Distortions about Ashura - Part 5

Ashura: Lies and Fabrications

This work is a summary of a series of lectures conducted by Ayatollah Murtadha al-Mutahhari during Ashura in Iran in 1969. In these lectures Mutahhari discusses the many fabrications regarding the martyrdom of al-Hussain ibn Ali (as), and specifically the spurious stories that have been falsely attributed to this event by Shias. He demonstrates the fact that many myths have been created around this event – created specifically for the purpose of whipping the people into a frenzy and making them shed false tears.

Muttahhari sought (in 1969) to bring accountability to both the reciters of these events and the listeners. He emphasized that it was the responsibility of all parties involved to end the mythmaking and storytelling, and to focus instead on the factual retelling of the martyrdom of al-Hussain (as).

Al-Abbas could Defeat an Entire Army

It is also written in that book that Imam Hussain himself personally killed three hundred thousand men in combat. The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima killed sixty thousand people. I calculated that if we assume that a swordsman kills one man every second, it would take eighty-three hours and twenty minutes to massacre a force of three hundred thousand.

Later, when they saw that this number of those felled by the Imam did not fit with a day’s duration, they said that the day of ‘Ashura was also seventy-two hours long!

Similar things are said concerning Hadrat Abu al-Fadl, that he killed twenty-five thousand men. I calculated that if one man were killed per second, it would require six days and fifty and odd hours to kill that many.

Therefore, we have to admit what Hajji Nuri, this great man, says, that if one wanted to mourn the Imam today and narrate the ordeals of Abu ‘Abd Allah, may Peace be upon him, one should lament over these new tragedies, over these falsehoods, which have been incorporated in the accounts of his martyrdom.

SOURCE:

http://www.twelvershia.net/2015/09/05/ashura-lies-and-fabrications/