The following video shows a mourning ceremony performed by Muslims on the street in the German city of Bonn. Three identifying features tell you they are most likely Shi’ites, rather than Sunnis:

1. The black outfits — those are typically Shia. Sunnis normally wear white when they are expressing their religious devotion. 2. The self-harm ritual, which is very similar to the one performed by Shi’ites at the Ashura festival every year, when they mourn the death of Hussein, the grandson of Mohammed who founded the Shia sect when he was martyred for refusing to submit to what eventually became the Sunni sect. Shi’ites celebrate Ashura by cutting themselves extensively with knives or flails. 3. The fact that these men take off their shirts in public, which is forbidden under Sunni Islam. As you may remember, in some of the Islamic State’s snuff videos the bare chests of male corpses were pixilated out. A Sunni man is required to cover himself from neck to ankles; to expose any of the flesh in between is haram.



Many thanks to MissPiggy for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Video transcript: