Mourning Ritual Shiites Muslims

In the month of Muharram Muslim Shiites remember with mourning the death of one of its most important leaders.

Until here everything is normal, what is really strange is when all participants begin to beat his chest with his hands and then cut with knives and other sharp objects.

The Ashura festival is celebrated throughout the Muslim community, but is a central Shiite religious commemoration.

The festival falls on the tenth day of Muharram, the first month of the Muslim lunar calendar, and it recalls the Islamic world a voluntary fast when Noah left the ark and the salvation of Moses from the Egyptians by God's.

The Shiites also remember the martyrdom of Hussein, grandson of Prophet Mohammed, occurred in 680 in the city of Karbala, which is in the current Iraqi territory.

To honor him, thousands of men and women dressed in black march through the streets beating their chests and chanting. They also perform rituals of mourning and passionate recreations of martyrdom: there are those who emulate the function of Hussein flagellation with chains or cutting his forehead until blood runs them through the body.

Some Shiite leaders try to discourage bleeding, saying it creates a bad image of their faith. In return, he proposed to the faithful donate blood.

In Islamic antiquity, the Shia were a political faction that supported Ali, son of Muhammad and the fourth caliph (temporal and spiritual leader) of the Muslim community.

Ali was killed in 661 and his main opponent, Muawiya, became caliph. It was this murder that ended up causing the Great Schism that divided Muslims Shiites and Sunnis.

Muawiya was succeeded by his son Yazid, but Ali's son, Hussein, refused to accept its legitimacy, sparking a confrontation between them.

Hussein and his followers were massacred in battle near Karbala in the year 680. The deaths of Ali and Hussein gave rise to the Shia cult of martyrdom. Today, the Shiites are about 15% of the Muslim population in the world.