Eid Al Adha [Festival of Sacrifice] is a Muslim holiday commemorating the willingness of Ibrahim to sacrifice his son Isma'il for God. Due to God's intervention Ibrahim slaughtered a sheep instead and to this day every year Muslim households slaughter a sheep. The sheep is slaughtered in a halal way- he is given food & water before being killed. The butcher says "In the name of God; God is the Greatest" (Bismillah; Allahu Akbar) and makes sure the animal doesn't see the knife.
In the Egyptian reef (countryside), it is common to smear the blood of the slaughtered sheep on the door of your home. Above is the picture of a hand-print on the door of a home I visited during Eid.
From a cultural perspective, the slaughter and the hand-print are not practices with which I am familiar. As a vegetarian, I do not support the cruel killing of animals, but in my opinion the slaughter was humane. Some of the street art in Cairo serves as a commemoration for martyrs, is the hand-print not another form of commemoration for the dead?
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