Light Does Not Discriminate: Why We Bleed for Those Who Are Not Us

🩸 The Question That Will Not Go Away

There is a question that surfaces again and again in our homes, on our screens, and in our own hearts: they're Sunni — why should we care?

It comes dressed in many costumes. Some ask it from exhaustion: look at the losses we keep absorbing and the little we seem to gain. We have buried families, lost homes, lost loved ones. And not only ordinary loss — we have spilt holy, irreplaceable blood. Great leaders, special people who left their mark on history, taken from us. Is it worth it for people who do not even share our worldview?

Others ask it from supremacy — not from love of truth, but from hatred of the other. I don't like Sunnis. They're not worth it. They hate us anyway. They point to those who joined ISIS, to a street named after a tyrant, and say: I am dying for them?

Others ask it from a hardened place: who cares, they're not Shia, this isn't our cause. They will even argue the theology away — claiming the land itself was opened under conquests we do not endorse, so why pour our priceless blood into it?

And the cynics ask it from geopolitics: their loyalty only ever serves their own interests; if the tables turned they would behead you.

So the question stands, in all its forms. Let us answer it — carefully, honestly, and without flinching.

🏠 Fix the Home Before the Neighbourhood

Before we speak of dying for the Sunni, we have to be honest about a closer wound: do we even have unity among ourselves?

We Shia are quick to fracture. A disagreement over how a centre is managed, and someone breaks off to open their own — and then forbids his family from praying in the old one. More centres are no problem if they are built in order and with awareness of one another. But when they are born of grudges we were once willing to go to war over and now refuse to even speak across, what business do we have lecturing the world about unity?

This is intra-faith dialogue, not inter-faith. Before Sunni–Shia, there is Shia–Shia. The Qur'an's principle is plain: if you want to change a society, begin with yourself; if you want to mend your house, begin with yourself.

يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا قُوا أَنفُسَكُمْ وَأَهْلِيكُمْ نَارًا
Yā ayyuhā alladhīna āmanū qū anfusakum wa-ahlīkum nārā
O you who believe, shield yourselves and your families from a fire.

You cannot talk the big talk about innocent families abroad while there is injustice in your own house — between you and your children, between husband and wife. Learn your priorities. Mend the home, then the neighbourhood.

🤝 Three Levels of Unity

Once the house is in order, can we unite with the non-Shia world? Yes — on three levels. Two are obligatory whether we like it or not. The third depends.

First, social unity. Here it is irrelevant whether your neighbour prays as a Sunni or a Shia. If a sister has her hijab torn off, do not ask how or when she prays — run to her aid. If a brother is being bullied, do not check his sect first — go, help, assist. A Muslim should be someone everyone feels safe around.

الْمُسْلِمُ مَنْ سَلِمَ الْمُسْلِمُونَ مِنْ لِسَانِهِ وَيَدِهِ
Al-muslimu man salima al-muslimūna min lisānihi wa-yadihi
The Muslim is the one from whose tongue and hand other people are safe.

When a Muslim is near, the feeling should be alhamdulillah, a Muslim is here — not watch out. You must be that example. Stand up on the bus and give your seat to the elder, to the woman, to whoever needs it more than your strong, capable young body. This is chivalry — in Arabic, futuwwah: that you are strong, young, and able, and still you give others priority. That is what Allah loves. He praised exactly such a group in the Qur'an:

إِنَّهُمْ فِتْيَةٌ آمَنُوا بِرَبِّهِمْ وَزِدْنَاهُمْ هُدًى
Innahum fityatun āmanū bi-Rabbihim wa-zidnāhum hudā
Indeed they were young men who believed in their Lord, so We increased them in guidance.

They had every excuse under the sun to drift — youth, health, the promise of long life — and still they worshipped. So Allah did not merely give them guidance; He gave them extra. And from this same spirit comes the one whose chivalry has no equal:

لَا فَتَى إِلَّا عَلِيٌّ لَا سَيْفَ إِلَّا ذُو الْفَقَارِ
Lā fatā illā ʿAlī, lā sayfa illā Dhū al-Faqār
There is no champion but Ali, and no sword but Dhū al-Faqār.

A man with every reason to coast, and instead he submits his whole life — never crude, never cheating others, always praying on time, never seating himself before his elders. There is none like him in chivalry, and no sword like his.

Second, humanitarian unity — this one is even greater. The day the Qur'an is burned in France, the day the Prophet is mocked, you and your Sunni brother stand together: that is my Book too. When fifty worshippers were gunned down in the mosque in Christchurch, the question was never who did they revere? That day was simply tragic. If it had been a church full of Christians, it should still have shaken you. This unity is obligated.

⚖️ The Third Level: Theology — Where Unity Has a Limit

The third level is theological, and here the rule reverses: you cannot compromise on your creed, even in the name of unity.

There are two extremes. The first dissolves everything into unity until nothing distinct remains — let's not discuss the difficult things, let's give warm words to figures we do not actually venerate, let's just pray their way. This is not halal unity; it is surrender. You gave up your identity, and you lost your dignity in the bargain.

They once asked the Imam: why remind people of the tragedy of Imam Hussain every single Muharram — once is surely enough? His answer:

لَوْلَا أَنَّا نُذَكِّرُكُمْ بِهِ لَنَسِيتُمُوهُ
Lawlā annā nudhakkirukum bihi la-nasītumūh
Were it not that we remind you of him, you would have forgotten him.

We revive it because it is our identity — not as a bargaining chip for unity. Do not let anyone tell you to bury who you are because it offends someone. Don't be a snowflake — let it offend. Disagreement is not an assault: I am not going to disrespect you, but coexistence does not require me to accept everything you believe.

And yet — the second extreme is just as dangerous: who cares what they think, say whatever you want, go as far as you like. That was never the way of the Prophet's household. There are people with knowledge but no wisdom. Hikma — wisdom — means putting things in their right place. Is this the time? Is this the place?

A convert scholar in Egypt was dragged through the streets and killed by extremists — not because all Sunnis are extremists, but because some are wolves, and he lived among them. Words have consequences. Say something too rough on a livestream, and someone in Peshawar or Mosul pays the price. We saw it again in Syria, where people became victims simply by association.

So taqiyya — guarding your tongue to avoid bloodshed and fitna — is sometimes obligatory. But it is an exception, not a posture of cowardice. The principle remains: keep your narrative, stay true to yourself, but wield the truth wisely.

There was a man on Hajj who began openly cursing the figures we revere as enemies, right in the sacred precincts. The result? His group's leader was arrested and the whole group was sent home. We know our stance — but who were you performing for? That is knowledge without hikma.

When I speak to my non-Shia brother, offence given deliberately is not the same as offence that arises academically. I want the best for you — I want you to embrace Islam. But how can I welcome you while loudly condemning, in your face, the very figures you hold dear? Imagine someone naming your mother and your Imam and filling in the blanks with curses. Wouldn't your hand reach for their throat? When a whole generation has been raised on hatred and a man comes spewing venom, of course they will act on it. There is a way to speak. Wisdom is not weakness — it is the missing verse some forget.

👨‍👩‍👧 The Theology of the Home: Don't Trade Your Identity for Love

This careful, uncompromising line runs straight through marriage and family. Sunni–Shia marriages are generally permissible — with one exception: when the Shia spouse fears the other will pull them, or their children, away from their path. Then that relationship becomes haram, because you must be able to safeguard your faith and your children's.

To the sister marrying a man who does not care for her deen: do not be fooled. He cares for other things, not for this — because if he cared for your deen, he would not be doing what he is doing. And to the young man chasing love over values: when your beautiful children come, will they pray on the turbah or not? Who is their first authority — and what if mother and father pull in two directions?

The small differences are not so small when you live them. What is halal on their table — octopus, lizard — may be forbidden on yours. Whose house, whose rules? Even the day of Eid can fracture a family, one fasting while the other feasts. So ask yourself honestly: am I interested in this person, or in their principles, vision, and values? What truly draws us to anyone, if not those? Keep your identity. Never compromise it. But use wisdom in how you hold it.

🌍 You Are Not a Sect — You Are Islam

Now to the heart of the question: where do we stand on dying for others?

First, the assumption is false. Who told you every Palestinian shares the worldview you condemn? Many are deeply sympathetic to the love of the Household — some were found martyred with a ziyarah in their pocket. And the ISIS argument cuts both ways: yes, perhaps one fighter joined them — but are the children ISIS? The women? The men fleeing genocide? If one man shouts a slogan, do I now judge every Iraqi, every Lebanese, every Syrian? I cannot generalise. That is wrong.

Second — and this is the deepest point — even if they do not share your sect, you cannot say they're not my sect, so I will not care. Listen to what that statement does to you:

If you only help those who match your sect, you have just shrunk Islam into a sect — one little group among many. But Islam is holistic, all-encompassing. Sectarianism is the small thing; you are the big thing.

If being Shia means you love Imam Ali and the family of the Prophet — then Imam Ali was the greatest Shia. And if being Sunni means following the Sunnah of Allah — then Imam Ali was the greatest Sunni. So what is the issue? When you reduce yourself to "just a sect," you have made the school of the Household into a club membership. It is not. It is a way of life, morals, ethics, a vision, a system. Yours is green, yours is red, yours is blue — mine is the entire spectrum.

أَلَا وَإِنَّ شِيعَتَنَا هُمُ الَّذِينَ يَتَّبِعُونَ آثَارَنَا
Alā wa-inna shīʿatanā humu alladhīna yattabiʿūna āthāranā
Truly, our Shia are those who follow in our footsteps.

So do not ever say they're not my sect, that's why I can't help them. You took the name of Ali — but not his justice.

🕊 We Would Rebuild the Stones. We Cannot Rebuild the Child.

"Why did we die for you?" Because we could not stand to watch you die innocently. That is the whole of it — not geopolitics.

Here is the controversial truth, said plainly: if Bayt al-Maqdis and the Dome of the Rock were destroyed today, if the Church of the Holy Sepulchre were levelled today, if the Wailing Wall were rubble today — we would rebuild every one of them. The next day. The same day. The Kaaba itself was demolished and rebuilt more than once.

But what can rebuild an innocent child crushed under the rubble? What can rebuild a soul burned to ash? The day you can rebuild a murdered child, I will agree it was not worth dying for. Until then, we cannot stay silent while the whole world turns its back, while babies are killed and women and men run for their lives.

And do not let anyone accuse us of comparing Karbala to Palestine. No one is making a comparison. But when I see children dying and tents burning, I cannot help remembering a day in history when tents were burned and women and children ran. We carry something most of the Muslim world — and the elite who could act but do not — have lost. It is called conscience.

هَلَكَ النَّاسُ إِلَّا الْعَالِمُونَ
Halaka al-nāsu illā al-ʿālimūn
The people are destroyed, except those who know.

You are alive if your heart still shakes when you see this. There are those who walk but are better off dead — men walking, unmoved. How could a heart not move at a mother saying my son lost his eye, lost his fingers? It is not easy. We will miss those we lost every single day. But it is worth it — because we were cut from the cloth of the Household, and we give justice indiscriminately.

أَطْعِمُوا الطَّعَامَ وَأَفْشُوا السَّلَامَ
Aṭʿimū al-ṭaʿāma wa-afshū al-salām
Feed others and spread peace.

We look at what you are, not who you are. When the Imam passed a Christian begging beside a church, he asked: "What is this?" — what is this state of affairs that allows it — not who is this. My justice does not ask your name.

🐈 If His Mercy Reaches a Cat

How wide is the mercy we are meant to carry? There is a hadith found in their books and in ours alike: a woman entered the Fire because she caged a cat until it starved and died. Allah punished her — for a cat.

If Allah's mercy is that vast over an animal, how much greater is His care over a human being, over the children of Adam He fashioned with His own hand? Just because someone prays a different way, follows a different school, that does not lower their worth before Allah — so it must not lower their worth before you and me.

ارْحَمُوا مَنْ فِي الْأَرْضِ يَرْحَمْكُمْ مَنْ فِي السَّمَاءِ
Irḥamū man fī al-arḍi yarḥamkum man fī al-samāʾ
Have mercy on those on earth, and the One in the heavens will have mercy on you.

Where is the mercy these days? People have lost sleep, lost the will to watch the news, sickened by the world. But you must keep at least some degree of consciousness — for there are people we have never met and yet we love. In the school of the Household, everyone with an open heart is welcome to come in. The only one we turn away is the one who says my way or the highway.

⚔️ The Class of the Master: Composure Over Cruelty

They are horrible to us — so why must we become horrible like them? The best revenge is not to prove their slander true. They call us crazy — so do not go crazy and hand them the proof. Have some class.

When a great scholar of the Household debated an opponent who hurled at him filthy insults — O son of impurity — he did not stoop. He answered every point with proof, verse by verse, two thousand arguments, half from revelation and half from reason. He won the war by keeping his composure. He could have hurled the insult back and still won the argument — but he chose dignity instead. One of the greatest pieces of wisdom: the first to scream and raise his voice in a debate has already lost. You do not need to force the truth — the truth shines; just show it.

وَلَا يَتَكَبَّرُ أَحَدٌ إِلَّا مِنْ ذِلَّةٍ يَجِدُهَا فِي نَفْسِهِ
Wa-lā yatakabbaru aḥadun illā min dhillatin yajiduhā fī nafsih
No one becomes arrogant except out of a lowliness he finds within himself.

They are arrogant because they are insecure. Do not climb when they climb. Lower your wing — except in the one moment it must rise: when it becomes truth against falsehood.

🪦 Raised by Umm al-Banīn: Brotherhood Above Blood

The most beautiful example of this brotherhood was forged on the most personal level — in a household raised by an extraordinary mother, Umm al-Banīn. She raised four sons and taught them one core value: you may share blood with Al-Hussain, but you will never call him merely "brother." You will call him your Imam. He is not just family — he is the Imam of the time, and whatever he says, goes.

She built a brotherhood synchronised on a single purpose. And the proof of how deep it ran appears in those who opposed the family and still found welcome. Take the man who blamed Imam Ali, who held him responsible — by common language, an enemy of Ali. When he later came to Karbala, Imam Hussain did not say I cannot unite with you. And the brothers did not turn on him. They forgave — no, more than forgave: they were willing to die for him.

Say this to those who go to the wrong masjid to pray and are sneered at — who, after they leave, have their prayer-spot "cleaned." No. If a Sunni comes and prays among us, go to that very spot and embrace and welcome them. We are cut from a cloth that, when a Sunni walks in, we extend our hand first. It is up to them whether to take it — but we extend it first.

Consider those non-Muslims and outsiders who came to Hussain. One arrives saying I disagree with you on a sectarian level — and Hussain says welcome to the school of Muhammad. He welcomes him without demanding he join the group first. Even Zuhayr, who had despised the family, was reminded by Hussain of a prophecy Salman al-Muhammadi once told him — that his greatest joy would come on the day he was called to his final battle. He remembered. And he joined.

And the magnanimity runs to the very end. The one who first blocked Hussain's family and children from the water — Hussain still says of him: if I die, treat him as he treated me; but if I live, let him be, and care for him — give him from my water, give him from my food. If it were left to us, we would destroy a man for a single bad look. But this is the Household. They do not confine themselves to a sect.

نَحْنُ شَجَرَةٌ وَاحِدَةٌ مِنْ نُورٍ
Naḥnu shajaratun wāḥidatun min nūr
We are one tree of light.

We were radiance before this clay was fashioned. From us is light — and have you ever seen light discriminate? The sun shines on the Sunni and the Shia alike. If you attach yourself to that light, you must shine it on everyone too. You do not hold it back; you do not burn people with it. You say: I'll tell you where you're wrong — but I'll unite with you on a hundred levels, and I will never compromise my own.

🌙 Make Me Proud — The Mother's Wait

What was Umm al-Banīn's secret? She raised four children, with Al-Abbas the eldest, on a single principle: whatever the Imam of your time says, goes. She did not say that's my son's brother-in-law — she said that's my Imam. And every single day she would wait in Medina for news of her sons.

When her son bid her farewell, she said only: make me proud. Proud not by fighting — though we fight when we must — but by knowing the cause of the Imam of your time. That is the question for each of us: some the Imam wants to resist; others watch from afar with breaking hearts. What does the Imam want from you, here? Your task is to never conform, to always be proud, to be unapologetic, to hold firm to your identity — to be the best Shia you can be wherever you live, conforming only to Allah. We will never bully others — but we will never be bullied.

أَنَا أُمُّ الْبَنِينَ الَّتِي كُنْتُ بِالنُّفُوسِ مُكَرَّمَة
Anā Umm al-Banīn allatī kuntu bi-l-nufūsi mukarrama
I am Umm al-Banīn, who was once honoured among souls.

She would stand outside Medina and wait: maybe now they have returned. I gave four sons for Hussain — and if I had a thousand, I would give them all. And when the news of Karbala finally came, it was Bishr who carried it back. He could no longer bring himself to call the city by its Islamic name; in his grief he called it by its old name of ignorance — do you know who we just let be slaughtered? He cried out:

يَا أَهْلَ يَثْرِبَ لَا مُقَامَ لَكُمْ بِهَا · قُتِلَ الْحُسَيْنُ فَأَدْمُعِي مِدْرَارُ
Yā ahla Yathriba lā maqāma lakum bihā · qutila al-Ḥusaynu fa-admuʿī midrār
O people of Yathrib, there is no place for you here — Hussain has been killed, and my tears pour without end.

Then Umm al-Banīn came to him, holding an infant. Tell me about Karbala. He praised the martyrdom of her sons — and she stopped him: I did not ask you about my son. Tell me about Hussain. He told of one son fallen, then another, and each time she said: I did not ask for them — tell me about Aba Abdillah al-Hussain. Her own four sons, ransomed before her Imam — until the line came that pierced her heart, and she dropped the infant from the shock, gathered herself, and asked only for word of Hussain.

That is the answer to they're Sunni, why should we care? A mother who would give a thousand sons and ask after none of them — only after the Imam, only after the truth, only after the one who was killed defending everyone. That is the cloth we are cut from. We do not love a sect. We love justice, and we shine our light on all who will receive it.