Livestock Sacrifice Muslims at Worst! Holy Festival! Ever!

Sacrificial Beasts Strike Back in Turkey

from Reuters

ISTANBUL - The Muslim faithful are supposed to sacrifice sheep or other livestock for the Eid al-Adha festival, but in Turkey more than 1,600 people cut themselves and two died of heart attacks on Tuesday.

Turkey's streets annually run with blood as sheep and cattle have their throats cut on pavements and waste ground to commemorate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son for God. The scenes are decried by the secular media which every year calls for an end to the public slaughter.

Three people suffered heart attacks and two of them died while carrying out sacrifices, state-run Anatolian news agency said, and 1,664 were hospitalised nationwide, mostly from cuts suffered while trying to hold down struggling beasts.

Television showed a number of bulls escaping the knife and running down the streets. One butted open the door of a corner shop and took refuge inside. Angry bulls in at least two places attacked their would-be killers and put them in hospital.

But one man in the western province of Bolu solved the problem of how to catch an escaped bull by shooting it in the legs with a shot-gun and then cutting its throat.