Even if we suppose that a faction of ignorant men misread his position and killed him—something they were in no way entitled to do, for what was required of them was to grant the three requests he had earlier put to them—then the blame rests upon that band of tyrants alone; the Muslim community as a whole is not to be arraigned, nor is its Prophet ﷺ to be impugned. Matters are not as those people have imagined or as they have proceeded; rather, the great majority of scholars, ancient and modern, have regarded the killing of al-Ḥusayn and his companions with abhorrence. Only a paltry handful of the people of Kūfah—may Allah disgrace them—approved of it, and most of them had written to him in the first place merely to exploit him for their own corrupt ambitions.
[When Ibn Ziyād became aware of their intentions, he gave them the worldly advantages they sought, cajoled and coerced them with inducement and intimidation, whereupon they drew back from al-Ḥusayn, abandoned him, and then killed him] ⦗1⦘.
Not every soldier in that army was pleased with his death; even Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah did not expressly approve of it—Allah knows best—yet he did not voice any disapproval either. What is more probable is that, had Yazīd gained custody of him before he was killed, he would have pardoned him, just as his father had instructed him to do and as he himself openly declared.
[He is reported to have cursed Ibn Ziyād for what he did and to have reviled him outwardly, yet he neither removed him from office, punished him for it, nor sent anyone to censure him—Allah knows best] ⦗2⦘.
Every Muslim ought to be grieved by al-Ḥusayn’s slaying—may Allah be pleased with him—for he was one of the nobles of the Muslims and a learned Companion, the son of the Messenger of Allah’s daughter, the best of his daughters. He was devout, courageous, and generous. What is unbecoming, however, is the ostentatious display of anguish and sorrow exhibited by certain people, much of which is in all likelihood affected and hypocritical. His father, who was superior to him, was killed, yet they do not mark his death with mourning as they do the day of al-Ḥusayn’s martyrdom; his father was slain on a Friday as he went out to the dawn prayer, on the seventeenth of Ramaḍān, 40 AH.
ʿUthmān, whom Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-Jamāʿah regard as superior to ʿAlī, was murdered while besieged in his home during the Days of Tashrīq in Dhū al-Ḥijjah, 36 AH, slaughtered from jugular to jugular, yet people did not institute a day of mourning for him. Likewise ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, who was superior to both ʿUthmān and ʿAlī, was killed while standing in the miḥrāb leading the dawn prayer and reciting the Quran, and no public mourning was enacted for him. The Ṣiddīq, who surpassed them all, passed away and the community did not adopt his death-day as a lamentation either.
As for the Messenger of Allah ﷺ—the master of the children of Adam in this world and the next—Allah took him to Himself as He had taken the prophets before him, yet no one established on the day of their deaths a lamentation such as these ignorant Rāfiḍah observe on the day of al-Ḥusayn’s martyrdom.
Nor has anyone reported that on the day of their deaths, or those before them, anything occurred like the marvels alleged for al-Ḥusayn’s death—an eclipse of the sun, a crimson glow in the sky, and so forth.
The finest thing to say when such calamities and the like are recalled is what al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī ⦗3⦘ narrated from his grandfather, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ: “No Muslim who is afflicted by a calamity, then remembers it—even after a long lapse of time—and renews for it the words of istiʿrjāʿ (“To Allah we belong and to Him we shall return”) except that …”