CAIRO: Police detained seven people celebrating the Shia Muslim festival of Ashura on Monday in front of the Hussein Mosque in Cairo’s Islamic quarter, a security source said.
The detained were among 2,000 to 3,000 people from the minority Shia community in overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim Egypt, who were celebrating the festival that marks the martyrdom of the Prophet Mohamed’s grandson Hussein in the battle of Karbala in Iraq in the year 680.
The Shias had gathered from different parts of Egypt without obtaining a permit to mark the holiday, the security source said, adding the detained included the Egyptian Shia leader Mohamed El-Derini.
Commemorations of Hussein’s death by Shia Muslims, who pay special reverence to Hussein, have long been banned at the mosque.
