Ashura (10 Muharram) is usually my entry point when discussing how to find a meeting point (kalimatun sawa’) between Sunnis and Shia while I was in Australia. Most of my Iranian frinds would ask, “Are the sunni Muslims in Indonesia celebrating Ashura?” I replied, “yes, we are. We are fasting and increase the dhikr on that day just like you”.
One of them asked, “Do you respect Husayn too?”. I replied, “of course, we majority of Sunni Muslims respect to Husayn as much as you respect to Husayn. We love Husayn as much as you love Husayn”. Usually if I say that, they will comment, “In fact, we are the same, aren’t we?!”. I replied, “we are the same, our shahadat is the same, our Prophet is the same, our Qur’an is the same”. Then some of them asked, “What’s the difference between us?” I replied, “the difference is that you only admit that there were 12 imams after the death of the Prophet and we don’t. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t love your 12 Imams. We love them because they are also the descendent of the Prophet. We just don’t call them Imams. Many of us mantion Hasan Husayn in our salawat.We in the Sunni also call our Prophet as Jaddal (grand father of) Hasan wal Husayn “. Baca entri selengkapnya »