Blood brothers: Ashura unites Shias against Israel

The 10-day festival of Ashura, with its gruesome ritual of self-wounding and flagellation, is invariably an astonishing spectacle, especially on its final climactic day, which falls tomorrow.

It is important to Shia Muslims everywhere. But in Lebanon, under the influence of the Hezbollah party, it has become increasingly politicised over recent years. Tomorrow's Day of Ashura is expected to be as much a rallying cry against Israel and America as a religious event.

The festival commemorates the martyrdom of Imam Hossein, a grandson of Mohammed, at the battle of Karbala in 680AD, in what is now Iraq, and is a remembrance of the struggles of the Shia. So it is ripe for exploitation by a party that relies on its supporters' willingness to die and which since its rise in the early 1980s has sought to make party unity synonymous with Shia identity.

Last week, the first day of the festival was marked in the vast Hezbollah-run suburb of south Beirut with a rally of tens of thousands in support of Gaza.

Palestinian flags and pro-Gaza posters were distributed by Hezbollah officials, and party leader Hassan Nasrallah told the crowd, "Today you are expressing your constant commitment to this yearly call... To Gazans I say: your pain is our pain and your wounds are our wounds." Amid palpable euphoria and many keffiyehs, people shouted, "At your service, Hossein," as well as, "Death to Israel" and "Death to America."

There has been a crescendo of this political rhetoric at nightly Ashura gatherings of thousands of people in south Beirut, Nabatiyeh and the towns of largely Shia southern Lebanon. As Israelis have deployed extra troops to the Lebanese border, and horrifying TV footage has come out of Gaza, Nasrallah and other leaders have called for solidarity with "our brothers in the resistance in Palestine".

Shia writer and activist Lokman Slim says: "Each year the most important thing is how the tenth day is celebrated, and the extent to which it will be politicised, the extent to which it will be violent. For sure, this year it will be more politicised. There is no doubt about this."

He adds: "We now see a full control of Hezbollah over all the ceremonies. It's an opportunity to broadcast in a sentimental way their political message."

Political observers say that Hezbollah, and its Iranian backers, has little desire for war with Israel at the moment. A Lebanese election is approaching and a bloody battle with a well-prepared enemy would scupper their hopes of victory.

But the invasion of Gaza gives them the perfect opportunity to unite their Shia supporters in visceral anti-Israeli party feeling. As blood spills tomorrow on the streets of Nabatiyeh, religious fervour will be indistinguishable from party devotion. ·