Why Must Children be Involved?
by admin
Muslims and Non-Muslims alike are shocked when they come across incidents where parents make their children participate in blood shedding actives. There are many images on the Internet of young children cutting their own heads with swords and some infamous pictures of mothers cutting the heads of their babies! How far will some people to go give us a bad name?
A few years ago a member of the Shia community in the UK was found guilty of child cruelty by a British court for forcing two children to cut themselves with blades that he had just used to cut himself! This case was covered by the mass media and it put the Shia community into disrepute.
A devout Muslim who was found guilty of child cruelty after forcing two boys to beat themselves during a religious ceremony is due to be sentenced today.
Syed Mustafa Zaidi, 44, was found guilty of two counts of child cruelty in a British legal first last month.
The boys, aged 13 and 15, were forced to beat themselves with a zanjeer zani, an implement containing five curved blades, during a ceremony to commemorate the death of a Shia Muslim spiritual leader.
Both boys also admitted they had flogged themselves with a smaller zanjeer zani from the age of six in Pakistan.
A 14-year-old boy, who was 13 at the time, said Zaidi told them both: “Start doing it, start doing it.”
He told the jury: “We said ‘we don’t want to do it’.”
The boy said he saw Zaidi flogging himself with the zanjeer zani before washing his blood from it and handing it to the 15-year-old boy.
He said Zaidi “kept pressuring him” and “make him do the knife thing”.
Unfortunately there are some Shia clerics who do not discourage Tatbir on children, rather they consider it to be recommended.
The following question was sent to the office of Ayatullah Sadiq Shirazi:
What is the ruling on doing tatbir on children in a country where it is not prohibited?
The response:
Tatbeer is mustahib but in case of minor it is mustahib to seek permission from his wali (Shariah Guardian).
Many great Shia scholars have disagreed with that sort of opinion.