A Muslim was found guilty of child cruelty yesterday for forcing two boys to beat themselves with a bladed whip during a religious ceremony.

Syed Mustafa Zaidi made the boys, aged 13 and 15, flog themselves on their backs with a five-bladed implement called a zanjeer zani.

Both needed hospital treatment for cuts sustained during the Shia ceremony commemorating the death of a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. Zaidi now faces up to ten years in jail.

The boys, who cannot be named for legal reasons, admitted that they had wanted to beat themselves, but not under duress and not using blades.

Throughout the trial at Manchester Crown Court, Zaidi, 44, insisted that the act was part of the boys’ religion and therefore not illegal. But the jury convicted him of two counts of child cruelty.

The court was told that despite attending a meeting two days before the ashura ceremony at which elders made it clear that boys were not permitted to flog themselves, Zaidi was determined to make them participate.

At the service at a community centre in Levenshulme, Manchester, Zaidi began flogging himself. The elders asked him to stop because they were concerned that he was harming himself. Instead, he washed his blood from the ceremonial whip and handed it to the 15-year-old boy.

The 13-year-old told the court that Zaidi urged them both: “Start doing it, start doing it.” Despite their protests that it would hurt and saying, “We don’t want to do it”, Zaidi removed one boy’s shirt and forced him to flog himself.

The younger boy said the other “swung it once or twice and said, ‘I don’t want to do it any more’.”

He said that Zaidi pulled and pushed him as he tried to take his shirt off and said: “Keep doing it. This is a sad moment. Look, he’s not doing it.”

Both boys said that they had flogged themselves with a zanjeer zani regarded as suitable for children from the age of 6 in Pakistan, but had never used the adult whip.

The jury was shown a 20-minute film of the ceremony featuring Zaidi flagellating himself until his back was bloody and cut. The ritual marks the death of Husayn, grandson of Muhammad and a central figure in the Shia faith. He was killed at the Battle of Karbala alongside 72 members of his family about 1,400 years ago. Performing the matam — self-flagellation — is believed to bring out feelings of grief at their deaths.

Zaidi, a warehouse supervisor from Eccles, Lancashire, denied that his actions had been wrong, saying: “This is a part of our religion.”

He said the 15-year-old boy had performed a “perfect matam” and that it was not a “stitching matam” because he did not sustain heavy cuts. “It was an emotional time and the children were happy, they asked for it. No one forced anyone.”

He said that if he had known it was illegal he would not have persuaded the children to take part.

After the verdict, Carol Jackson, a lawyer with the Greater Manchester Crown Prosecution Service, said: “The CPS wishes to make it clear that this prosecution was not an attack upon the practices or ceremonies of Shia Muslims.

“Indeed, the prosecution relied as part of its evidence upon the president of the local Shia community centre.”

Sentencing was adjourned until next month.

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