10 Muharram (Ashura) and Nine Av for Tragedy and Forgiveness 1

Ashura marks the 10th day of the 1st month of Muharram, on the Islamic lunar calendar of 1448. Ashura for 2026 is observed on sundown of June 25th ending at sundown on June 26th. The day commemorates for Shia Muslims the death of Husayn ibn Ali the grandson of Prophet Muhammad in the Battle of Karbala of October 10, 680 CE. For Sunni Muslims the day relates to Prophet Moses and the Hebrews who fled Egypt and God separated the Reed Sea.

Both 10 Muharram (Ashura) for Muslims, and Nine Av for Jews, reminds us of a tragedy that we should not forget, or let another tragedy happen again.

Muharram is one of 4 sacred months in Islam, a time filled with divine mercy and spiritual opportunity. The days of this month are especially valuable for seeking forgiveness, increasing worship, and drawing closer to Allah. “Indeed, the number of months with Allah is twelve [lunar] months in the register of Allah from the day He created the heavens and the earth…”(Qur’an 9:36) The word “Ashura” is derived from the Arabic and Hebrew word for ”ten”.

9th Muharram 2026 (a recommended fast day): Wednesday, June 24, 2026
10th Muharram 2026 (Ashura — primary fast day): Thursday, June 25, 2026
11th Muharram 2026 (an optional additional fast day): Friday, June 26, 2026

1. Prophet Musa (Moses) On the arrival of Prophet Muhammad to Madinah, he found the Jews fasting on the 10th of Muharram, which was nine Av that year. When he asked them, he was informed that they were celebrating this day because Prophet Musa and the Children of Israel were rescued from Pharaoh when God split the Red Sea and drowned Pharaoh’s army. Prophet Muhammad said to them: ‘We have more right to Musa than you,’ and started fasting on this day and urged Muslims to do the same.

2. The Martyrdom of Imam Hussain at Karbala. Ashura is also a day of deep sadness for Shia Muslims because on this day in 61 AH (680 CE), the beloved grandson of Prophet Muhammad, Imam Hussain ibn Ali, was martyred along with most of the male members of the Prophet’s family at the Battle of Karbala. This tragedy is commemorated by Shias through mourning, praying, giving charity.

3. A Day of Divine Mercy Scholars of all the Islamic traditions also mention Ashura as a day when other significant events took place such as the day of Noah’s ark touch land, and the day of the repentance of the nations. It is a day which is very much connected to God’s mercy, gratitude and the power. So could 90 years of Conflict would have been Avoided?

The Palestine-Zionist wars started with the Great Revolt of the Arabs against the British pro-Zionist Mandate in 1936. It has continued off and on for 90 years.

If the rulers of the Ottoman Empire had taken advantage of the Zionist leader Theodore Herzl’s offer of massive investments into the Ottoman Empire by European Jews like the French and British Rothschilds in return for expanded Jewish settlements in Palestine, the Ottomans would not have joined World War 1, and the Arabs would have fought the Turks for independence.

If the Christian, Jewish and Muslim nationalists in Bagdad, Damascus, and Jerusalem had to fight the Ottoman Turks for independence; there would have no British Mcahon-Hussein letters, nor any Balfour Declaration or British Mandate.

European and American Jewish Zionists would have supported the Arabs and Zionists against the Turks; and an independent Jewish Allied state might have become the outcome. Ali Maher Pasha, an Egyptian prime minister and chief adviser to King Farouk said, “in a better atmosphere they (the Zionists) might be able to advance further, not by force, but with Arab goodwill.”

But by 1939 Nationalistic secular politics had made even Arab government rivals; and Hajj Amin Husseini had already poisoned the possibility that Arabs could have offered their well respected traditional welcome of guests, to their cousins who were desperate to return home.

The earlier Ben-Gurion’s meetings with George Antonius and Muse Alami would more likely have led to a more peaceful outcome for both sides. Millions of European Jews would not have died in the Nazi holocaust; and millions of Palestinians would not be living in refugee camps.

The Great Revolt period was between 1936 and 1939, when several thousand Palestinians living under the British Mandate rose up violently against a growing Jewish population and the Brits who were in charge. About 500 Jews, 250 British servicemen and at least 5-8,000 Arabs died; of whom at least 1,500 fell at the hands of fellow Arabs.

In the wake of the violence, Britain’s “Peel Commission” proposed partitioning the mandate into Jewish and Arab states, while placing major limits on Jewish immigration. Most Zionists, led by David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann, felt forced to accept the proposal because of the Nazi danger.

Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, grand mufti of Jerusalem and de facto leader of the Palestinian community, rejected the idea and called for jihad. He later went to Nazi Germany. The Palestinians emerged from the revolt weakened politically, economically and militarily. Since then more than 100-200,000 lives have been lost.

However, they did accomplish their goal of substantially slowing the growth of the Jewish populations. If the Palestinians had accepted Britain’s “Peel Commission” proposal partitioning the mandate into Jewish and Arab states, hundreds of thousands of European Jews could have been rescued and brought to the Jewish state in the years preceding the Nazi’s Final Solution.

And the failure of the revolt set the stage for what the Palestinians call the Nakba (catastrophe) when they lost the next anti-Zionist war in 1948.

So are the Palestinian Arabs victims of their own failed leadership? Can two people share the land, by dividing it? The idea that things could have indeed gone differently, and that they weren’t fated for endless conflict, suggests maybe they still can go differently in the future, unless they want to fight for another 90 years.

What if Herbert Samuel, the Jewish British high commissioner for Palestine, had appointed a moderate Palestinian instead of al-Husseini as grand mufti? What if the two-state solution offered by the Peel Commission report in 1937 had gone through? “Jews would have gotten less than 20% of the country but there would have been no Palestinian refugee crisis. There would have been no Nakhba in 1948 and the Gaza Strip would not be teeming with refugees today.

What would have happened if the religious leaders of Palestine had followed the Qur’an statement that “We made the people who were considered weak (the Jews) to inherit the eastern part of the land (Jordan) and the western part thereof (Israel) which we have blessed. And the fair Word of your Lord was fulfilled for the Children of Israel, because of their endurance. And We completely destroyed all the great works and buildings which Pharaoh and his people erected.” (Qur’an 7:137)

This verse is clear that the land was meant for Jews by using the phrase ‘the people who were considered weak’. Most of the interpreters perceive that this phrase refers to the Children of Israel (Al-Razi, Al-Shawkani; Al-Tabari; Al-Zamakhshari). In fact, although it seems implicit at the beginning, the meaning is directly made understood from the later part of the same verse which mentions ‘Children of Israel’ in relation to ‘Pharaoh’.

On July 28, Saudi Arabia and France will co-chair a historic two-day conference at the UN with the aim of charting a “clear and irreversible pathway” to a “peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine and implementation of the two-state solution.”

There will be no peace until both Palestinians and Israelis chant ‘From the river to the sea’ as an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, and not death, destruction, or hate. We can make it truly aspirational by making it focus on both peoples first, and the land second. “From the river to the sea Palestinians and Israelis should be freed of hatred and suffering by ‘a two state for two peoples sharing of the land peacefully solution.’”

August 29, 1897 Two hundred Jewish delegates from 17 countries attend the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, and agree to “the expedient promotion of the settlement of Jewish agriculturists, artisans, and tradesmen in Palestine.” Herzl, elected president of the congress, later prophetically writes: “At Basel I founded the Jewish State.”

June 19, 1917 Arthur Balfour, British foreign secretary, invites Jewish leader Lord Rothschild and Chaim Weizmann, who will later become the first president of Israel, to draft what becomes known as the Balfour Declaration, expressing Britain’s support for a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. Weizmann, a Russian-born Zionist, is a biochemist whose method of producing a key component of explosives was vital to Britain’s war effort.

November 2, 1917 The British government issues the Balfour Declaration, signed by Foreign Secretary Balfour, declaring “sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations” for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” With a caveat — “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the (personal) civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”

July 24, 2024 During a post-war conference in San Remo, Italy, Britain is formally awarded the mandate for Palestine. But the mandate for Palestine authorizes Britain only to fulfill the promise of the Balfour Declaration: “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

April 19, 1936 as tensions mounted by.ever increasing Jewish immigration from Nazi Germany the terms of the mandate for Palestine, and a hastily formed Arab National Committee called for a national strike which quickly escalates into an armed revolt that lasts three years.

April 19, 1947 The UN’s first attempt to solve “the Palestine problem” is General Assembly Resolution 181, which orders the termination of the British mandate and the partition of Palestine into two separate, independent states, with Jerusalem entrusted to a “Special International Regime.” Jews celebrate but the Arab Higher Committee rejects a plan that would give the Jewish minority 56.47 percent of Palestine and the Arabs only 42.88 percent.

May 15, 1948 A coalition of several Arab League forces attacks the newly created State of Israel. Over the following 10 months, Israel takes most of Palestine, with the exception of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, giving it control of almost the entire territory claimed by the Zionist movement at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 as the “Jewish national home.” What becomes known by the Palestinians as the Nakba (“Catastrophe” in Arabic), more than half a million Arabs flee from their homes, triggering a refugee problem that persists to this day.

October 6, 1973 An Egyptian-led coalition of Arab forces launches a surprise attack on Israel, aimed at returning control of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and regaining control of the Golan Heights. Although it ends in stalemate, the 19-day Ramadan war leads to the Egyptian-Israeli Camp David Accords five years later and peace with Egypt and Jordan.

March 26, 1979  Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin sign the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab state, normalizing relations between their two countries and returning the Sinai to Egyptian control. Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, accuses Sadat of betrayal. Sadat is assassinated during a military parade in Cairo on October 6, 1981 but Egypt and Israel have avoided war for two generations.