 Imagine, it's 1400 years ago, it's the ninth of Muharram, at night you hear noises and commotion coming from outside, so you leave your tent and you see people leaving the camp of Mama Sayyidina As-Salaam in their hundreds and thousands, for a split second your eyes fall into the eyes of Imam Sayyidina As-Salaam, you see the sadness and sorrow in his face, there and then you decide you're going to stay, knowing full well what's going to happen to you when the morning comes, so now it's the day of Ashura, you've now become the 73rd companion of Imam Sayyidina As-Salaam, and imagine you walk up to the Imam and ask him how best you can serve him and he gives you the choice, what would you want to do on that day, serving him in whatever way you would like to, so for example you could bring back water with a bottle of water, you could protect the tents of the women and children from being under attack, you could bring back the wounded bodies, the pieces of the companions of Imam Sayyidina As-Salaam, what would you want to do, where would you want to serve your Imam, I mean you'd want to obviously serve him in every single one of those ways that you could obviously, hindsight's obviously a good thing to kind of know what certain things have happened, but you know going to get water with Hazret al-Bas, I mean you know the ladies is probably the one thing being able to protect you know children for example that probably didn't understand what was actually like you know truthfully happening and when you've got sisters or mothers for example, I think that bites a little bit more at what you would want to do for example say my you know as much as I'd like to do everything and try and serve you know the best way that you possibly could, if you were there I think for me it would obviously be trying to look after the women, but ultimately you know you'd always try and push you know if you were in that position to ask Imam what he would want you to do for example rather than you know you never know where are only human that then they could always make a decision that might not be the best decision right for you whereas in you know with the Imam he could give you direction in terms of what would be the best thing that would help you obviously, I mean ultimately you're doing the main sacrifice anyway but anything additional that you could do for or are you going to help so now imagine one day after work you come home you open your house door you see your family members running around the house frantically one person's gathering through another person's bringing sweets another person's making tea so naturally it occurs to you that you have a guest or guests that have come to your house so you grab one of them and you ask what's going on why is everyone rushing around and someone replies to you that someone's come to see you so you ask who and they say they're waiting for you in the living room so you go into the living room you open the door you walk inside you look around to see who's come to visit you and you see that it's Imam Hussain al-Assad in that moment what would you say to him what would you want him to say back to you it's difficult in terms of I mean you could only say how much he without his sacrifice even though there were imams after him I don't think this is just my personal opinion that the religion would be as global or the way it is currently for example and if you look throughout the course of you know the calendar year moharam it's probably the biggest month we have a lot more lectures we have a lot more of the kids or even anyone associated with the religion knows a lot more about imam Hussain than they may know about the other imams for example so the sacrifice that he's obviously given but ultimately at this time it would be to ask what you can do that is obviously going to help not just you but obviously if there's anything that you can impact in terms of the religion one person you know can't do much but any kind of anything that someone does for example by other people picking up even if it reaches one person it's going to be ultimately you would get so up for that for example but it would be it would be difficult and without being in that kind of a position to say what I mean ultimately I think I would freeze first of all to kind of even you know come to the realization that someone like that is sitting in front of me for example um but yeah ultimately you know the sacrifice that he's done and what we can do going forward especially with the way you know it's not difficult to follow the religion in the west but you're obviously impacted by a lot more things out here than you would be for example in certain places in the Middle East for example so just what we can do because all of us get certain thoughts that might obviously not be completely halal for example or we may do things that are sins for example and how to obviously best refrain from those so now imagine you've talked about some things with him and it's time for him to leave your house what would you want him to say as a sort of a farewell before he walks out of your life at least in person what would make you the happiest to hear from his holy night I think to tell me that I'm one of your true followers you can't really ask for any more than that so for him to accept your service and servitude yeah I mean obviously you can carry on doing that but ultimately that's what would make anyone I believe the happiest to obviously be told that you know you're a true follower of and you can't obviously call yourself a companion but you know someone that's part of his umma for example that's what mine would be so at the beginning the first question I asked you was about 1400 years ago and as you rightly said yourself with hindsight it's probably easy to say I would help in this way or I would try to stop this from happening or I would be the shield for the little girl from being hit for example and I said to you you walk up to the imam and you ask him and he gives you the choice a lot of us often forget that in this day and age we have an imam who's with us who we should be a companion to also and in a way him being absent or directly absent from us has given us the choice in the way we want to serve him so what do you think you've done for the 12th imam what do you think you would like to do how do you think we should all serve him and become closer to him because some say at least imam sain alayhi salam had 72 who gave their everything how many does this imam have something that I think we all think about truthfully I don't think I've done as much as I would like or I should have done maybe within regards to our imam it's a lot more difficult when you don't have that reminder in front of you on a regular basis for example it's a lot easier to forget and think about it after you've done certain things that maybe you think you shouldn't have because it's obviously going to hinder you going forward for example um obviously I'd like to be the best person I can be and try and influence as many people going forward um but yeah it's it's difficult when you know 72 companions had imam saying in front of them where you know seeing someone you know certain times words are not you know actions are more um more powerful than words than words um you know seeing someone's expression for example it can hit a spot that words will not so with the torch imam not being here you know it's a bigger test in certain ways for us that are we actually going to be one of the people that stands up when the time comes and that's something that I think about a lot but you know as for the answer we always try and balance it on the good side of it but I think there's a lot more that I can do a lot more that everyone else can do um you know you look at the religion at the moment in terms of the way it's portrayed in certain places you know there is a lot of work to do I think we get painted with the same brush um in terms of the media but you know all we can do as individually is do as much as we can to follow the religion in the right way try and obviously spread the message as best we can um and carry on commemorating each and every single one of the imams obviously maharam's a bigger impact uh than the other birthdays and uh deaths yeah try that's all we can do is to try our best to go forward but I don't think personally I think I've got a lot more that I can do