If Kierkegaard Knew Karbala
The Ultimate Knight of Faith: Imam Hussain ع
“Shah ast Hussain, Badshah ast Hussain,
Deen ast Hussain, Deen Panah ast Hussain.
Sardad na dad dast, dar dast-e-yazeed,
Haqaa key binaey La Ila ast Hussain.
Salaam Ya Hussain!”
Hussain is the Ruler, Hussain is the King,
Hussain is Faith, Hussain is the Protector of Faith.
He gave his head but not his hand to Yazeed,
Indeed, Hussain is the foundation of "There is no god but God."
Peace be upon you, O Hussain!
— A centuries-old Persian poem praising Imam Hussain, often recited in Muharram and attributed to Moinuddin Chishti.
Our present day rings loudly with the noise of screeching voices, tyrannical and triumphant. Our ears have adjusted, however painfully so, but our hearts, wounded yet refusing to succumb, have not. In the cacophony of contemporary discourse, as we search desperately for heroes amidst the havoc, we have forgotten one of the most profound embodiments of what Søren Kierkegaard called the knight of faith—the figure who transcends all earthly categories through absolute devotion to become the pinnacle of heroism—a figure whose leap into the divine abyss surpasses even blessed Abraham's trembling ascent up Moriah. For those who listen carefully enough, their ears will catch the gentle echoes lingering in the margins, refusing to be silenced into nonexistence. The footsteps of ancient sacrifices still reverberate through time, calling to those who refuse to forget what it means to choose eternity over empire.
In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard exalts Abraham as the archetype of religious heroism, whose willingness to sacrifice his son transcends ethical categories and enters the realm of the absolute. Throughout the book, the narrator Johannes Silentio explores and attempts to understand the depth, intensity, and complex emotions of Abraham's trek up Moriah to fulfill God's command and sacrifice his beloved son. This was a journey that he, like most people, can not begin to fathom. In his quest to understand such ultimate devotion, Kierkegaard also looked to other figures who chose principle over life. Thus, the Greek philosopher Socrates, too, was honored by Kierkegaard as the pinnacle of moral courage for his choice of death over the betrayal of truth.
But what is Socrates’ hemlock to Hussain’s Ashura?
What if Kierkegaard knew Karbala?
The blessed Prophet Muhammad ﷺ once remarked about his beloved younger grandson, Hussain ibn Ali: “Hussain is from me and I am from Hussain.”
In 680, on the day of Ashura, Hussain was brutally martyred in the Battle of Karbala after refusing to pledge allegiance to the tyrant Yazid, who, in his despotism and shamelessness, threatened to destroy the noble message Hussain’s grandfather brought forth. In his courageous stand for truth, we find a sacrifice that not only echoes Abraham’s trial and faith but also offers a new lens. Through recognizing his just fight for truth to prevail over tyranny, one can not help but conclude that Hussain is not merely another religious hero, but the ultimate knight of faith. He committed to the love of God over the love of life, justice over oppression, and infinity over finitude.
His sacrifice, encompassing not only personal martyrdom but the offering of his family, transcends Kierkegaard’s framework in its scope and significance. Hussain's courage when facing Yazid, knowing not only that he would die, but that his family and companions would perish alongside him, represents a form of faith that encompasses both personal and communal dimensions. His sacrifice remains nearly incomprehensible, like Abraham’s, yet far less spoken of. Just as we turn to the memory of the blessed prophet Abraham to draw closer to God, the cure for our modern spiritual anguish, born from witnessing constant oppression, lies in turning to the memory of Hussain.
If we are to understand Hussain through Kierkegaard's framework, we must first grasp the mathematics of his sacrifice. Kierkegaard wrote extensively about Abraham as the father who would sacrifice his son for God, the singular, devastating choice that defines his heroism. Abraham's willingness to offer Ismail (and Ismail’s acceptance) represents the archetypal act of faith, complete in its mystifying beauty. Yet Hussain's sacrifice expands this paradigm: not one soul offered, but seventy-two. One man, facing the machinery of empire, knowing that his children, his siblings, his companions would follow him into the furnace of martyrdom. And still he chose justice over safety, the everlasting over the immediate, and integrity over submission to tyranny.
This comparison is not to negate or minimize the beautiful faith of Prophet Abraham (pbuh), God forbid—there is a reason he is the honored Khalilullah, the Friend of God, whom we revere every Eid al-Adha. This is merely to shed light on the magnitude of Hussain's offering, whose faith was what it was precisely because he was the descendant of this great prophet. Abraham's sacrifice remains the foundation; Hussain's represents its fullest flowering.
The theological architecture of their trials reveals a profound distinction. Kierkegaard's Abraham represents the individual who suspends the ethical for the religious, trusting in God despite the apparent contradiction of divine command. Abraham's trial included the clarity of direct divine communication—a voice that commanded, tested, and ultimately intervened with merciful reprieve. Hussain's situation presents a different challenge: faced with Yazid's tyrannical rule and the corruption of Islamic principles, he made his fateful decision to resist without explicit divine instruction.
This distinction illuminates something remarkable. While Abraham responded to the unmistakable voice of the divine, Hussain’s decision required not just obedience to a clear command, but the courage to interpret his religious duty in the face of certain death. Here lies not merely a theological difference, but a profound expansion of what human faith can accomplish—faith that operates through spiritual conscience rather than direct revelation. Faced with Yazid's corrupt reign, Hussain discerned that silence was not an option, and that to preserve the soul of Islam, he had to stake everything. Himself, his children. His siblings, his nephews. His closest companions. Not even his six-month-old baby was spared. Devastating as it is, this is the calculus of Karbala. It is nearly unbearable to contemplate, which is why those who understand this mourn, while those who don't mock and misinterpret.
This is what Kierkegaard could never have imagined in 19th century Protestant Denmark: a figure who embodied not just the knight of faith, but the knight of faith elevated to its highest possible expression—one who, even on the battlefield facing imminent death, deprived of water in the scorching desert heat and surrounded by thousands of spears and swords, still paused to offer his daily prayers, prioritizing his covenant with God above even his final moments of earthly existence.
Hussain's courage becomes arguably unmatched in the annals of human history when we recognize not just the piety but the profound sorrow embedded within it. He was not alone in his sacrifice, accompanied by seventy-two companions and family members, all heroes of faith in their own right. Before embarking on this journey toward certain death, he offered each of them the opportunity to leave, extinguishing the lamps around them in the darkness as a promise that none would be judged or shamed for departing, since it was his head Yazid sought, not theirs. Yet everyone chose to remain.
Thus, when facing Yazid's army of thirty thousand, knowing not only that he would die but that his beloved family and companions would perish alongside him, Hussain transcends even Kierkegaard's most profound meditations on religious heroism. For the philosopher, the greatest act of heroism was to abandon everything for God. If Abraham's monumental sacrifice became a foundational moment for monotheistic faith, then Hussain's sacrifice became its preservation. Abraham offered his son; Hussain offered everything. He wasn't simply preserving Islam, but embodying what Islam demands: that justice be lived, not merely preached. That truth be embodied, even when death is the price. That faith be more than belief, it must be resistance.
The Temporal Bridge: From Abraham to Hussain
The Islamic calendar provides a profound symbolic connection between these two archetypal sacrifices. The month of Muharram, which marks the Islamic new year on its first day and Ashura on its tenth, immediately follows Dhul Hijjah. This means the journey of Hussain’s caravan to their ultimate offering began amidst the spirit of Eid al-Adha, which celebrates Abraham's offering. It is no small thing, either, that the junction of these blessed journeys meets during the sacred days known as the best of the entire year.
This timing speaks to the shared spiritual movement of the two figures; going deeper than coincidence, it reveals the holy design of time itself, the delicate fashioning of God’s divine plan. As we remember Abraham's trek up Moriah, so Hussain's begins. Ordinary duration transforms into sacred time, where past and present collapse into the eternal moment of choosing God over the world. Before us, we have two offerings: one spared, one allowed to bleed. Bleed it did, and bleed still it does today. This is the liturgy of time: sacrifice echoing sacrifice, faith answering faith. A calendar not just marking venerated days, but stitching together a sanctified story that begins with Abraham, and reaches its crescendo at Karbala.
The great thinker Allama Iqbal beautifully captured the essence of Imam Hussain’s eternal relevance through his poetry in Bal-e Jibril:
"The eternal reality is the station of Hussain,
The styles of Kufa and Damascus keep changing."
While worldly powers and their methods may shift and change over time, the spiritual truth and moral example of Hussain's stand for justice remains constant and eternal.
This sacred narrative linking Abraham and Hussain also illuminates what Kierkegaard called the "movement of resignation,"— the moment when the knight of faith knowingly relinquishes all earthly hope, resigning their fate to God. Abraham’s journey to Moriah is mirrored in Hussain's journey to Karbala, which serves as the perfect, perhaps ultimate, example of this movement. Yet Hussain did not make this movement in private silence, but in the public square, on a barren plain, with the eyes of history upon him. It is not as if he were ignorant of what was to come; on the contrary, he knew very well what was to take place. Knowing his life was in danger because of his stand, on the eighth of Dhul Hijjah, to avoid bloodshed from taking place in the Kaaba and to protect its sanctity, he converted his Hajj into Umrah. Thus, his movement of resignation began with the commemoration of his forefather’s.
The Courage of Mary
Kierkegaard identified courage and humility as the twin pillars of faithful heroism. In Hussain, these virtues find their perfect synthesis—not merely as separate qualities, but as one seamless expression of faith confronting the absolute.
In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard presents Mary (pbuh) as an exemplar of what he calls "humble courage." When angel Gabriel delivers the divine message that she will bear a son as a virgin, Mary responds: "Let it be unto me according to thy word,”— embodying both profound humility and extraordinary courage. Like Abraham, she makes a leap of faith beyond rational understanding, accepting a divine calling that will inevitably bring her suffering. What makes her courage "humble" is her acceptance without demand for signs or rational justification. She simply surrenders, trusting something infinitely larger than her comprehension.
Hussain at Karbala embodied this same humble courage with breathtaking completeness. He exhibited that particular quality of strength that accepts the impossible, bearing witness to divine mystery without fully grasping its dimensions. Seeing Yazid's overwhelming forces, understanding exactly what his "yes" would cost, he chose to trust in divine justice rather than earthly calculation. Like Mary accepting the angel's impossible message, Hussain accepted what he knew would be annihilation, not out of despair, but out of conviction.
But where Mary's courage was private, whispered in the intimacy of divine visitation, Hussain's was declared before Yazid’s army and history itself. Where Abraham's trial unfolded in mountain solitude, Hussain's played out on the plains of Karbala before enemies and allies alike. His surrender transcended passivity to become the most active force imaginable. It is the difference between giving up and giving over, between defeat and offering—the conscious choice to align one's will with divine justice, even, and especially when that alignment demands earthly destruction. Here we witness what the Sufis understand as fana—the ultimate annihilation that Hussain willingly embraced.
The Knight of Faith Perfected
In Hussain, the courage of Abraham and the humility of Mary converge into something unprecedented: a knight of faith who doesn't merely fit Kierkegaard's framework, but redefines it entirely. His faith was rooted not in certainty of outcome, but in nearness to truth. He was not just resigned—he was resolute. His surrender was not a passive retreat but a fierce advance toward divine will. He didn’t merely trust God, but rather loved Him so deeply and thoroughly that even the prospect of obliteration could not tear him from the path of justice God has bestowed upon him to protect. Thus, he becomes the perfected knight of faith, who translates his believing into becoming, his obedience into an offering, and in his profound sacrifice, transforms the very meaning of faith itself.
Just as Abraham’s son was his most beloved, making him the unfathomable sacrifice, so too was Islam for Hussain. He held upon his shoulders the weight of his grandfather’s message: in shedding his own blood, he ensured that Islam’s true spirit would continue to live. He thus becomes the guiding star for all those wholly committed to God beyond anything else. Moreover, his commitment extends beyond the personal relationship with the divine to encompass the social, political, and cosmic dimensions of what it means to live per divine will.
In Hussain, we witness the ultimate synthesis of the knight of faith and the servant of justice. He is mystic and martyr, philosopher and revolutionary. Through tracing his footsteps on Ashura, we discover that the soul’s individual journey to God and the world’s collective struggle for justice are no longer separate roads, but one. This unity reveals why, despite this long essay, he honestly transcends any label. He demonstrates that authentic spirituality cannot be separated from the pursuit of justice, that true love of God manifests inevitably in resistance to oppression, that the movement of resignation, when perfected, becomes the movement of revolution.
The Legacy That Transcends Time
It is interesting to consider what Kierkegaard would have written had he encountered the story of Karbala. In Hussain, he might have seen something that exceeded even his most profound imagination of what human faith could accomplish. Abraham's test lasted three days; Hussain's lasted beyond the ten days that are commemorated, into the struggle of his sister Zaynab and son Sajjad, bleeding into fourteen centuries and breathing still. Hussain's status extends beyond historical martyrdom into the realm of cosmic significance—his sacrifice understood not merely as political resistance but as a spiritual act that maintains the balance between justice and oppression across time. His martyrdom becomes an eternal principle, not merely a historical event, but a continuous invitation to choose light over darkness.
What makes Hussain's sacrifice so monumental is that it was simultaneously personal and communal, political and cosmic, mystical and material. He embodied what it means for divine love to become a public ethic. In doing so, he preserved a religion not through power, but through refusal; not through dominance, but through death; not through empire, but through eternal defiance of it. The legacy of his leap of faith crosses centuries, continents, and every attempt to erase it from historical memory. Yet it would be neither accurate nor fair to minimize his sacrifice as one for Muslims alone. He proclaimed the universality of his stand in one of his most resonant battlefield declarations on Ashura:
These words have drawn reverence from thinkers across religious traditions, rising beyond the boundaries of faith to speak to the universal human longing for justice.
Hussain’s example remains so compelling precisely because it transcends time and religious tradition, serving as a guiding star for anyone seeking to understand complete commitment to the divine. He was not merely a historical or political figure, but a spiritual revolutionary standing against the tyranny not only of his time, but of all times to come. In recognizing him as the ultimate hero of faith, we acknowledge not only his historical significance but his continuing relevance as a model for courage in the face of oppression—his resistance defining faithfulness for all people and all ages.
Hussain Today
As the ‘Socrates of Christendom,’ Kierkegaard challenged the dormant Christians of his time to step beyond ritual and passive practice to adopt the heroic faith of Abraham. He called his readers to abandon hollow religion and embrace the brave, beautiful leap of faith that the prophet exhibited so exceptionally. This same bravery he so admired in Abraham is why he also revered Socrates, whose death was arguably a quiet martyrdom, the triumph of intellectual integrity over political expedience. But if he had known Karbala, he would see how what he so revered in his beloved Socrates, who chose poison over abandoning his principles, pales before the magnitude of Hussain's sacrifice. Hussain's death, a public declaration that shook the foundations of an empire, made him the true inheritor of the title ‘martyr of all martyrs’. Where Socrates died for the principle of truth, Hussain died as truth itself, bleeding his convictions into the desert sand where they would take root under a bright, still sun.
His martyrdom thus transcends history to become principle, proof, and possibility. Shaheed Mutahhari eloquently captured this eternal dimension;
“With a courage that was more than human, he managed to leave a message for the entire world: ‘Do not submit to exploitation of any kind; maintain a tenacious grip on veracity; better die with honour than live in shame.’ He surely deserves universal recognition. ‘He is an immortal heir of universal praise.’”
Hussain did not only offer his life for Islam; he offered it as Islam. In this profound act, he achieved true immortality. Thus, his sacrifice lives forever, not as a moment buried in the earth, but as an ever-present summons. It reverberates in every whispered prayer beneath occupation, in every act of resistance, in every refusal to bow to injustice. Hussain's stand becomes the rhythm of the oppressed, the resolve of the faithful, the roar beneath imposed silence.
This sacred truth also reveals itself in a profound paradox: the army of Yazid withheld mercy from Hussain, yes, but he had become mercy itself. To remember the words of the Prophet ﷺ, Rahmatul lil Alamin—mercy for all mankind—who proclaimed 'Hussain is from me and I am from Hussain' is to hear his declaration to the universe: that on Karbala's ash-ridden, blood-soaked earth, Hussain became the very essence of what was withheld from him. He was the sanctified and spiritual heir of God’s most beloved creation, and the extinguishing of his life only solidified this truth. Even in his fear and trembling, he stood firm as faith’s steadfast knight, its eternal compass and cornerstone. And in that, he shall never die.
The Yazids of our age live on too, tragically, alongside the complicit silence of those who have forgotten this truth. Like their predecessor, they attempt to erase the memory of the perfected knight of faith, but ignorance can never wear the crown of victory for long. In every plea leaving the lips of the oppressed, in every stone thrown at a tank, in every choice of truth over comfort, the spirit of Hussain's sacrifice continues to unfold, calling us back to what we could be, what we should be, what we must be.
Today, as new tragedies unfold across the world, from Palestine to Kashmir, from Sudan to the silence of the majority, we must ask ourselves: are we inheritors of Hussain’s faith or Yazid’s comfort? Have we remembered what it means to say “God is greater,” or have we emptied it of meaning? The answer reveals itself in our response to injustice, in our willingness to stand with the oppressed, in our choice between the safety of silence and the sacrifice truth demands. For many, sadly, it seems the latter is true. Still, though, just as Hussain’s victory lives on in the continuation of his memory, so too shall the victims of today’s many Yazids see their triumph.
Just as billions have commemorated Abraham's faith during Eid al-Adha, hundreds of millions will soon mark Hussain's martyrdom on Ashura. When that day arrives, sermons will echo Hussain's final call from the battlefield, when wounded and alone, he asked: "Is there anyone left to help me?" Across oceans, languages, and generations, millions will answer him:
"Labbayk ya Hussain."
"Here I am, O Hussain."
Let us be amongst them. Let us remember his death and defiance in the cries of today's oppressed, from the children of Gaza’s rubble to those of Sanaa’s sand, standing with them in their struggle against the Yazids of our time. For in doing so, we ensure that the knight of faith's ultimate sacrifice continues to illuminate the path from tyranny to truth, from resignation to resistance, from death to eternal life.
“The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.” — Kierkegaard
Endless peace and blessings be upon Hussain, martyr of all martyrs.
Further Reading:
Imam Husayn: The Heir of Prophet Abraham
Karbala: Hussain’s Everlasting Stand (film)
Allama Iqbal and Imam Hussain (as)
Labayk ya Hussain (this is a short video that shows the millions of pilgrims at the grave of Imam Hussain in Karbala on the anniversary of Ashura, responding to his final call. It is deeply moving and testifies to his ultimate triumph, so I had to share.)
Before I read this, the painting you chose pierced my heart. (ع)
Beautiful work ma sha Allah !
Labayka ya Hussain !