The Great Big Green Week and sacred summer are here

I’m experiencing the impending arrival of summer slightly differently at the moment, partly because of our behind-the-scenes infrastructure-building and partly because this year Muharram, the first month of the Muslim calendar, occurs in mid-June before the summer solstice. Last year, it occurred just after the solstice. This is because the Islamic lunar calendar is approximately 11 days shorter than the Gregorian solar calendar. What this means is that, rather than my usual excitement about socialising with friends and loved ones in the sunny outdoors, I’m feeling a bit more reflective than usual in the leadup to summer. 

Muharram, which basically means ‘sacred’ in Arabic, is the month of several symbolic milestones in Muslim sacred history. The most foundational of these is the Hijrah (migration) of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, from Mecca to Medina. The Islamic calendar is hence also known as the Hijri calendar, and Muslims will mark the start of the Hijri year 1448 on 17 June. 

I was brought up in Malaysia and, as a Sunni Muslim, I associated Muharram with gratitude for the saving power of faith in God. Muharram was not merely an occasion to remember the Hijrah – it also commemorated the landing of the ark of Prophet Nuh (the Biblical Noah), peace be upon him, on Mount Judi in modern Turkey, and the parting of the Red Sea by Prophet Musa (the Biblical Moses), peace be upon him, to seek freedom from Pharaoh’s army.

I associated the tenth day of Muharram, known as Ashura, with recommended optional fasting (full disclosure: which I never observed) and increased worship. Despite not fasting, I would look forward to feasting on the bubur asyura prepared by my paternal aunts – a sweet dish consisting of ten ingredients peculiar to the north of peninsula Malaysia where I grew up. 

I was therefore quite taken aback when, soon after I arrived in London in 2010 for postgraduate study, I wrongly assumed that Muharram was also a time of fasting and rejoicing for one of my classmates, whom I learnt was a Shia. ‘Absolutely not,’ she said. ‘For us, Muharram is a time of mourning.’

In 680 CE, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Husayn ibn Ali (b. 626 CE), along with his family and followers, were massacred by the forces of the second Umayyad Caliph Yazid I in what is commonly known as the tragedy of Karbala. This tragedy was part of the Second Fitna (civil war) in early Muslim history, and was a key turning point in what later became a definitive break between Sunnis and Shias. And this tragedy happened during Muharram. 

For Shia Muslims, the first ten days of Muharram are thus a time of mourning culminating on Ashura. This 10-day period is marked by Majlis (gatherings) held to recount the events of Karbala, as well as processions and symbolic acts of grief to honour the sacrifice of Imam Husayn and his companions. The symbolism of Muharram, for Shias, is indivisible from what Husayn symbolises – a revolutionary leader who took the ultimate stand for moral justice. 

I won’t pretend that these different interpretations of Muharram do not still engender sectarian divisions and, sadly, violence amongst Muslims today. But, as someone with many Shia friends whom I respect and love dearly – and who was raised in a country that officially criminalises Shia expressions of Islam – the inner meanings I internalised as a Sunni about Muharram have ironically become even more salient precisely because my one-sided childhood understanding of it has been irreversibly challenged and expanded. To me, Muharram is now ultimately a time of deep reverence and critical self-reflection. This, and the solstice later this month, have heightened my awareness of the sacredness of summer. 

What does this mean for our work at Faith for the Climate? To me, the intra-faith subtleties about working for climate justice are just as important as building interfaith collaboration and friendship. If we are serious about working for climate justice, we need to understand the complex ways that power operates within and between faith communities, and how this can create multiple forms of oppression that are often not visible in the societal mainstream. 

It’s not always easy, and often it means that we can and should only move at the speed of trust rather than rushing things unnecessarily. And it requires lots of continuous learning and un-learning, which can be unsettling at times. 

That’s why I try to include a diverse range of goodies in these monthly updates, from personal spiritual reflections, special announcements, upcoming events and actions, to precious information resources that are increasingly rendered invisible by the proliferation of misinformation, artificial intelligence slop, and other divisive technologies.

Read on, and enjoy.