Maybe it's about time, but we are all learning about Islam. The Raven has a post showing a photograph of the Shi'ites celebration of a feast of Mohammed's grandson Ali's death. The photograph shows people who are really quite bloody in their commemoration of the death of Ali. This Shia practice isn't easy to understand for everyone, apparently even the Sunni look with some concern at the practice according to alt.muslim - your muslim news community:

The Shia holiday of Ashura, celebrated this past weekend, is perhaps the biggest lightning rod for conflict between Shia Muslims and the majority Sunni Muslims. The traditional public displays of self-flagellation and bloodletting - meant to emulate the pain that Imam Hussain felt during his martyrdom - is difficult for Sunni Muslims to understand and is often responded to with jeering or even murder. However, this practice is banned in Iran and frowned upon in Lebanon. Many Shia clerics are calling for participants to donate blood instead of spilling it on the streets, although this call is resisted by those who feel that suffering is an integral part of the commemoration.

Apparently, questions about the practice aren't limited to Xians.

Actually, this article prompted some questions about Islam, as to which I felt there was no better time to ask than ... Easter. My parents invited their neighbors ... actually neighbors who moved in next door to the family home around the time that I left for law school...to Easter brunch. They are Persian - don't call them Arab - and they told me that the Persians are historically Shi'ite because of the tie between nationalism and religion. Like the Polish or the Irish, the Persians embraced Islam in order to avoid the homogenizing tendency of the dominant culture. Interestingly, for the first time in twenty years, I learned that Mrs. E. was ethnically Georgian. Apparently, after the Communist Revolution, her grandfather moved to Persia and Islamicized. If you have read any history of the Byzantium Empire circa 700 to 1100 A.D., you will recognize that pattern as the norm of the Caucasian nobility, which regularly moved between the Great Powers of Persia and Rome, or Byzantium, or whomever, throughout history.

Fascinating.