Ashura: The Day Allah Saved Musa

Part One: The Month Allah Named After Himself

Brothers,

We have entered Muharram, and in a few days the tenth of this month arrives: the day of Ashura. Before we reach it, we need to understand the month it sits inside, and the story that gives it meaning.

Part 1: The Sacred Month of Allah

Muharram is one of four months Allah singled out as sacred from the foundation of creation:

Indeed, the number of months ordained by Allah is twelve, in the Record of Allah since the day He created the heavens and the earth, of which four are sacred. That is the correct religion, so do not wrong yourselves during them. (At-Tawba, 9:36)

Four months set apart: Dhul Qa’dah, Dhul Hijjah, Muharram, and Rajab. Within them, the scale of reward and consequence is heightened. A good deed weighs more. A sin cuts deeper. Muharram opens the year on this elevated ground, and the Prophet ﷺ told us exactly what to do with it:

The best fasting after Ramadan is in the month of Allah, al-Muharram, and the best prayer after the obligatory prayers is prayer in the night. (Muslim)

Notice the title given to this month alone among the twelve: “the month of Allah.” Not because Allah owns the other months any less, but because this designation honors Muharram above the rest, and because the greatest single day of voluntary fasting in the entire year sits inside it. That day is Ashura, the tenth.

Part 2: Musa, Pharaoh, and the Sea That Obeyed

Ashura carries a story that every one of us needs standing between us and despair: the day Allah rescued a persecuted, cornered people and destroyed the tyrant chasing them.

Musa (alayhi as-salam) led the Children of Israel out of Egypt after years of Pharaoh’s oppression, forced labor, and the slaughter of their infant sons. Pharaoh gathered his army and pursued them to the edge of the sea. There was nowhere left to run. The water in front, the army behind. Musa’s own people cried out in terror:

And when the two groups came within sight of each other, the companions of Musa cried, 'We are sure to be overtaken!' Musa reassured [them], 'Certainly not! My Lord is with me. He will guide me.' Then We inspired Musa: 'Strike the sea with your staff,' and it parted, each side like a mighty mountain. Then We closed in the pursuers there, and We saved Musa and all those with him, then drowned the rest. (Ash-Shu'araa, 26:61-66)

Think about that moment. Every human calculation said it was over. But Musa’s answer was not a plan or an escape route. It was certainty in Allah: “My Lord is with me.” That is the position of a believer cornered by circumstance, whether at the edge of a sea or inside a locked unit. Trapped by every human measure, never trapped by Allah’s power.

The sea split. The believers crossed on dry ground. And when Pharaoh drove his army into that same opening, the water closed over him at the very last moment of his life:

We carried the Children of Israel across the sea, and Pharaoh and his soldiers pursued them in tyranny and enmity, until, when the drowning overtook him, he cried, 'I believe that there is no god except the One the Children of Israel believe in, and I am one of those who submit.' ˹He was told,˺ 'Now? But you always disobeyed and were one of the corruptors. Today We will preserve your corpse, so you may become a sign to those after you. And indeed, most people are heedless of Our signs.' (Yunus, 10:90-92)

Pharaoh’s deathbed declaration of faith was rejected, it came only when he saw the punishment with his own eyes, when belief could no longer benefit him. But notice the second half of Allah’s response: his body would be preserved, physically, as a sign for every generation after him. Historians and scientists have documented preserved royal remains from this era pulled from the region described in the Quran, centuries after this ayah was revealed to an unlettered Prophet ﷺ in the desert. Allah does not simply tell us a story. He leaves evidence.

Part 3: “We Have More Right to Musa Than You”

When the Prophet ﷺ migrated to Madinah, he found the Jewish community there fasting on this very day.

The Prophet ﷺ came to Madinah and saw the Jews fasting on the day of Ashura. He asked them about it, and they said, 'This is a great day. Allah saved Musa and his people and drowned Pharaoh and his people on this day, so Musa fasted it out of gratitude, and we fast it too.' The Prophet ﷺ said, 'We have more right to Musa than you,' and he fasted it and commanded the Muslims to fast it. (Bukhari)

Read that response again. The Prophet ﷺ did not dismiss the day or claim it belonged only to the Jews. He affirmed the event, honored Musa (alayhi as-salam) as a Prophet of Allah, and then claimed a closer relationship to him than the community fasting in his memory. Every Prophet of Allah belongs to us. Musa, Ibrahim, Isa, all of them, peace be upon them all, are our Prophets too. Their victories are our victories. Their deliverance is a mercy we claim as our own.

And notice why Musa fasted in the first place: gratitude. Shukr. Not obligation, not ritual for its own sake, but a direct response to being saved from something that should have destroyed him. He was cornered at the sea with an army behind him, and when Allah delivered him, his response was worship. That is the entire lesson sitting inside one day of the calendar.

Part Two: Fasting Ashura and the Discipline of Gratitude

Brothers,

Part 4: A Year Wiped Clean

The Prophet ﷺ told us exactly what fasting this day accomplishes:

Fasting the day of Ashura, I hope Allah will accept it as expiation for the sins of the previous year. (Muslim)

One day, and a full year of sins between you and Allah is hoped to be erased. This is not a small matter. Compare it to what the rest of the year demands of you in worship for far less promised in return, and you begin to see how much weight Allah placed on this single day.

If Ashura falls this week, fast it. If you have already missed it by the time you hear this, do not treat the door as closed, keep the intention alive for next year, and do not let a chance like this pass you by again.

Part 5: The Ninth With the Tenth

The Prophet ﷺ was also careful that this fast not simply mirror another community’s practice without distinction. Late in his life he said:

If I live until next year, I will surely fast the ninth day. (Muslim)

He passed away before that following year arrived, but the instruction stood: pair the ninth of Muharram, called Tasu’a, with the tenth. Fast two days together, or the tenth and the eleventh if the ninth is missed, so the fast is distinct in form from the practice of others while still honoring the same day of deliverance. This is a small detail, but it shows how Islam cares about the smallest matters of worship: not just what you do, but how you do it, and why.

Part 6: What Ashura Is Not

Because this day carries such weight, some communities have added things to it that the Sunnah never commanded: mourning rituals of grief and self-harm on one side, or festivals of celebration, sweets, and amusement on the other. Neither belongs here. Ashura is a day of fasting and gratitude to Allah for a historical act of deliverance, nothing more elaborate, and nothing less serious. We honor it exactly as the Prophet ﷺ honored it: with a fast, not a festival and not a funeral.

Part 7: A New Year, A Stocktake of the Soul

Muharram also opens the Hijri year, and it is worth remembering why. Umar ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him), when the Companions needed a starting point for the Islamic calendar, did not choose the Prophet’s ﷺ birth or even his death. He chose the Hijrah, the migration from Makkah to Madinah, the moment the believers left a land where they could not practice their religion and moved toward one where they could.

That choice teaches us what the new year is actually for. A Hijri new year is not a countdown or a party. It is an invitation to make your own hijrah, your own migration, away from whatever sin you have been living inside and toward the life Allah is calling you to.

Whoever emigrates in the way of Allah will find on earth many locations and abundance ˹of resources˺. (An-Nisaa, 4:100)

Ask yourself honestly at the start of this year: what am I still living next to that I need to leave? What habit, what grudge, what old version of myself needs a hijrah? The Prophet ﷺ said the true emigrant is the one who leaves what Allah has forbidden, not merely the one who changes location. That migration is available to you wherever you are.

Part 8: Gratitude as Worship

Brothers, hold onto this closing thought. Musa (alayhi as-salam) was surrounded, cornered, with no way out by any human measure. Allah delivered him. And his response to that deliverance was not relief that faded by the next day. It was worship. He fasted, and generations after him remembered that gratitude in a single day of the calendar.

Every one of you in this room knows what it means to be cornered. Some of you have watched a case take a turn you did not expect, in your favor. Some of you have reconciled with family you thought you had lost for good. Some of you have felt Allah open your heart to Islam or bring you back to it after years away, when you had every reason to expect nothing but hardness. That is your sea splitting. That is your Pharaoh drowning behind you.

The test is what you do next. Does the relief fade into forgetfulness within a week, or does it turn into worship that lasts? Musa did not simply feel grateful. He fasted. He acted. Gratitude that stays only in the heart and never reaches the limbs is incomplete. When Allah delivers you from something, however small it looks from the outside, respond the way Musa responded: with an act of worship that outlives the relief.

May Allah make us among those who remember His favors and answer them with gratitude, not forgetfulness.

O Allah, just as You saved Musa from Pharaoh, save us from every trial that threatens to drown us.

O Allah, grant us the tawfiq to fast this blessed day and to accept it from us as You accepted it from the Prophets before us.

O Allah, make this new year the year of our hijrah away from sin and toward You.

O Allah, do not let our gratitude fade with the relief that produced it. Turn every mercy You give us into worship that lasts.

O Allah, deliver every one of us from the hardship we carry, whether it is confinement, separation from family, or the weight of our own past.

O Allah, give us certainty like the certainty of Musa when he said, “My Lord is with me,” even when every door looks closed.

O Allah, make us among those who leave what You have forbidden, wherever we are and whatever our circumstance.

O Allah, forgive us the sins of this past year as You forgave those who fasted Ashura before us.