Aslam-o-Alikum

       Ashura was observed in singapore on 15 April 2000. Before that the majalis were being hold from 5 April 2000. Moulana Mazahir Ali from Lucknow
and marsia-goh Abbas from Banglore were invited for this auspasious occasion.

      Majalis were supposed to start at 8:30pm but i think the muslims all over the world dont know the importance of *pabandi-e-waqt*. and ppl start to come around 9:00 pm. The majalis is started by the recitation of the Quran by a local indian singaporean buisnessman followed by the english translation and explaination of the verses. then the marsia-goh would recite some qasidaz and marisa-z. sometime some body from the audience would also
come to stage and recite something.

        Then moulana would be invited to start the speech. One thing i found very strange was the lack of 'naraaz' here. first day when the moulana was seated on *mimbar* i was anitcipating either him or somebody else to raise the 'narasz' of takbeer,risalat and haidari. but no body did that. next day i myself raised the 'nara-z' but the response was so bleak that i myself felt embarassed, like may be here this is not the tradition. even during the majlis had no nara. i tried once or twice but the response made me think that its better not to.

        After majalis the matam was held to mourn the martyrdom of the karbala. most of the mourners were reluctant to do matam with the full strech of their hands, just using one of the their hand like they r tapping some kind instead of matam. but there were 3-4 south indian muslims who not only recited some very good noha (in urdu) but *khul ke matam kiya*.

        Apart from the men, women were also present. but one thing i noted with much embarassment that the outlook of the south asian women (dont know whether they were indians or pakistanis) were not appropriate according to the occasion of the Moharram. though most of them were clad in black, but at the same time were not covering their head even inside the imam-bargah and during majlis. then it was evident that they were wearing make-up also.  on the other hand the malay women were very much properly dressed.

        On the day of the ashura, a lot of ppl were present. Iranian,pakistanies, indianz malay, and i think bangladeshi too. qasidaz and marsiaz were recited in urdu, english, malay,arabi and i htink in persian also. then majalis were recited in malay and urdu. later matam was held. malay nohaz were so heart-breakening and were much much more touching then the lucknow-style nohaz. that even most of the ppl there apart from malayz couldnt understand them but they matam-ed with all their heart on malay nohaz. the other good thing was that each and every malay person present there, be it a kid or adult, were responding to the nohaz reciting with the noha-khawan.

        Later sham-e-gareeban was held after namz-e-maghrib.