The Qur’anic command to love the Prophet’s family is not a minor teaching, it is a divine trust. To fast while turning away from the suffering of the Prophet’s Family and to dismiss their oppression with slogans like “history is complicated,” such a fast may be recorded on the calendar, but in the sight of God it is stripped of light, because it is built on a refusal to acknowledge injustice against those whom He commanded us to honour. 

Imam Ahmed Al-Hassan, born as Ahmed Ismail, is the First of the Twelve Mahdis and the promised Yamani. He publicly emerged in 1999 in Basra, Iraq, as the Messenger and successor of Imam Mahdi. Before his divine appointment, he was an ordinary man living a normal life—he studied engineering at university and was married with children.