Notes on Pilgrimages to Santiago and Karbala

Chemin St, Jacques Paraphernalia, Le Puy-en-Velay, France 2005

©EOP

Years when St. James Day is a Sunday are designated Holy Years, and I had planned to write a few lines on Sunday 25 July, St. James Day. Events precluded the posting, so I though I would post a few notes on a hideously hot afternoon waiting for plumbers to install a new water heater.The number of pilgrims walking at least the last 200 km to Santiago in 2010 has greatly escalated, as it always does on Holy Years. That growth in numbers is in part a reflection of the fact that the next Holy Year is 11 years away. At Santiago de Compostela and along the routes (Camino, Chemin, Weg etc.) leading toward it the entire year is important, with many special events. In Santiago itself, the Holy Door of the Cathedral is open, the King of Spain has visited at least twice, and the Pope is planning a visit in November. I had hoped to do at least a bit of the pilgrimage this year, perhaps along one of the less popular routes, but an ankle injury in February made that impossible.

[An unrelated reason for many more pilgrims in 2010 may be the Spanish team's triumph in the football World Cup in South Africa and the victory of a Spaniard in bicycling's Tour de France. Some football-crazed Spaniards (and perhaps some cycling crazed ones as well) promised to make the pilgrimage to the shrine of Spain's patron if their team was successful.]

Pilgrims to Santiago are rarely, if ever, victims of political violence even in the restive Basque region where most walk for a week or more on their way west. Sadly that is not the case for pilgrims to the Shia Islam shrines in Karbala, Iraq.

Shrines in Karbala, Iraq

Source: Muslim Herald

"Eight people killed as violence against Shiite pilgrims continues in Iraq"
By Leila Fadel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 9, 2010; A09
"BAGHDAD -- At least seven people were killed in bombings targeting Shiite pilgrims in the Iraqi capital Thursday, and a pilgrim returning home on foot was shot dead outside the northern city of Kirkuk, on the third day of deadly violence by militants apparently intent on stoking sectarian tensions amid a months-long political stalemate."

The article in the right-wing newspaper went on to describe the violence and how it has become an annual event as millions of Shia Muslims from Iraq but also from neighboring countries, particularly Iran where Shia Islam is the dominant cult, make the trek to Karbala and the tomb of Imam Hussayn. Under Saddam, the pilgrimage was curtailed and even prohibited, but subsequent to the Cheney-Bush military adventure for benefit of the oil cartel, pilgrims have returned in great numbers to the purported tomb of Mohammed's son-in-law, a founding figure of the Shiite cult. In 2009 PBS released a documentary film, made of the 2006 pilgrimage, to the shrine. [I have not as yet viewed the film but expect to before the next time I teach the pilgrimage course]. Though it is cold comfort to those mourning loved ones or suffering personal injuries, the violence in 2010, horrible as it was, was far less than that of earlier years.