Let me be honest with you. When I scroll through my feed on the 9th and 10th of Muharram and I see Muslims posting holiday getaways, weekend plans, barbecue spreads, something inside me breaks a little. Not because I’m surprised anymore. But because these are the same people. The exact same people who were sharing infographics about Palestine at 2am. Who were reposting videos of children being pulled from rubble. Who showed up to protests with signs and tears and fire in their eyes.
And I have to ask..was that real? Or has activism just become the newest thing to be seen doing?
Because here’s the thing about social media in 2026. The outrage has become aesthetic. Raising your voice for the oppressed has become a personality trait, a trend, something you do to signal that you are one of the good ones. And I say this not to dismiss every person who has ever spoken up online, but to ask a harder question: if your conscience is loud enough to mourn children in Gaza, how is it quiet enough to book a resort on Ashura?
The 9th and 10th of Muharram are not just heavy dates on a religious calendar. They carry a weight that is almost physical. Because what happened on the plains of Karbala in 61 AH was not simply a religious event that Muslims commemorate out of tradition. It was a massacre. The grandson of the Holy Prophet ? watched his companions fall one by one. He gave son after son. He gave brother after brother. Seventy two people. And he stood firm. In thirst. In grief. Against an army of thousands. Not because he didn’t know what was coming. But because he knew exactly what was coming and he stood anyway.
That is not ancient history. That is the most urgent story of our time.
Look around you. Eighty percent of the world cannot side with truth when it costs them something. Children are still being killed. Women are still being erased. The powerful are still crushing the powerless and calling it politics. If the message of Imam Hussain (AS) feels irrelevant to you, I would ask you to look again – because the very fact that we still need it this desperately is proof that Karbala never ended. It just keeps wearing different faces.
We talk about Hussain being for everyone. We say his door has no discrimination. And that is true. Go to Karbala during Arbaeen and you will see it with your own eyes – millions of people, every race, every language, every background, walking and weeping for a man they never met. Because grief recognises grief. Because a human being who lost everything and still did not bow to tyranny speaks to something in every soul that has ever suffered.
But here is my confusion. If Hussain is for everyone…where are we?
Not the non-Muslims. Not the people who have never heard his name. I mean us. The ones who grew up with his name on our lips. The ones who know what happened at the river Euphrates. The ones who will share a post about oppression on any given Tuesday but cannot sit still for ten days in Muharram.
There is something I think about often. In India, when Muharram falls close to Holi or Diwali, there have been instances of Hindu communities choosing to postpone their celebrations out of respect for the grief of their Muslim neighbours. Out of respect. For a mourning that is not even theirs.
So I want to ask, what is stopping us? What exactly is stopping us from pausing our small celebrations, our weekend plans, our getaways, for ten days? Ten days out of three hundred and sixty five. For the man we claim to love. For the massacre we claim to remember. For the message we claim to carry.
You cannot say Labaik Ya Hussain with your mouth and book a holiday with your hands in the same breath.
If Karbala is the classroom and Imam Hussain (AS) is the lesson – how are we expecting to pass when we haven’t even opened the book?
And if we cannot pause long enough to sit with his grief… what exactly are we mourning in Palestine?
