Ashura Slideshow

Perhaps I was over-reacting when I loaded up the car with flak jackets and a first aid kit in preparation for a trip to see the Ashura ceremonies in Nabatiyeh in southern Lebanon. But I was still feeling foolish for having stumbled unprepared into a fire-fight between Shia and Sunni Muslim gangs in Beirut last week, and Ashura ceremonies have often been marred by violence. In Iraq, they have become opportnities for Sunni extremists to fan sectarian flames by attacking worshipers on one of the most important Shia holidays. Nevertheless I was probably laying it on a little thick for the benefit of my friend Katherine, an American newspaper reporter who'd just returned to Lebanon from the States and needed an update on the recent unpleasantness here: that's the mosque where guys passed out helmets and sticks during Thursday's riot, I pointed out; that's the university where the street fighting broke out after a lunchroom argument, etc. By the time we got to Nabatiyeh, I'd freaked her out to the extent that when we went inside a Kentucky Fried Chicken to use the bathroom, she noticed a motorcycle helmet by the counter and asked "Is that for the rioters?" No, I replied, that's for the home delivery man.

Now and then it's important to take a deep breath and remind ourselves that the Middle East isn't inhabited exclusively by people who want nothing more than to cut each other to pieces at a moment's notice. Sometimes there are people who merely want to cut themselves to pieces. That's what happens on Ashura in southern Lebanon, one of the few places in the world outside of Iraq where Shia Muslims ritually bleed themsleves in honor of the suffering of their ancestors.

The holiday commemorates the death of Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, at the battle of Karbala in Iraq in 680 AD. Hussein was killed by rival claimants to the leadership of the Muslim people in a dynastic struggle that occurred following the death of the Prophet. Ever since that schism, followers of Hussein -- Shia Muslims -- have been a minority sect of Islam, while the victors at Karbala ruled the Islamic world for hundreds of years and their followers, the majority, became Sunni.

The action on the main day of the Ashura festival in Nabatiyeh occurs around a Husseiniyah, a Shia community center, where older men with straight razors make gashes on the heads of the young men gathered there. The lads then beat their scalps in a gesture of lament that also accelerates the flow of blood from the superficial wounds. Once they've worked themselves up into a red lather, they make circular processions around the neighborhood shouting "Haidar!" -- described to me as nickname for Hussein's father Ali, meaning "lion".

Recent health campaigns have tried to make the process safer and more sanitary. Teams of paramedics line the main drag in Nabatiyeh to dress wounds and pass out rubbing alcohol so that participants clean their razors after each use. One paramedic told me that there was little risk of passing HIV infections, because no Muslim with HIV would knowingly participate.

Still, the practice of Ashura bloodletting is controversial even among Shia. "It's disgusting," a 12-year old boy in Nabatiyeh told me. "It's just a bunch of guys showing off." More senior authorities have also expressed their disapproval. Clerics in Iran discourage the practice, and the spiritual leaders of Hizballah, the largest Shia political party in Lebanon, have also banned it. Lebanese critics say that bloodletting is embarrassingly medieval and a waste of good blood that should instead be donated to hospitals.

To an outsider visiting Nabatiyeh or looking at photographs of Ashura, it's hard not to remark on this fetishizing of violence and death, and noticing the link between Karbala and more recent battles. Nabatiyeh was heavily damaged this summer during the war with Israel, and there's a poster at the entrance of the city with portraits of the fighters killed in that conflict.

And tell me that you don't look at this picture of a young boy with a sword and ask yourself: "Will he be in the next generation of militia fighters? Is he a future suicide bomber?"

But Shia Islam is hardly the only culture or religion that has adopted ritual bloodletting as a rite of masculinity. Just a few miles to the south in Israel, whole families gather and watch as their newest male members are circumcised. How many American fathers take their sons hunting then hang the dead animal on the living room wall? And if the guys in togas look silly to you, substitute the blood and self-abuse for a beer keg, projectile vomit, and ritual hazing, and you've got yourself a wild fraternity party. Please sir, can I have another?

But if torturing yourself as part of a history lesson still seems so Middle Ages and Middle Eastern, maybe that's because there's very little in contemporary Western culture -- and especially American culture -- that helps us understand what it is like to be a born loser. Even Jews have the golden age of Solomon and his Temple to remember when things get really bad. But for Shia, their moment of consciousness as a people coincided with their greatest defeat. It would be as if our defining moment as Americans occured when George Washington crossed the Delaware River to meet with certain death, or if the British had hung the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and the republican true-belivers among us have lived as quasi-outlaws ever since.

Alongside all the controversial blood and beating, Ashura participants also stage a history pageant that recounts the final hours of Hussein at Karbala as he eschews surrender and vassalage to meet his fate. It is a morality play repeated every year all over the Shia world in a seemingly unchanging format that nevertheless moves many in the audience to tears. "Hussein's example teaches us how to live with dignity in the face of total humiliation," a man from a nearby village told me.

Hussein's legacy also continues, Shia believe, because one of his descendants, the Mahdi, lives hidden among us, and will makes his appearance at a time of great trial and strife in order to save humanity. There are some who believe that the great upheaval of the Middle East today -- especially the American invasion of Iraq, sectarian slaughter, the summer war in Lebanon, and the coming confrontation between America and Iran -- is a prelude to the Mahdi's return. But for the moment in Lebanon, the Mahdi's intervention is unnecessary. Ashura was peaceful throughtout the country, and the only injuries in Nabatiyeh were self-inflicted.

Photos and text by Andrew Lee Butters/Nabatiyeh