Pilgrims worship at Shi'ite holy shrine in Karbala
Hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims worshipped under a blazing sun today at a holy shrine in the southern Iraqi city of Karbala.
The pilgrims chanted, danced and even slashed their bodies in a frenzied religious ritual that was banned for decades by Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Up to two million Shiites from Iraq, Iran and other countries were converging on Karbala for a pilgrimage that culminates on Thursday.
Karbala is where Hussein, a grandson of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, was martyred in the seventh century.
The march comes as Shiites are flexing new-found strength since the fall of Saddam, whose mostly Sunni Muslim government severely repressed Iraq’s Shiite majority.
Shiites have been setting up local administrations to re-establish order, and religious leaders have emerged as key sources of political power, especially in southern Iraq.
At least one leading Shiite figure has called for the Karbala gathering to be used as a protest against US domination of Iraq.
American troops were keeping a low profile today – even though they had stockpiled emergency food and water for the pilgrims and worked out security measures for the 45 mile march along the main route from Najaf to Karbala.
Local Iraqis were handing out the food and water so as not to inflame tensions.
The pilgrims included men and women of all ages – the men clad mostly white robes and headbands, the women cloaked head to toe in traditional black dress.
The mood in the sacred city was frenetic.
Two groups of 100 men in white robes slashed their heads with long sharp swords in a self-mutilation ritual, spraying blood on those near them.
They waved the blades at the shrine, screaming with joy. Some were taken away in cars to get medical treatment, while others washed up later at a traditional Iraqi bathhouse.
Packs of men circled the city’s main shrines, creating an almost solid mass of humanity. Some worshippers held aloft photographs of Shiite clerics.
Water trucks were brought in to help the crowd – which may already have surpassed a million people – weather today’s 32 C (90 F ) heat and blazing sun. Roving watermen sprayed the worshippers to keep them cool.
A portrait of Saddam Hussein that used to hang on the main Imam Hussein shrine was gone, underlining the new sense of freedom enjoyed by Iraqi Shiites.
The roads in the area were choked with pilgrims, some of them limping from long journeys.
Two men crawled on their stomachs into one shrine – months ago, they had vowed to crawl into Karbala if the Americans ousted Saddam.
“We were prohibited from visiting these shrines for a long time by the Baath Party and their agents,” Abed Ali Ghilan said.
“This year we thank God for ridding us of the dictator Saddam Hussein and for letting us visit these shrines.”
Saddam’s regime had permitted the annual pilgrimages, but prohibited people from coming on foot or engaging in the ritual slashings, and monitored the participants as well as centres of Shiite rebellion in Najaf and Karbala.
Despite their new-found freedoms, rifts have erupted among the Shiites since Saddam’s fall.
Abdul Majid al-Khoei, a cleric who had opposed Saddam’s rule, was hacked to death on April 10 in the holy city of Najaf along with a pro-Saddam cleric with whom he appeared as a gesture of reconciliation.
Al-Jazeera television reported that some senior clerics did not show up today, possibly due to security concerns.
They included the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, and Muktada al-Sadr.
Al-Sistani was one of several clerics reportedly threatened by the mob in Najaf, which was reportedly led by al-Sadr and made up of members of Saddam’s Baath Party.
