The Shiite community this week marks the death of the Imam Alí.
Activities in Barcelona during the month of Ramadan include the commemoration of the death of the Imam ‘Alī ibn Abī Tālib. The Shiite community commemorates the assassination of the Imam Alí on the 21st day of Ramadan in the year 40 after Hijrah, equivalent to the year 661 AC in Kufa (in what is nowadays Iraq). The community is marking the occasion on 31 March this year, with a procession around the streets of the Ciutat Vella district, ending up in Pg. Lluís Companys.
‘Alī ibn Abī Tālib was the cousin and son in law of the prophet Muhammad, and the fourth caliph to govern the Muslim community. The figure is highly venerated in the whole of Islam, particularly among Shiite Muslims. The commemoration takes the form of a procession, where participants display great pain and sadness over the loss of their spiritual leader.
Shia Islam is a branch of Islam that accepts the descendants of the family of the prophet Muhammad, through his cousin and son in law Ali ibn Abi-Talib as the legitimate governors of the Muslim community. The presence of the Shiite community in Barcelona was consolidated during the 1980s, with the association of a group of Lebanese Muslims. It was not until the arrival of people from Pakistan in the late 1990s that there was a marked increase in the number of Shiites in the city, and it was then that the first centre of worship associated with this branch of Islam was opened.
Today, practising Shiite Muslims in Barcelona have their own mosque: the Centre Islàmic Al Qaim, which opened in 1999. It is a community made up mostly by people from Pakistan, particularly from the north of the country, who follow the Twelver branch of Shia Islam, which awaits the reappearance of the Twelfth Hidden Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi, who will return at the end of time to re-establish justice in the world.
