Introduction: The Grief That Distance Carries

In the first post of this series, I explored the psychological architecture of sacred grief: how the destruction of Jannatul Baqīʿ in 1925 produced a wound that Western clinical models struggle to name, let alone hold. I argued that three overlapping frameworks (disenfranchised grief, moral injury, and ongoing desecration) begin to map the terrain of what the Shīʿah community carries on every 8th of Shawwāl. The response to that post confirmed what I have observed in clinical practice: this grief is real, it is active, and it has been waiting for language.

At Kisa Therapy Clinic, we work with clients who carry a grief that Western clinical models were not built to hold. Some of these clients have never visited Baqīʿ. Some have stood before the flattened earth where the graves of Imām Ḥasan al-Mujtabā (ʿa), Imām Zaynul ʿĀbidīn (ʿa), Imām al-Bāqir (ʿa), and Imām aṣ-Ṣādiq (ʿa) once stood and felt the full weight of what was taken. Others know the loss only through narrative, through the tears of their parents and grandparents, through the annual majālis that mark Yawmul Ghamm. In every case, the question is the same: what does one do with grief when one cannot visit the grave?

This is the driving question of the present post. The central argument I make here is that the Shīʿah tradition does not treat physical distance as a spiritual deficit. Through the concept of ziyārah min baʿīd (زِيَارَة مِنْ بَعِيد, visitation from afar), the tradition reframes absence as a different form of spiritual intimacy. What I find remarkable, as a clinician who reads both clinical literature and ḥadīth literature, is that continuing bonds theory (Klass, Silverman, & Nickman, 1996) provides the clinical language for what the tradition has always practiced. The convergence is not accidental; it is, I posit, a case of psychological science arriving at insights the spiritual tradition encoded centuries ago.

How this post is structured: I begin with a discussion of continuing bonds theory and its recent developments (Module 1), then turn to the tradition’s own answer in the form of ziyārah from afar (Module 2). Module 3 examines the paradox of shawq (yearning) as a sacred state. Module 4 brings the clinical and spiritual together. I close with concrete therapeutic recommendations for both individuals and clinicians.

Module 1: Relationships Do Not End with Death

The Paradigm Shift in Grief Psychology

For much of the twentieth century, the dominant clinical model of grief operated on a single premise: the function of mourning is to sever bonds with the deceased so the survivor can “move on.” Freud’s (1917) concept of Trauerarbeit (grief work) set the template: the mourner must withdraw emotional energy (libido) from the lost object and reinvest it in new attachments. Grief that persisted, that maintained a connection with the dead, was read as pathological, as evidence of incomplete mourning.

Klass, Silverman, and Nickman (1996) dismantled this premise. In Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief, they argued that the dominant twentieth-century model held that the function of grief and mourning was to cut bonds with the deceased, thereby freeing the survivor to reinvest in new relationships — but that this model was based more on the cultural values of modernity than on any substantial data of what people actually do.

Their core thesis was both simple and revolutionary: relationships change with death but do not end, and a continuing bond is normal, adaptive, and comforting. The bereaved do not “let go” of their dead. They renegotiate the relationship. They find new ways to remain connected: through memory, through ritual, through conversation, through the ongoing sense that the deceased is present in their lives.

This was not a minor adjustment. It was a paradigm shift. The clinical world moved from asking “Have you let go?” to asking “How do you stay connected?”

The Dual Process and Its Extensions

Stroebe and Schut (1999) built on this foundation with the Dual Process Model (DPM) of coping with bereavement. They proposed that healthy grief oscillates between two orientations: loss-oriented coping (confronting the grief, dwelling in the pain, yearning for the deceased) and restoration-oriented coping (attending to life changes, building a new identity, engaging with the world). Healthy mourning is not one or the other; it is the oscillation between the two. The person who grieves well moves back and forth, sometimes immersed in loss, sometimes attending to the demands of living.

I highlight this model because it maps with striking precision onto the Shīʿah annual cycle. The community oscillates between periods of intense loss-orientation (Muḥarram, Yawmul Ghamm, the martyrdom commemorations) and restoration-orientation (daily life, community building, service). This is not pathological oscillation; it is, by the DPM’s own criteria, adaptive grief processing embedded in communal rhythm.

Pihkala (2025) extended the DPM further, applying it to collective and religious contexts. Writing about ecological grief, Pihkala observed that religious communities can play an important role in grief processing and that grief and grievance are intimately connected. This extension matters for our purposes: the Shīʿah community’s grief over Baqīʿ is both grief (loss of sacred sites) and grievance (injustice of the destruction). The two are not separate experiences. They are, as Pihkala suggests, intimately woven.

Continuing Bonds in Contemporary Research

Recent scholarship has expanded the continuing bonds framework in directions that illuminate the Shīʿah experience. Price et al. (2025) found that people use digital spaces to maintain continuing bonds with the deceased: posting on social media, visiting memorial pages, and engaging in online communities of remembrance. Online Yawmul Ghamm observances, which have grown significantly in the diaspora, serve the same function: they are digital extensions of a continuing bond practice, particularly vital when the physical site of mourning (Baqīʿ) has been denied.

De Clercq et al. (2025) added an important nuance: continuing bonds are “bittersweet.” Comfort and renewed grief coexist in the same moment of connection. The mourner who speaks to their deceased loved one feels both solace and the fresh sting of absence. This maps directly onto the Shīʿah experience of ziyārah: closeness to the Ahlul Bayt (ʿa) through recitation, supplication, and commemoration brings both comfort and a renewed awareness of what has been lost. The tears at a majlis are not a sign of unresolved grief; they are the bittersweet texture of a continuing bond.

The application, then, is this: the entire Shīʿah relationship with the Ahlul Bayt (ʿa) is a continuing bond par excellence. Ziyārah, duʿāʾ, and annual commemorations are not “stuck” grief. They are not signs of a community that has failed to “move on.” They are precisely the adaptive continuing bonds that Klass and colleagues describe: renegotiated relationships with the beloved dead, maintained through ritual, narrative, and spiritual practice. The clinical literature validates what the tradition has always known.

Module 2: Ziyārah from Afar: The Tradition’s Answer

Distance as a Different Form of Intimacy

Where continuing bonds theory provides the clinical framework, the Shīʿah tradition provides the spiritual infrastructure. And nowhere is this infrastructure more fully articulated than in the ḥadīth literature on ziyārah (visitation) and, specifically, on ziyārah min baʿīd (visitation from afar).

Kāmil az-Ziyārah by Ibn Qulawayh al-Qummī (d. 368 AH) is one of the most important Shīʿah ḥadīth collections devoted to ziyārah, containing 108 chapters that detail the spiritual significance, protocols, and rewards of visiting the graves of the Noble Prophet (ṣ) and the Ahlul Bayt (ʿa). Chapter 56 addresses a specific dimension of ziyārah: the role of shawq (شَوْق, yearning) in the act of visitation. The aḥādīth in this chapter are, I argue, directly relevant to the psychology of mourning from afar.

Imām al-Bāqir (ʿa) is reported to have said:

*”Those who visit Imām Ḥusayn’s grave with yearning (shawq) receive the reward of one thousand accepted Ḥajj, one thousand purified ʿUmrah, protection from plague for a year, angelic companionship, and Paradise entry.”*¹

Imām aṣ-Ṣādiq (ʿa) said:

*”Those who visit Imām Ḥusayn with yearning become among Allah’s most honorable slaves, standing under Ḥusayn’s flag until entering Paradise together.”*²

And again, Imām aṣ-Ṣādiq (ʿa):

*Allah boasts of those who visit (perform ziyārah) with yearning to the angels and throne-carriers.*³

What is remarkable about these narrations is the centrality of shawq (yearning) as the operative element. It is not merely the physical act of being present at the grave that carries weight; it is the yearning, the longing, the state of the heart. This distinction is not incidental. It is, I posit, the theological foundation for what the tradition does next: it provides a complete protocol for when physical presence is impossible.

The Protocol for Those Who Cannot Visit

The tradition does not leave the distant mourner without recourse. Multiple authoritative sources describe detailed practices for ziyārah min baʿīd:

*”When you intend to visit the Noble Prophet while you are in any place other than the holy city of Medina, you may bathe yourself, stand before something like a grave, write the name of the Noble Prophet on it, concentrate heartily on it, and say the following ziyārah …”*⁴

Imām aṣ-Ṣādiq (ʿa) is reported to have said that one who intends to visit the tombs while in a remote place may bathe himself on Friday, put on two clean garbs, go to a desert or rooftop, offer a four-unit prayer, then stand facing qiblah and recite the prescribed ziyārah.⁵

And the Noble Prophet Muḥammad (ṣ) himself:

*”He who visits my tomb after my death will be considered to have immigrated to me in my lifetime. If you cannot visit my tomb, you can send me greetings, for they reach me.”*⁶

The key insight across these sources is consistent: distance does not sever the spiritual bond. The tradition provides a complete protocol for when physical access is impossible, including ritual preparation (bathing, clean garments), intentional orientation (facing qiblah), and prescribed language (the ziyārah texts). These are not consolation prizes for those who cannot make the journey. They are, within the tradition’s own framework, genuine acts of visitation. The Zawār (visitor) who recites ziyārah from a rooftop in Toronto is, in the tradition’s understanding, truly in the presence of the Imām (ʿa).

What This Means for Baqīʿ

The relevance to the Baqīʿ question is direct. The destruction of the graves does not eliminate the possibility of ziyārah; it relocates the practice. Even those who stand at Baqīʿ today are, in a sense, performing ziyārah min baʿīd: the graves are beneath unmarked ground, the markers are gone, the structures have been razed. Everyone who mourns the Ahlul Bayt (ʿa) buried at Baqīʿ is mourning from some form of distance. The tradition anticipated this. The infrastructure was already in place.

Module 3: When Longing Itself Becomes Sacred

The Paradox of Shawq

If ziyārah min baʿīd (visitation from afar) is the tradition’s practice, shawq (شَوْق, yearning) is its animating spirit. I want to dwell on this concept because it contains a paradox that is clinically and spiritually significant.

The paradox is this: the tradition does not merely tolerate distance. It assigns spiritual weight to the longing that distance produces. Shawq is not a deficit to be overcome; it is a state to be inhabited. The yearning of the heart for the Ahlul Bayt (ʿa), for the sacred sites, for the physical closeness that has been denied, carries its own spiritual gravity.

Imām Zaynul ʿĀbidīn (ʿa), in the Ṣaḥīfah as-Sajjādiyyah, supplicates: “O God, bless Muḥammad and his Household, make me their comrade, make me their helper, and oblige me with yearning for Thee.” The request is not for the yearning to be removed. It is for the yearning to be granted. Shawq is something one asks God for, not something one asks God to relieve.

In Nahj al-Balāghah, Imām ʿAlī (ʿa) describes the state of the truly devout:

*”If not for the lifespans decreed for them by God, their souls would not tarry in their bodies for the blink of an eye but, yearning for God’s reward and fearing his punishment, they would instantly depart.”*⁷

Here, yearning is so intense that it would, were it not restrained by divine decree, dissolve the boundary between this world and the next. This is not the language of a tradition that views distance as failure. It is the language of a tradition that understands longing as a form of closeness.

The Clinical Parallel: Meaning Reconstruction

Neimeyer (2001) argued that “meaning reconstruction in response to loss is the central process in grieving.” The mourner who can find or construct meaning in their loss, who can integrate the loss into a coherent narrative of life, is the mourner who grieves adaptively. The tradition’s reframing of distance as spiritual intimacy is, in clinical terms, a profound act of meaning reconstruction. The narrative shifts from “I am far from the grave and therefore diminished” to “my yearning is itself a form of closeness, recognized by God and the Imām (ʿa).”

This is not denial. It is not spiritual bypassing. It is, based on my limited exploration of both literatures, one of the most sophisticated grief-processing frameworks I have encountered: a tradition that takes the pain of absence, refuses to minimize it, and then transforms it into a vehicle for spiritual proximity. The reframe does not eliminate the grief; it sacralizes it. Absence is not a deficit to be mourned; it is a form of spiritual proximity to be inhabited.

Module 4: Bridging the Consulting Room and the Prayer Mat

Having established the clinical framework for maintaining connection across death (continuing bonds, Module 1), the theological infrastructure through which the tradition provides for mourning from afar (ziyārah min baʿīd, Module 2), and the spiritual state that animates both (shawq as sacred yearning, Module 3), I now bring these threads together. The question driving this module is: what does integration look like in practice, and how can clinicians and individuals draw on both traditions simultaneously?

Clinical and Spiritual Integration

The convergence between these two bodies of knowledge is, I argue, more than coincidental. It reflects a shared recognition that human beings do not sever bonds with those they love, that maintaining connection is adaptive rather than pathological, and that absence can be transformed through intentional practice.

The following table maps the correspondence:

Clinical Concept	Islamic Practice	Integration
Continuing bonds (Klass et al., 1996)	Ziyārah, duʿāʾ, addressing the Imāms (ʿa) directly	The tradition sacralizes what psychology validates
Oscillation between loss and restoration (Stroebe & Schut, 1999)	Annual rhythm: Yawmul Ghamm intensity alongside daily life	Communal calendar embodies healthy grief processing
Meaning reconstruction (Neimeyer, 2001)	Reframing distance as spiritual intimacy via shawq	Shawq transforms absence into sacred presence
Adaptive grief (not “moving on”)	*”His grief is long, his sorrow is distant …”*⁸	The tradition defines the muʾmin as one who carries permanent, quiet grief
Bittersweet continuing bonds (De Clercq et al., 2025)	Tears of joy and sorrow at majālis	Comfort and renewed grief coexist as features, not failures

It is fair to conclude, based on this mapping, that the Shīʿah tradition has been practicing continuing bonds for over a millennium before the concept was named in Western psychology. Science, in this case, corroborates what theology has always held: that love does not end at the grave, and that maintaining connection with the beloved dead is not only healthy but sacred.

What Clinicians Need to Hear

Sweeney et al. (2026) recently argued that greater clinical openness and epistemic humility may foster more inclusive grief models. This call for epistemic humility is directly relevant to the Shīʿah continuing bonds tradition. A clinician who encounters a client who speaks to Imām Ḥusayn (ʿa) in supplication, who weeps annually on Yawmul Ghamm, and who performs ziyārah from their living room facing the qiblah, must resist the reflex to pathologize. These are not symptoms. They are, by the clinical literature’s own criteria, adaptive continuing bonds practices embedded in a tradition that predates and, in many ways, exceeds the clinical framework.

This requires what Sweeney and colleagues call “epistemic humility”: the recognition that one’s clinical training, however rigorous, does not contain the full map of human grief. The Shīʿah tradition holds territory that the clinical map has not yet charted. The responsible clinician does not dismiss what they do not recognize; they learn.

Therapeutic Recommendations: Concrete Practices for Sacred Grief

For Individuals

Based on the integration of continuing bonds theory and the tradition’s own infrastructure, I offer the following recommendations for individuals who carry sacred grief related to Baqīʿ and the Ahlul Bayt (ʿa):

1. Ziyārah from afar as structured practice. Follow the traditional protocol: bathe, wear clean garments, face qiblah, and recite the prescribed ziyārah text. This is not a substitute for physical visitation; it is, within the tradition, a genuine form of visitation. Treat it as such. Set aside dedicated time, minimize distractions, and approach it with the same intentionality you would bring to standing at the ḍarīḥ itself. The texts of ziyārah from afar are available in Mafātīḥ al-Jinān and can be performed on significant dates (Yawmul Ghamm, the birth and martyrdom dates of each Imām (ʿa)) or on any day the heart is moved to connect.
2. Journaling with the Imām (ʿa). Write letters expressing grief, longing, and devotion. This practice bridges the clinical recommendation of expressive writing (Pennebaker, 1997) with the tradition’s practice of addressing the Imāms (ʿa) directly in ziyārah and duʿāʾ. The act of writing externalizes the grief, gives it form, and creates a tangible record of the continuing bond. You may write to any of the Ahlul Bayt (ʿa) buried at Baqīʿ: Imām Ḥasan al-Mujtabā (ʿa), Imām Zaynul ʿĀbidīn (ʿa), Imām al-Bāqir (ʿa), Imām aṣ-Ṣādiq (ʿa), or the Noble Prophet’s (ṣ) daughter, Sayyidah Fāṭimah az-Zahrāʾ (ʿa), whose grave remains unknown, itself a grief within the grief.
3. Duʿāʾ as grief container. Duʿāʾ 21 of the Ṣaḥīfah as-Sajjādiyyah (the Supplication in Sorrow) provides a structured format for expressing grief to God. It is, in clinical terms, a guided emotional processing exercise with a theological frame. The language of this duʿāʾ gives permission to feel sorrow fully while holding it within the container of divine address. For those whose grief feels formless or overwhelming, this duʿāʾ provides both form and holding.
4. Remembrance gatherings as communal grief processing. Participate in local Yawmul Ghamm majālis (gatherings). The communal dimension of grief processing is well established in the clinical literature; what the majlis adds is a shared continuing bond with the Ahlul Bayt (ʿa), a collective oscillation between loss and restoration, and the validation that one’s grief is recognized and held by a community. If local majālis are not available, online gatherings serve the same function (Price et al., 2025).

For Clinicians

1. Ask about ziyārah practices in initial assessment. When working with Shīʿah Muslim clients, inquire about their relationship with ziyārah, duʿāʾ, and commemorative practices. These are not peripheral spiritual habits; they are central to the client’s attachment world and grief processing.
2. Explore the client’s relationship with the Ahlul Bayt (ʿa) as part of attachment and bonds assessment. The Imāms (ʿa) may function as attachment figures, spiritual mentors, and ongoing relational presences in the client’s life. Understanding this relationship is essential to understanding the client’s grief landscape.
3. Validate distance-based mourning as clinically sound and theologically grounded. Do not treat mourning from afar (ziyārah min baʿīd) as a lesser form of mourning. The continuing bonds literature supports the adaptiveness of maintaining connection through ritual and intentional practice, regardless of physical proximity.
4. Do not impose “closure” as a therapeutic goal. The Shīʿah tradition explicitly resists the concept of closure in grief. Imām ʿAlī (ʿa) described the believer as one whose “grief is long” and whose “sorrow is distant.”⁸ This is not pathology; it is a theological anthropology that defines the faithful person as one who carries grief with dignity and purpose. The clinician’s role is not to resolve this grief but to help the client carry it well.
5. Consider referral to knowledgeable community scholars for spiritual components. The clinician need not be a theologian. When the client’s grief has spiritual dimensions that exceed the clinician’s training, a referral to a knowledgeable ʿālim (scholar) or community leader is not a clinical failure; it is a clinical strength. Collaborative care that honors both the consulting room and the prayer mat serves the client best.

Conclusion: Absence as Intimacy

The argument of this post can be stated simply. Continuing bonds theory names what the Shīʿah tradition has always practiced: that relationships with the beloved dead do not end but are renegotiated, maintained, and deepened through ritual and intentional connection. Mourning from afar (ziyārah min baʿīd) provides the spiritual infrastructure for this continuing bond when physical access is denied. And shawq (yearning) sanctifies the experience of distance itself, transforming absence from a deficit into a form of spiritual proximity.

For the Shīʿah diaspora, for those who may never stand at Baqīʿ, for those who stand there and find only flattened earth, this is not a consolation. It is a reframe with both clinical and theological integrity. The distance is real. The grief is real. And the tradition says: your yearning reaches. Your ziyārah is received. Your bond with the Ahlul Bayt (ʿa) is not diminished by geography or by demolition.

In the final post of this series, I turn to the question of what happens after: how does a community transform a century of collective grief into collective growth? Tedeschi and Calhoun’s post-traumatic growth framework, applied communally, offers a clinical lens for understanding how the Shīʿah community has not merely survived the destruction of Baqīʿ but has, in many ways, been shaped by it. Growth does not mean the wound was worth it. It means the community found a way to carry it forward.

At Kisa Therapy Clinic, we believe that the best grief work honors both the science of psychology and the wisdom of tradition. If you or someone you know carries sacred grief, whether related to Baqīʿ, to distance from the holy sites, or to any loss that your community holds but the world does not recognize, we are here to hold that with you.

Ali Raza Hasan Ali, MSW, RSW, Clinical Director, Kisa Therapy Clinic

References

Cameron, D. (2025). Disenfranchised grief and meaning reconstruction in the wake of animal loss. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying. https://doi.org/10.1177/00302228251410992

De Clercq, A., Stroebe, M., Aoun, S., & Hartog, I. (2025). Bittersweet encounters with deceased loved ones. Death Studies. Advance online publication.

Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and melancholia. In The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 14, pp. 237–258). Hogarth Press.

Klass, D., Silverman, P. R., & Nickman, S. L. (Eds.). (1996). Continuing bonds: New understandings of grief. Taylor & Francis.

Neimeyer, R. A. (2001). Meaning reconstruction and the experience of loss. American Psychological Association.

Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process. Psychological Science, 8(3), 162–166.

Pihkala, P. (2025). Ecological grief and the dual process model of coping with bereavement. Religions, 16(1), 1–20.

Price, D. M., Lester, D., Pettijohn, T. F., & Nadorff, D. K. (2025). Maintaining continuing bonds through social media. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying. Advance online publication.

Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (1999). The dual process model of coping with bereavement: Rationale and description. Death Studies, 23(3), 197–224.

Sweeney, C., Klass, D., & Steffen, E. (2026). After-death communications and continuing bonds. Death Studies. Advance online publication.

Primary Sources

¹ Ibn Qulawayh. Kāmil az-Ziyārah, Chapter 56, Ḥadīth 3.

² Ibn Qulawayh. Kāmil az-Ziyārah, Chapter 56, Ḥadīth 4.

³ Ibn Qulawayh. Kāmil az-Ziyārah, Chapter 56, Ḥadīth 5.

⁴ Shaykh al-Mufīd, Shaykh ash-Shahīd, and Sayyid Ibn Ṭāwūs; cited in Shaykh ʿAbbās al-Qummī, Mafātīḥ al-Jinān (from Zād al-Maʿād).

⁵ Shaykh aṭ-Ṭūsī. Miṣbāḥ al-Mutahajjid; cited in Shaykh ʿAbbās al-Qummī, Mafātīḥ al-Jinān.

⁶ Shaykh ʿAbbās al-Qummī. Mafātīḥ al-Jinān.

⁷ Sharīf ar-Raḍī (compiler). Nahj al-Balāghah, Sermon 193.

⁸ ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Āmidī (compiler). Ghurar al-Ḥikam, Ḥadīth #911.