About the Podcast:
- How can a 7th-century tragedy still shape the way millions make sense of war, injustice and resistance today?
- Was Karbala, in its origin and its afterlife, a political story or a religious one, and can the two ever be separated?
- How are the rituals of Muharram being lived, translated, and reshaped by the political contexts they move through?
In this episode of Thinking Islam, we explore the enduring power of Ashura and the story of Karbala across Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon with Middle East analyst Zahra Ladha. The conversation begins with the sense that Karbala is never merely historical but ever-present, a story woven into names, daily speech, and a shared moral framework of giving water to the thirsty and standing with the oppressed. Zahra argues that to understand these rituals one must engage them on their own terms rather than reducing them to a political vehicle, and that the gap in much outside coverage comes from beginning with a systems-level or security focus rather than the lived emotional reality. From this grounding, we turn to the question of politicisation, and the insight that runs through the whole conversation: no one owns the narrative of Karbala, so no one can politicise it alone. Its meaning is always negotiated between states, communities, and individuals.
We examine how the same story takes different shapes depending on geography and circumstance, from the pilgrimage walk reclaimed in Iraq after decades of repression under Saddam Hussein, to the candle-lit streets of Iran during Ashura, to the local traditions of Lebanon that predate the Islamic Revolution. The discussion moves to the latmiya and how, in a time of war, its register has shifted from mourning the martyrs who came before to preparing the living for martyrdom itself, with nationalist symbols, Persian epics, and Iranian flags merged into the religious language of Karbala. Zahra traces how this resistance narrative has become an anti-colonial and anti-imperial one, understood instantly in contexts where the word colonial need never be spoken.
We close by considering the impact of social media, where a younger generation documents pilgrimage through trending audios and engages with the story in new ways, and the question of whether Karbala risks becoming the single lens through which all struggle is read. Zahra resists the language of imposition, offering instead the idea of competing ecosystems in which no actor fully wins, only renegotiates. What endures, she suggests, is the premise itself: a framework of bravery, loyalty, and the refusal of humiliation, captured in the words attributed to Imam Hussain that death with dignity is better than a life of humiliation. More than thirteen centuries on, that framework still gives millions a language through which to understand their place in the world.
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Learn More About Our Guest:
Zahra Ladha is a Middle East analyst and writer whose work examines the intersection of ritual, politics, and collective memory across the region. Fluent in Arabic and Persian and holding an MSc in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford, her research focuses on Iran, Iraq, transnational Shiism, and Muslim diasporas. Her reporting and analysis, published in outlets including Middle East Eye and The New Arab, bring together lived cultural experience and rigorous geopolitical insight in a way that few writers on the region are able to offer.
Read More of Her Insights:
Ladha, Z. (2026) ‘Latmiya: Inside the Ashura Rituals Shaping Iran’s Wartime Narrative’, Middle East Eye, 8 May. Available at: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/inside-ashura-rituals-shaping-iran-wartime-narrative
