Short thread ๐งตA couple of days ago, I tweeted about a Shia shrine in Karbala, Iraq, that had been hit by a landslide and had killed 7 people, including children. Those people would have been alive today if they didn't visit a bogus shrine designed to con them out of their money.
This shrine, Quttarat al-Imam Ali, is said to be the site where Ali bin Abi Talib (RA) was passing through on the way to the Battle of Siffin. His army was dying of thirst, so he struck a rock with his hand which caused a spring of water to gush forth, quencing his men's thirst.
Obviously, there are parallels here with the story of Hajar (AS) & her infant son Prophet Ismail (AS) & the discovery of the Well of Zamzam that continues to flow thousands of years later.
The Shia tradition is, unsurprisingly, bogus. However, they take advantage of the people's ignorance & attract them to these shrines where each bottle of "Imam Ali's blessed water" sells for 5,000 dinars & is said to cure ailments & have other miraculous properties.
In reality, the landslide occurred because an illegally dug well was discovered nearby, with a pipe leading all the way through the hill overlooking the fake shrine. There was, naturally, no concern for public safety because they just wanted to milk well-meaning Shia pilgrims.
The result was the pipe leaked more & more water into the soil of the hill, causing it to become soft, erode & eventually collapse on their little money-making scheme, killing innocents including blameless children. This is an absolute tragedy. bbc.com
I'm certain that the shrine custodians will find a mystical way to justify what happened, saying that it was Allah's punishment for the pilgrims not showing enough respect to their Imam or not donating enough to purify their sins etc, but the reality is that this is man-made.
Iraq is absolutely peppered with new Shia shrines every week, claiming to hold a relic or another from Ahl al-Bayt or the leather strap of Ja'afar al-Sadiq's old sandal or whatever, and they're all *fake*. Gullible pilgrims come & pay hard-earned money to these scammers.
The sooner a proper historical survey is conducted of all sites, with fake sites either razed or else cordoned off, the better. You'd kill off entire businesses run by dodgy mullahs that rely on this snake oil trade and chicanery, and keep the public safe at the same time.
However, and as long as Iran holds sway, as well as the Hawza of Najaf & the frauds of Karbala, this will never happen. Too many Shia clerics who back the regime make money, hand over fist, by playing on the spiritual sentiments of naive and largely illiterate followers.
For the record, this sort of idiotic behaviour also exists in radical Sunni Sufi groups, who found a new shrine every other month based on a hair shed by this saint or that saint once upon a time somewhere in that area. This all needs to be blotted out.
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