Islamic Holy Day Ritual in St louis

I came across this gem recently and I really don't know what to say about it.

I have heard Islam is a religion of love but watching this video I'm not so sure.

Source

Seriously to mutilate yourself in order to show your conviction to your faith is messed up.

a reply to: sirlancelot

It's also celebrated by Shia as well as Sunnis (which the link only mentions)...

Shiites celebrate the Day of Ashura with self-flagellation (harming oneself)...


Sunnis do not do this, to us it is Haram to harm yourself...




& that's my job done...


Now over to the "experts" who are gonna talk about the "Cult of Death & Destruction"...


Just don't lump me into your nonsense!

a reply to: sirlancelot

I don't know what to say. I need to un-see that.

Hindus do something similar, they cut themselves and put huge poles through their cheeks as well as other forms of self mutilation in order to show their faith.

Christianity has it flagellants as well as the Cilice worn by some severe Christians.

Buddhist monks frequently starve themselves, expose their bodies to freezing temperatures, hold poses that seriously strain muscles, and many other forms of what would be considered torture.

And then you got Muslims doing what you wrote the OP about.

Moral of the story, Religion makes you an idiot regardless of your particular brand of fairy tale nonsense

a reply to: infolurker

lol...

In all honestly, Christians can get pretty zealous in their own right. Here is footage of a Philippino re-enactment of the crucifixion. Those guys you see? They are flagellants, and I was divided on whether they were actually beating themselves bloody or just hitting their backs with dye filled sacks, but some of those closer shots show what appear to be actual contusions/abrasions on their backs and those are sticks on the ends of those whips.

There is actually a really understandable lecture by a very known scholar of the Jafari thought of school. Im not going to speak about because i have little knowledge of the subjectWhy shias beat their chest

originally posted by: CharlieSpeirs
a reply to: sirlancelot

It's also celebrated by Shia as well as Sunnis (which the link only mentions)...

Shiites celebrate the Day of Ashura with self-flagellation (harming oneself)...

I'm not sure "celebrate" is the most appropriate word here, considering that Shi'a do it as a form of mourning.

But it is odd that the link mentions Sunnis, when it is almost exclusively a Shi'a practice. As I said, Shi'ites do this as a form of mourning for Hussain, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, and the 3rd Shi'ite Imam. While Sunnis in countries with a Shi'a presence also sometimes participate in mourning, self-flagellation is predominately done by Shi'ites. The religiously ordained way to mark the day for Sunnis is by fasting, which the link mentions, but that relates to a separate incident that just happened to fall on the same day.

Now while I personally disagree with this and don't really consider it an appropriate form of mourning (or the idea in general of mourning someone who died over 1000 years ago), if the participants are all their of their own free will, and want to do whatever they want to do, I'm not sure I have much to speak against them. I mean, in that case, I'd ban smoking, tattoos, piercings, body modifications and wearing high heels, all different forms of self harm (most way more dangerous than this form of self-flagellation, which barely breaks the flesh, and doesn't even last 2 months, although it definitely looks more impressive).