Yesterday 27th January Husayn Day Peace Walk was the first ever demonstration of Shiite faith in the Bay Area. It was a peace walk attended by well over 800 people and the message was clear; Religious tolerance, Integration and Peaceful co-existence.
The walk started at 11am but I reached at 1:30pm and surprisingly I had only missed 30 minutes of walk. They started off at St James Street and North 1st Street going towards the San Jose City Hall. The best thing was that it didn’t rain. As far as I know, nothing went wrong that was visible to my naked eye.
The first and foremost thing that I noticed was that women were ahead, men were behind. This is something I have never seen before. In Pakistan and other places where these walks are done, it’s more of a MEN only affair and it is known as Juloos. There are women but they are outnumbered by men.
This peace walk was more of a Juloos with American touch and I think it really worked. What I mean by that is when the peace walk ended, there were few speakers took the podium at the city hall and tried to focus on the legacy of the Prophet’s (P.B.U.H)Grand Son, Husayn (A.S). There were few things that one could get out of them was that they emphasized on religious tolerance, greater integration in to American society, and Peaceful co-existence with different faiths of the world.
I believe that this first ever attempt to get the message across was successful. I might be wrong but I haven’t seen Muslims having peace walks or anything similar to Husayn day in the past 5 years I have been here. Times are tough and it’s important now more than ever for Muslims to voice their opinion because there are things happening all around the world where Islam has been made a mockery of and the religion of peace fails to convince anyone if it really is what it’s believed to be.
Husayn (A.S) left a mark on history by what he did for the Muslims of the time and the generations of Muslims after that. History recognizes this and Husayn (A.S) is recognized by the many great leaders and revolutionaries as some one who did what was right. It’s unfortunate that non-Muslims have better understanding of Husayn’s (A.S) message then does the general Muslim population. His message is very simple, if you believe in something, stand up for it and sacrifice all you have.
We all know Gandhi, just ponder over what he said about Husayn (A.S):
“the progress of Islam does not depend on the use of the sword by its believers, but the result of the supreme sacrifice of Husayn, the great saint.”
Photos taken on Husayn Day Peace Walk
