I can't see the last message, where someone posted on the Ashura Festival, but essentially he/she is correct.
Well.. . I have seen enough blood to turn me vegetarian, at least for today.
My concern was whether the original video had been correctly described and interpreted.
The answer is: No.
Someone took some footage from a religious festival of penance (they also use flagellation) which most likely took place in Egypt (that's as close as I could get to the actual picture which was on a koptic site, but kept freezing on me) then put a foreword in to fit various European cities who have large Muslim populations and turned it into a fear message. If I hadn't been so outraged that this procession was purported to have been in 'my' former city of Vienna, I would never have been able to make this discovery.
The idea for the blood sacrifice is that you can do penance by punishing yourself and you'll get brownie points to paradise, not so distant from older Christian thinking. But essentially they are commemorating a cruel battle lost against the Ummayad Dynasty and their leader, one Hussain in this festival who suppressed the minority Shiite sect which was following a grandson of the Prophet, one 'Ali'. The biggest festival occurs in Kerbala and is held on a yearly basis close to Rahmadan.
The do celebrate 'Ashura' in European cities as well, but mostly indoors and with less blood. Turkey has become a bit more civilized; young Turks of the Shiite persuasion donate their blood at hospitals.
One photo that I will remember for a long time was that of a little girl dressed in white Muslim gear plus white angel wings holding a doll smeared with blood.
