01/20/2026
You called the procession on the Brooklyn Bridge a “spectacle” and warned about a “wrong impression,” and in doing so you exposed exactly where you stand. How are you a Shia when you so easily borrow the language of the oppressor? Calling public mourning a spectacle is not intelligence or maturity, it is fear wrapped in concern.
A procession is not a show, it is protest, resistance, and a public refusal to accept injustice. Hussain was not martyred so his name could be kept safely indoors, and Zaynab did not rise so people like you could worry about optics. Every tyrant in history has repeated the same lines you are repeating now: wrong place, wrong method, wrong image. These words never come from the oppressed; they are always used against them. Shame on you.
And if you truly believe there is room for improvement, then prove you have sincerity. Step out of your comfort zone and into the field. Go to the organizers, speak to them, advise them, volunteer, and take responsibility for the work you claim is missing. But you will not do that, because you do not want burden, you want comfort; you do not want sacrifice, you want commentary. You contribute nothing, yet you judge those who show up with their time, their bodies, and their courage. Today you dismiss mourners as a spectacle; tomorrow history will remember you as something far worse, a silent enabler who gave oppression a respectable voice. That is not neutrality, that is betrayal. Shame on you.
