Grief as Resistance: Honoring Ashura and Our Ancestors

As the crescent moon ushers in the sacred month of Muharram, Tending Futures honors the deep grief, resistance and unwavering truth that lives in this time.

Yesterday marked Ashura, the 10th day of Muharram, one of the holiest days in the Islamic calendar.  For our Shi’a Muslim kin, Muharram is not only the beginning of the Islamic New Year, it is a portal of remembrance.  A time when the heart turns to Karbala, where Imam Hussain (AS), grandson of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), stood with courage and sacrifice against tyranny and injustice.

This is a month of mourning, not for death alone but for what was betrayed: justice, dignity and divine love.  Imam Hussain did not die in vain.  He died so that truth could never be buried by empire.

As Black and Indigenous people, we, too, carry the memory of resistance in our bones.  We know what it means to stand against empire with nothing but truth.  We know Karbala because we’ve lived it on the shores of the Atlantic, in the cotton fields of the South, on reservations and in the belly of prisons.

We see echoes of Hussain in our ancestors who refused to bow.  In Harriet, in Malcolm, in Toypurina, in George Jackson.  In the mothers who hid their children in the hush harbors.  In the water protectors and the freedom fighters.

This Muharram, may we grieve boldly.  May we hold sacred space for lament, for collective prayer, for the names of the martyred both in Karbala and in our own lineages.

May we deepen our commitment to truth.  May we carry the banner of Hussain in our movements for justice, not as metaphor but as praxis.

We remember.
We mourn.
We rise.

Every day is Ashura.  Every land is Karbala.