Karbala is the single event that most shapes how a fifth of Muslims feel about power. Husayn was invited to Kufa, abandoned by the Kufans, cut off from the Euphrates for three days, and killed with his male household on the tenth of Muharram; the women and the surviving son were taken captive to Damascus. Shia liturgy retells this every year in enormous detail and with deliberate emotional force, and the annual mourning is not commemoration so much as re-entry. The political reading — a small band refusing an unjust ruler — has been used by Iranian revolutionaries, Lebanese parties, Indian anti-colonialists and Gandhi alike, and by their opponents. Sunnis honour Husayn without mourning him annually, fast on Ashura for a different reason, and generally find the self-flagellation practised by some Shia distasteful; a number of senior Shia jurists agree and have discouraged bloodletting in favour of blood donation.