TARGET 120418

Eid al Adha
Muslims Pray in Moscow

Looking down one street. The Russian police and militia are there only to keep the peace and assist if there are any
medical or other emergencies, but just in case, around 3,000 law enforcement officers were deployed to guard
this and the other worship sites. For security reasons, worshipers were not allowed to bring large bags or packs
to the sites. Metal detectors were also set up to scan for potentially dangerous objects or weapons.

Looking in the other direction

Looking down another street

Looking down another street. Muslims bow in prayer at the celebration of Eid al Adha in Moscow.

Eid al-Adha is an Islamic festival to commemorate the willingness of Ibrahim (also known as Abraham) to follow Allah's (God's) command to sacrifice his son Ishmael. Muslims around the world observe this event. At Eid al-Adha, many Muslims make a special effort to pray and listen to a sermon at a mosque. They also wear new clothes, visit family members and friends and may symbolically sacrifice an animal in an act known as qurbani. This represents the animal that Ibrahim sacrificed in the place of his son.

Each man brings a prayer rug and arranges it in a straight, orderly line with the worshippers
next to him. When the call to prayer is made, each worshipper kneels on his prayer rug to pray.
Because of the orderly spacing, the mass of worshippers stretches almost a mile on each
of the streets leading to the main Mosque.

There are few mosques in Moscow, and every year at the celebration of Eid al-Adha 80,000 to 100,000 Muslim males gather at the the location where the main Mosque was located in the city. The 100-year-old pastel green Cathedral Mosque was torn down in September of 2011 and a new mosque is being built next to it. (as of the time of this Wednesday's Target of the Week)

Women take part in the celebration, but the service and call to prayer held here is for the men, only.

Estimates of the number of Muslim men, women and children who live and work in the city of Moscow alone range between 2 and 5 million.

Police reported that at least 170,000 people celebrated the holiday in Moscow, including 80,000 men who gathered on the streets shown here. Because of the huge number of worshippers, the sermon and calls to prayer were made (in Arabic) over loudspeakers lining the streets.

The ceremony started at 8:30 AM, but many, if not most of the worshippers had arrived before daylight in order to get a good position near the mosque. The sheer volume of cars and people created kilometer-long traffic jams on streets neighboring the mosques. Thousands of Muscovites had a severe case of road rage, saying they could not get to work or drop children off at school on time because Muslims were marching in the streets to prayers, causing traffic jams.

The ceremony finished by noon, and over the next few hours, the huge crowds dispersed. Slowly, traffic in Moscow returned to normal levels. Police reported that the celebrations passed peacefully without any major incidents.

NOTE: To those viewers who look further into this ceremony for more feedback: The ceremony of Eid al Adha commemorates the day when an angel came to Abraham (Ibrahim in Arabic) and told him that he must sacrifice his only son to God on a sacrificial alter. Abraham (Ibrahim) obeyed, put his son on the altar and right before he actually sacrificed his son, the angel stopped him and told him that since he was that dedicated and obedient to God, he would be given an animal to sacrifice, instead.

The deremony therefore usually includes the public slaughtering of sacrificial animals of all types and can get quite disturbing. Muslims in Moscow have previously slaughtered the sacrificial animals in the Moscow streets, until the practice was stopped by law. Muslim leaders argue that the sacrificial slaughtering must be done in the streets because there are so few mosques in the city, and that the law is therefore unfair.

So, to warn you, if you search for further feedback on this target, you show probably incelude the word, "Moscow" in your search, because you may find that the sites covering the Eid al Adha ceremonies as practiced around the world can be very graphic and quite emotionally disturbing.

None of the links at the bottom of this page link to sites which would be emotionally disturbing to viewers, (unless they don't like crowds, of course.)

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