, of the family of the Bayt dragged through chains and smoke and fire, we say alhamdulillah, now I see a little of what they saw — and it draws us closer.

A friend of the lecturer lost an eye in the recent battle. He did not say "why me." He said: say congratulations to me — now I have something in common with Abul Fadl al-Abbas, who lost his eye in the final minutes of his life. Next time, take the right hand and the left, so I can become exactly like my master. Where else does such a school exist? It is the Husayniyya that teaches it.

And know this about the Husayniyya: it is not your house — it is Aba Abdillah's. It is a hospital. You do not turn away the sick: the half-practicing, the sister whose hijab is not as it should be, the one in pain. You say welcome, welcome — anything you need, you are at the hospital of Aba Abdillah al-Husayn. It is the sick who come to hospitals, not the healthy — and in this world we are all sick. Only the fourteen Maʿsumin are exempt.

🌿 The Third Root — Khums and Zakat: The Feet to Stand On

Say it plainly, even if the "K word" frightens the frugal: khums and zakat have kept us alive. When one part of the ummah is hurt, support always flows toward it — through khums, ḥuquq sharʿiyya, kaffarah, sadaqat.

Look at the vision of Islam: a kaffarah is often feeding sixty of the underprivileged. Allah's greatest concern seems to be that you cannot sleep comfortably while someone else suffers — "I have blessed you so much, so give; not the whole thing, just one fifth of it to charity."

وَاعْلَمُوا أَنَّمَا غَنِمْتُم مِّن شَيْءٍ فَأَنَّ لِلَّهِ خُمُسَهُ وَلِلرَّسُولِ وَلِذِي الْقُرْبَىٰ وَالْيَتَامَىٰ وَالْمَسَاكِينِ وَابْنِ السَّبِيلِ
Waʿlamū annamā ghanimtum min shayʾin fa-anna lillāhi khumusahu wa-lir-rasūli wa-li-dhī al-qurbā wa-l-yatāmā wa-l-masākīni wa-bni al-sabīl
And know that whatever you gain, a fifth of it is for Allah, the Messenger, the near of kin, the orphans, the needy, and the wayfarer. (al-Anfal 8:41)

These funds do not sit with some scholar in Najaf — they are distributed for the cause of the people of the age. When 180 girls were killed in the collapse of a school in Mina, it was Sistani who quietly rebuilt and fully sponsored that school — and no one reported it. When Yazidi women were dragged off like captives and slaves, sold to the highest bidder, it was Sayyid al-Sistani and the martyr Sayyid al-Qaʾid who sent the hawza pension and a weekly stipend (ratib) to those women — some still benefit from it today. Come to Najaf as a home. When Mosul, Tikrit, and Aleppo became dangerous — Ali ibn Abi Talib is your house. Open the gate of the city of the Prophet's knowledge, close the door behind you, and the monster will not catch you. Saddam shelled Ali's dome — and what became of Saddam but kebab for dogs?

And the giving returns multiplied:

مَّثَلُ الَّذِينَ يُنفِقُونَ أَمْوَالَهُمْ فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ كَمَثَلِ حَبَّةٍ أَنبَتَتْ سَبْعَ سَنَابِلَ فِي كُلِّ سُنبُلَةٍ مِّائَةُ حَبَّةٍ ۗ وَاللَّهُ يُضَاعِفُ لِمَن يَشَاءُ
Mathalu alladhīna yunfiqūna amwālahum fī sabīli Llāh ka-mathali ḥabbatin anbatat sabʿa sanābila fī kulli sunbulatin miʾatu ḥabbah; wallāhu yuḍāʿifu li-man yashāʾ
The likeness of those who spend their wealth in the way of Allah is as a grain that grows seven ears, in each ear a hundred grains — and Allah multiplies for whom He wills. (al-Baqara 2:261)

Seven hundredfold — and then Allah multiplies even more for whom He wills. What S&P 500, what Nasdaq, what Bitcoin pays that? Why flee from rizq when it is in the hand of the Razzaq? And Allah works in hidden ways — the hadith that one who writes his will lives longer:

كُتِبَ عَلَيْكُمْ إِذَا حَضَرَ أَحَدَكُمُ الْمَوْتُ إِن تَرَكَ خَيْرًا الْوَصِيَّةُ
Kutiba ʿalaykum idhā ḥaḍara aḥadakumu al-mawtu in taraka khayran al-waṣiyya
It is prescribed for you, when death approaches one of you and he leaves wealth, that he make a bequest. (al-Baqara 2:180)

If your wealth has sat untouched for a year — what is your plan? Another year? Give. Allah promised more.

🌙 The Fourth Root — The Imam of the Age: The One Who Never Lets You Fall

The last root they have mocked you for believing in: Sahib al-Asr wa-l-Zaman, Ajjala Allahu Ta'ala Farajahu — al-Imam al-Mahdi (a).

It is a miracle we are still alive. Miracles upon miracles, karamat upon karamat, in how we have survived — unless the hand of God has been working in this world with us. Speak to those facing the greatest evil today and they will tell you, by Allah, we have seen miracles out there. We should have been destroyed. We were pushed forward divinely; someone aided us, guided us, sent inspiration and ilham — a glimmer of what only an Imam can give.

Even the marja needs a marja — not for jurisprudence, but for spiritual support — and his reference is the Imam himself, who said:

وَأَمَّا الْحَوَادِثُ الْوَاقِعَةُ فَارْجِعُوا فِيهَا إِلَىٰ رُوَاةِ حَدِيثِنَا، فَإِنَّهُمْ حُجَّتِي عَلَيْكُمْ، وَأَنَا حُجَّةُ اللَّهِ عَلَيْهِمْ
Wa-ammā al-ḥawādithu al-wāqiʿah fa-rjiʿū fīhā ilā ruwāti ḥadīthinā, fa-innahum ḥujjatī ʿalaykum, wa-anā ḥujjatu Llāhi ʿalayhim
As for the events that occur, refer in them to the narrators of our hadith, for they are my proof upon you, and I am the proof of Allah upon them.

So the chain runs: the Imam of our time, to the scholars and the fuqaha who strove for the way of Allah, to us. His proof is to them; their proof is to us. The Imam is why we have outlasted Mutawakkil, Muawiyah, Yazid, Banu Abbas, Banu Umayya, the Ottomans, Salahuddin, Suleiman, the Seljuks, Saddam, Abdur Rahman Khan, Zarqawi — and that one man who put on a tie and made the whole world forget what he had done. We survived them all, and we will keep surviving. The Goliath next door is weaker than a spider's web.

The real danger is internal: to strip your own people of the one source of their honor — the only reason they have not yet been swallowed by the cancer next door — is to let that cancer consume you. Let the antidote do its work. Ali, who do you work for — your people, or the man who says he wants to make your women cry?

These are the four: the leadership that gives the vision, the charity that gives feet to stand on, Majlis al-Husayn that gives the fire, and an Imam who says — even if you fall, I will always protect you.

🪦 Muslim ibn Aqil — The Principle Made Flesh

You may say: Mawlana, we are not Maʿsum; we cannot carry Karbala perfectly. Then do not look for the Maʿsum — look at the Maʿsum's representative who was not infallible, yet when his Imam said "go," answered, how far do you want me to go? That man is Muslim ibn Aqil — cousin and brother-in-law of Imam al-Husayn, son-in-law of Ali ibn Abi Talib (he married Ruqayya, Ali's daughter), father of Muhammad, Ibrahim, and Hamida. His own father Aqil was so loved that the Prophet told him: Aqil, I love you a double love — a love for you yourself, and a love for you because Abu Talib loved you.

At Siffin, Muslim fought so ferociously, masked, that Muawiyah's side mistook this young man in his twenties for Ali ibn Abi Talib himself. (When Muawiyah's giant bodyguard "Sultan" of al-Habasha demanded a duel, Imam Ali took Muslim's mask, rode out in his place, and split the man in two — do not do that again.) Later, knowing no coin of the treasury would ever be mistreated in his hands, Imam Ali made Muslim his minister over the wealth of the entire Khilafah, from Khorasan to North Africa — I have sent to you my brother, my cousin, and the trusted one of my household.

So when twelve thousand letters came from Kufa begging Hussein to come and lead them against Yazid — that drinker of wine, openly debauched — Hussein sent the one he called akhi, my brother, though Muslim was his cousin:

جَمِيلٌ أَنْ يَكُونَ لَكَ أَخٌ هُوَ حَبِيبُكَ، لَكِنَّ الْأَجْمَلَ أَنْ يَكُونَ لَكَ حَبِيبٌ هُوَ أَخُوكَ
Jamīlun an yakūna laka akhun huwa ḥabībuk, lākinna al-ajmala an yakūna laka ḥabībun huwa akhūk
It is beautiful to have a brother who is your beloved — but more beautiful still is to have a beloved who becomes your brother.

If you have no brother or sister, then make one — and let the criterion be the love of Muhammad and the family of Muhammad.

Muslim set out with two companions; both died of thirst on the road. He wrote to Hussein, my two companions have died, but I will continue to persevere. He entered Kufa — and so did Ibn Ziyad, who came concealed (mulaththam), mistaken at first for Hussein himself, seized the city, and began to kill, imprison, and excommunicate. He jailed men like Mukhtar al-Thaqafi. The twelve thousand became three hundred.

When sheltered with the old scholar Hani ibn Urwa, Muslim was given a chance to assassinate Ibn Ziyad as he visited — strike him while his back was turned, on a hidden cue. Muslim let the moment pass. Did you think I would kill a man with his back to me? I was raised by Ali ibn Abi Talib on the principle that you fight the one who attacks you. I will not have history write that I murdered in cold blood when he least expected it. In the moment he could have been vicious, he stayed principled. Hani paid for that shelter — dragged by his beard through the narrow streets of Kufa, pelted and pierced until he died a martyr.

Don't let the slander stand — that "the Shia of Kufa killed Hussein." Where was Mecca? Where was Medina? Those who wrote the letters were hunted down by their own records and beheaded in Qunasa Square. And it was Kufans — Habib ibn Mudhahir, Muslim ibn Awsaja — who fought beside Hussein until they were killed.

Alone now, his supporters slain, Muslim led Maghrib in the masjid behind thirty men; by its end, three; by Isha, none. Wandering Kufa thirsty, with a bounty on his head, he sat at a doorway. A little girl opened it. Just some water, if you don't mind. He told her, with tears, I am gharib Kufa — the stranger of Kufa. Her mother, Taw'a, recognized him as the nephew of her Imam and took him in, though her own son was a soldier of Ibn Ziyad. That night Muslim spent in salah, dhikr, and Qur'an. In a moment's sleep he saw Rasulullah, his father Aqil, Lady Zahra, and his uncle Amir al-Mu'minin — each saying, we will see you soon.

When Taw'a's son betrayed his presence, Muslim faced the forces of Ibn Ziyad alone in the alleyways, felling man after man — Allahu Akbar, la ilaha illallah — until they would not face him one-on-one. This is the nephew of Amir al-Mu'minin, the son of the exterminators of disbelief — send all your forces. They threw rocks from the rooftops, loosed arrows that struck his head, stabbed him from behind, and dug a pit that he fell into. Shackled before Ibn Ziyad's throne, he was offered a final will. He asked three things: bury me as a Muslim, on the way of the Prophet; tell Hussein not to come to Kufa; and give me some water. Ibn Ziyad denied the burial, promised Hussein an even worse end, and granted only the water. But each time blood dripped into the cup, and Muslim could not drink — it is as if Allah wills that I die like my beloved Aba Abdillah al-Husayn — gharib, thirsty, wronged at Karbala, with no chance to drink a drop.

They took him to the top of the palace. He asked to pray one last salah. As he finished, they pushed him from the roof. He called out: As-salamu alayka ya Aba Abdillah. And far away, Hussein rose and answered: Wa ʿalayka as-salam, ya akhi Muslim — ya safīrī wa wakīlī — my brother Muslim, my envoy and my deputy. Then he laid his hand on the head of Muslim's daughter Hamida. Uncle Hussein, have I become an orphan? she asked. My daughters are now your sisters, he said, and I am now your father — for the Prophet had taught that when a child is orphaned, one gently touches her head.

Muslim, as he fell, cried out — Ayyuha Husayn.
And Aba Abdillah called back — Ayyuha Muslim.

🕯 What Our Enemies Never Understood

They thought that if they killed enough, banned enough, buried enough, the Shia would vanish like every other sect that scattered after the Prophet. They never understood the four roots — marjaʿiyya, khums and zakat, Majlis al-Husayn, and the Imam of the age — and they never understood Muslim ibn Aqil: a man who was not infallible, yet would die thirsty and alone rather than abandon the principles of Ali.

That is the secret. We are not victors because we held power; we held to principle even when it cost us power. Our shuhada were buried — and our enemies forgot that what you bury in the earth, if it is a seed, only grows again. And again, and again — a generation that keeps rising. They come one day and go the next, but the honor of the people remains. So we will cry for Hussein, and from those tears draw our strength, and keep standing — until the one who watches over us, who is hurt when we are hurt, comes to gather what was scattered and protect those who would not bend.