The Islamic calendar commences with a month which witnessed the most heart-rending tragedy ever visited upon humankind upon this mortal earth. This was no ordinary calamity wrought by the indifferent forces of nature; it was a catastrophe of the profoundest moral and spiritual dimensions, inflicted with cold deliberation upon a family whose every member was, without exception, kind-hearted, generous, pious and possessed of a character without blemish - a family heavenly inspired by the noblest i