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Millions of Muslims mark Arbaeen to renew allegiance to Imam Hussein
Each year, pilgrims from different countries traveled on foot to get to Imam Hussein’s holy shrine, in the Iraqi city of Karbala, to commemorate the event, which falls on Sunday this year.
The Arbaeen march is one of the largest annual religious congregations in the world, where the participants pay tribute to Imam Hussein (PBUH), who is the all-time icon of fighting injustice, oppression, and despotism, Press TV reported.
The third Shia Imam and his 72 companions were martyred in the Battle of Karbala in southern Iraq in 680 AD while resisting the much larger army of the despot Umayyad ruler of the time, Yazid.
People in the Iranian capital of Tehran, under the banner of “Those left behind from Arbaeen,” take part in a symbolic march to the holy shrine of Shah Abdol-Azim Hasani in the southern town of Rey.
Some of the participants at Tehran’s march wore the keffiyeh and carried Palestinian flags in a show of support for the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, who have been enduring a genocidal Israeli war since October 2023.
In an X post on Sunday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani said, “The great lesson of Arbaeen is to move on the path of truth, support the oppressed, and practically disavow of the Yazidis of today’s world, whose killing machine has martyred more than 40,000 innocent Palestinian citizens, mostly women and children, in Gaza for about eleven months.”
“The blood of the oppressed Palestinians will win over the Yazidis’ sword of oppression, God willing,” he added.
In Istanbul, thousands gathered to mark Arbaeen, with a ceremony that wrapped up a week of commemorations.
The 19th Universal Arbaeen Mourning Ceremony kicked off in the Bağcılar district, organized by the Ahl al-Bayt Scholars Association and the Ahl al-Bayt Youth Association. This year’s event zeroed in on the theme “From Karbala to Gaza,” with speakers weighing in on the tragedies in both cities.
Attendees roundly condemned the Israeli occupation’s genocide in Palestinian territories, calling for an end to the violence. The ceremony drew to a close with a show of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Lebanese Muslims gather near the Sayyida Khawla shrine in Baalbek, eastern Lebanon, for the Arbaeen commemorations, as tensions rise following Hezbollah’s announcement of a large-scale attack on Israel and Israeli forces’ strikes on Lebanon. One devotee said the attack came during “sacred days.”