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Staff Article
Interview Recorded: May 25, 2005
Posted: June 27, 2005
It is just a matter of having faith
Michael Goring
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I have seen and I have heard a lot of people talk about what they think, and how they have gotten help through it. It is just a matter of having faith. I would like to see the young people start getting back involved in it for the benefits that can be derived from it. The commemorations speak a lot for Islam, but it was the Shiites who built the Hosay. The Sunnis were the ones who killed Hussain. They say that is not good. If it is Hosay, and we come out on the night of Ashura and we were to meet the same Sunnis in their mosque, how can something be wrong? The same night that we know is Ashura, is the same night that they know is Ashura. It is the same thirty days of fast that we did. The fasting helps your inner body and it brings you a peace that you do not get ordinarily. Because of what I am doing now at the Hosay, I do therapy for people, and you can start with a two or three days fast. People come now and they would say, "You do not have anything behind your name. Dr. Pelham and Dr. David have." I have what was given to me by God. I can put my hand on you and feel the same spot they would feel, and tell you the same thing that they will tell you. It is true that I have not studied or have a doctorate, but I have studied what I am doing. It took me thirty-seven years to study therapy, and I do different massages.
I want to think, that because of the Hosay I have been disciplined to be able to do what I am doing now, and most people get results. After staying away for twenty years because it was not going right, I went back in. I had an experience once when I got seven squirts of blood. I spoke to quite a few people who are in the faith and they all felt it was good. I personally felt it was good. That is why I would not stay in it now. They are not doing the right thing and you cannot speak to them. When somebody who is my senior says, "Mr. Mike, we came back into it because we see you in it, and we figure that if you are in it, things are going right." It made me pull up my socks because they were getting wrong information. While I am there, everything goes well, but when I leave, things go haywire.
I would like to see the government stop giving them money to build the Hosay. The government provides five thousand dollars for each. When I was out of it an association was formed, and Mr. Hamdo Emamali and them, together with his nephew (who is acting Mayor), were able to go to the government and get them to subsidize grants. It has defeated the purpose of the people who build the Tadjah. The Tadjah is supposed to be built from our pockets. People are now getting into it to get the returns of five thousand dollars. It has taken away what it is really supposed to be. It is supposed to be a sacrifice. I heard something which I am totally displeased with. In the camps they are watching your Tadjah and saying, "My own is better than that." So what we have now is a competition, not the significance. Build it and have it looking good, but do not use it as a competition.
We are just commemorating the death of Hussain. We are sacrificing our time and our efforts to build it in a thirty-day period. Now they are doing it in forty and fifty days. A guy who comes down here and helps, is doing it in New York now whenever he feels like doing it. But what is most important, is that from the time they put up the frame a box is made, and he puts it to the front, and that is to collect money. The discipline in which it is supposed to be done is not done. Even Cedros is getting money. When they show you Cedros on TV, to people like me it is desecration. The Muslim person knows the importance of being covered before you make the turn, but when you go in a vest and a three quarter pants you are not doing what is supposed to be done. How are you going to get these things to stop?
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