`Ashurah celebrations

Of course, Shi`ites should have the right to observe the commemoration of `Ashurah.  It is part of the religious practice, although the chains and swords are cultural as is the spilling of blood, which should be banned, and senior Shi`ite clerics (from Khamenei to Sistani to Nasrallah to Fadlallah) have ruled against them but the observances should have been far more low key this year, especially in Lebanon.  In the context of acute sectarian agitation by Saudi Arabia and its clients in the region, Hizbullah should have led the effort to conduct a less loud and far more low key observances.  Instead, the observances have become far more loud and more in-your-face, partly to release the sectarian anger that many Shi`ites feel vis-a-vis sectarian provocations by the Saudi camp.  This is true particularly because `Ashurah commemoration hark back to an era of the Great Civil War in the body of Islam.  When I was a child, such extreme forms of observances with acting out the scenes of death were confined to Nabatiyyah in South Lebanon: Shi`ites of Tyre never observed it in such manner.