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Imam Husain: greatness comes from qualities, not from family descent

Friday Khutba by Dr Zahid Aziz, for Lahore Ahmadiyya UK, 26 June 2026

“And when his Lord tried Abraham with certain commands he fulfilled them. He said: Surely I will make you a leader of people. (Abraham) said: And of my offspring? My covenant does not include the wrongdoers, said He.” — ch. 2, Al-Baqarah, v. 124	وَ اِذِ ابۡتَلٰۤی اِبۡرٰہٖمَ رَبُّہٗ بِکَلِمٰتٍ فَاَتَمَّہُنَّ ؕ قَالَ اِنِّیۡ جَاعِلُکَ لِلنَّاسِ اِمَامًا ؕ قَالَ وَ مِنۡ ذُرِّیَّتِیۡ ؕ قَالَ لَا یَنَالُ عَہۡدِی الظّٰلِمِیۡنَ ﴿۱۲۴﴾
“And We blessed him and Isaac. And among their offspring some are doers of good, but some are clearly unjust to themselves.” — ch. 37, Al-Ṣāffāt, v. 113	وَ بٰرَکۡنَا عَلَیۡہِ وَ عَلٰۤی اِسۡحٰقَ ؕ وَ مِنۡ ذُرِّیَّتِہِمَا مُحۡسِنٌ وَّ ظَالِمٌ لِّنَفۡسِہٖ مُبِیۡنٌ ﴿۱۱۳﴾٪
“And certainly We sent Noah and Abraham, and We gave prophethood and the Book to their offspring; so some of them go aright, but most of them are transgressors.” — ch. 57, Al-Ḥadīd, v. 26	وَ لَقَدۡ اَرۡسَلۡنَا نُوۡحًا وَّ اِبۡرٰہِیۡمَ وَ جَعَلۡنَا فِیۡ ذُرِّیَّتِہِمَا النُّبُوَّۃَ وَ الۡکِتٰبَ فَمِنۡہُمۡ مُّہۡتَدٍ ۚ وَ کَثِیۡرٌ مِّنۡہُمۡ فٰسِقُوۡنَ ﴿۲۶﴾

As we are at the 10th of the month of Muḥarram, and the martyrdom of Hazrat Imam Husain, maternal grandson of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, is being marked and commemorated by Muslims all over the world, that is also the topic of this khutba. Imam Husain met his martyrdom in the year 680, about 48 years after the death of the Holy Prophet Muhammad. You will know that Imam Husain had refused to recognise the authority of the ruler Yazid, a tyrant, who had succeeded his father Muawiya as ruler of all Muslims of that time. His father had declared him as his successor in violation of the principles of Islam, and Imam Husain objected to this. Imam Husain, with a band of merely 50 to 70 followers, faced the state army of several thousand sent by Yazid, and they all perished in the ensuing battle of Karbala, including Imam Husain himself.

He is honoured by all Muslims for his great personal sacrifice in standing up for justice against a tyrant. The Shiah sect of Muslims raises Imam Husain to an exaggerated status not warranted by the teachings of Islam, and they give a specially high place to Hazrat Ali and the family and descendants of the Holy Prophet Muhammad. They also denigrate and speak ill of the other Companions of the Holy Prophet, starting with Hazrat Abu Bakr and Hazrat Umar whom they call as hypocrites. Despite this, in our opinion the Shiahs are our Muslim brethren and it is wholly wrong for anyone to declare them as kafir or to persecute or attack them.

Not only the Shiahs but also to some extent the mainstream, Sunni Muslims believe that there is something special about the descendants of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, and that they have a higher status with Allah because of being his descendants. This is why I recited those three verses at the beginning of this khutba.

In the first, it is said that God tested Abraham by asking him to carry out certain commands, and Abraham carried them out faithfully. So God made him a leader and example for people. Abraham asked God: What about my descendants? God replied that His promise does not include the wrongdoers. There is no automatic promise for them just because of being a prophet’s physical descendants. The second verse explicitly says that God blessed Abraham and his son Isaac but among their descendants are both good people and bad people. The third verse I recited goes further and says that among the descendants of Noah and Abraham, a few are good and most are bad.

Another verse in the Quran says that the prophets who appeared in all mankind were followed by later generations “who wasted prayers and followed low desires”, and they shall meet destruction in this world unless they repent and become believers and do good (19:59). In two places in the Quran, it is mentioned that the true believers who follow the teachings sent by God will enter the Gardens (jannāt) of the next life, and it is added that also entering these Gardens will be “those who do good (man ṣalaḥa) from among their fathers and their spouses and their descendants” (13:23, 40:8). No one can enter these Gardens just because they were the fathers or mothers, wives or husbands, or sons or daughters, or later descendants, of the true believers. They have to be doers of good themselves. Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad said about this:

“It must always be remembered that prophets, and likewise other righteous, truthful men of God, come to set an example in the world. The man who does not try to follow their example but is willing to bow to them and believes that they can grant him his needs, he is not at all a worthy person in God’s estimation. In fact, after death he will find that the Imam whom he revered has turned away from him. Those people who raise the status of Hazrat Ali or Hazrat Imam Husain so high that it is almost like worshipping them, they cannot be considered as followers of Imam Husain, and he will not be happy at this behaviour.” (Malfuzat, 2022 edition, vol. 6, p. 19–20)

After his martyrdom Imam Husain came to be honoured highly for refusing to accept the authority of the Muslim ruler of his time, Yazid, who in fact ruled over all Muslims of that time in the world, because Yazid was violating the teachings of Islam. Yet in his time, the vast majority of the Muslims were of no help at all to Imam Husain. Many obeyed Yazid’s orders, and others who had promised to help Imam Husain did nothing out of fear and remained quiet.

Centuries before this, when Jesus appeared among the Jews, he reminded them of their killing of the prophets and righteous ones before him. He said to their religious leaders:

“You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets. So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets” (Matthew, 23:29–30).

Jesus meant that they will behave in the same way towards him as their ancestors had done towards the righteous of their times. Their claim that “if we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets” is hollow and easy to make, because they are not living in the days of their ancestors. The test of the truth of their claim is if they now don’t repeat the misdeeds of their ancestors.

While Muslims mourn and grieve every year in Muharram over the martyrdom of Hazrat Imam Husain, relating tearful stories of how courageously he stood up against an unjust ruler, hardly any Muslim of today will follow the example of Imam Husain. In Pakistan, Ahmadis were declared as non-Muslims in 1974 by the national legislature and later other laws were made against them. These laws are all a violation of the teachings of the Holy Quran and the Holy Prophet. Hardly any Muslim in Pakistan, among those who knew that these laws were unjust and against Islam, stood up and risked his reputation or life to oppose these measures. They stood aside, allowing these injustices to be inflicted, just like those Muslims of Hazrat Imam Husain’s time who knew he was right but they gave him no support.

According to Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the greatness of Imam Husain, and of his older brother Imam Hasan, was not that they were grandsons of the Holy Prophet Muhammad. He writes about the two of them:

“No doubt they [Imam Husain and Imam Hasan] were offspring (aal) of the Holy Prophet in both senses [physical and spiritual] but why is it that pride is expressed on their relationship in the lower sense but their relationship in the higher sense is ignored? Those who know spiritual reality believe that even if they had not been offspring of the Holy Prophet in the lower [physical] sense, nonetheless because they were declared by God to be his offspring due to a spiritual connection, they would undoubtedly be heirs to the spiritual wealth of the Holy Prophet. …

I mean to say by this statement that the high status of Imam Hasan and Imam Husain should not merely be that they were physical descendants of the Holy Prophet, because that is nothing without a spiritual connection. Only those relatives of the Holy Prophet have a true connection with him who are his descendants in a spiritual sense.” (Tiryaq-ul-Qulub, p. 100, footnote)

Once it happened in 1905, during the life of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, that some of his followers had an argument with a Shiah. The Shiah made insulting remarks about Hazrat Mirza sahib and the Ahmadis retaliated by condemning Imam Husain. When Hazrat Mirza sahib learnt of this, he issued a public statement which begins as follows:

“I have learnt from a postcard sent by someone that some foolish men who describe themselves as belonging to my Jama‘at say about Hazrat Imam Husain that, God forbid, because he did not enter into the bai‘at of the khalifa of the time, namely, Yazid, therefore Husain was a rebel and Yazid was on the side of right. ‘May the curse of Allah be on the liars.’ I do not expect that such evil words would come from the lips of any righteous person from my Jama‘at.”

He went on to say:

“I inform my Jama‘at by this notice that we believe that Yazid was of an impure nature, like a worm bent low upon this world, and cruel. The sense in which a person can be called a believer, such a meaning did not apply to him. … He was blinded by love for this material world. Imam Husain, on the other hand, was perfectly pure, and is without doubt one of those eminent persons whom God purifies by His own hand, and fills with His love, and no doubt he is one of the leaders of the dwellers of paradise. A person who bears even the least malice against him is damaging his own faith. Imam Husain’s righteousness, love of God, patience, perseverance, piety and worship of God, is an example to us. … He was martyred because the world did not recognise his status. Which holy and pure person was loved by the people of the world during his life that Imam Husain should have been loved?” He further adds: “If  someone abuses or curses me, then to reply to him by speaking disrespectfully about a venerable, beloved one of God, is to commit a great sin. On such occasions it is better to overlook and to pray for the foolish opponent because if these people knew who has sent me, they would not speak ill of me.” (Majmu‘a Ishtiharat, vol. 3, p. 544–546)

I hope this satisfies our Shiah friends that Hazrat Mirza sahib held Imam Husain truly in the highest regard. Similarly, he held the Companions of the Holy Prophet in the greatest respect, whom the Sunni world respects but not unfortunately the Shiahs. About the first three khalifas of Islam he wrote:

“My Lord has made it clear to me that as-Siddiq (Abu Bakr), al-Faruq (Umar), and Uthman were righteous and faithful, and that they were among those chosen by Allah and favoured with His bounties.”

About Hazrat Abu Bakr in particular he wrote:

“By God! He was the second Adam of Islam and the first manifestation of the light of the Holy Prophet. He was not a prophet, but in him were found the powers of the messengers. It was because of his truth and sincerity that Islam’s garden flourished once again and its glory was restored after it had been stung by the arrows of misfortune.” (Sirr-ul-Khilafa, p. 8–9, 16)

May Allah enable us to hold in the highest respect all the Companions of the Holy Prophet, not because of their family ties, but because of their services — ameen.

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