In 1983 a young woman in Pakistan named Naseem Fatima claimed to be in direct visionary contact with the twelfth Imam (Shia Muslims believed their twelfth leader had disappeared centuries ago and would return as the world’s Messiah). A number of Shias were inspired by her, especially when she prophesied they would be able to visit the holy city of Karbala without worldly means.
Shia are known for their passionate faith, and for their poverty, so some of them took her literally. In February, thirty-eight Shia pilgrims walked to the shore of the Arabian Sea near the large city of Karachi. The women and children in the group, about half the number, were placed in six large trunks. Their leader, Sayyad Hussain Shah, pointed his religious banner at the waves and then marched into the sea. He believed that a path would open in the sea and lead them to Basra, from where the party would proceed to the holy city of Karbala in Iraq.
A few hours later, eighteen of the pilgrims had drowned and the survivors were plucked out of the water in varying stages of exhaustion and consciousness. Some of those who survived claimed, despite all the evidence to the contrary, to have witnessed the miracle of a parting sea. The Karachi police proceeded to arrest them on the grounds that they had attempted to leave Pakistan illegally without visas.
The nation of Pakistan was astonished at the incident. Rich Shias, impressed by the devotion of the survivors, paid for their journey by air for a week to and from Karbala. In Iraq, influential Shias, equally impressed, presented them with gifts, including rare copies of the Holy Quran. Shia Muslims saw the episode as confirmation of their faith; only the Shiahs were capable of such extreme devotion, of such a sacrifice. Naseem’s promise that they would visit Karbala without worldly means had seemingly been fulfilled.
Mainstream Sunni Muslims dismissed it as yet another example of Shiah aberration from the orthodox faith. More secular citizens saw it as flat-out evidence of insanity.
It makes you wonder what was going through Moses’ head when he and the Israelites were cornered at the Red Sea.….
________
Adapted from “The Rhetoric of English India,” by Sara Suleri Goodyear; “Death in Islam: The Hawkes Bay Case,” by Akbar S. Ahmed; and “The Disappeared: How the fatwa changed a writer’s life,” by Salman Rushdie in The New Yorker magazine, September 17, 2012, page 52.