Muslims celebrate Bakra-Eid today

Muslims are looking forward to celebrate Eid-ul-Azha or Bakri-Eid on Wednesday with gaity and in a spirit of sacrifice. After the brief prayers in the morning at mosques, the community will get down to sacrificing goats and sheep. Muslims around the world on Tuesday marked Eid al-Adha with prayers and ritual sacrifices, but celebrations in some countries were overshadowed by war, natural disaster and soaring livestock prices. Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice, honours Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael on the order of God, who according to Islamic tradition, provided a lamb in the boy's place.
In Saudi cities, the ritual sacrifices of sheep and goats began just after the dawn prayer. Chopping and pounding could be heard from behind the walls of great villas in downtown Riyadh, and blood was washing out into the streets. For the almost 2.8 million people on the Islamic hajj in Mecca it was a day for the ritual stoning of the devil, or Ibleess. "We are expelling the devil from our minds," said Jordanian Marwan Mashah, after throwing seven pebbles at one of the stone structures symbolising Satan. For the hajj pilgrims, though, the animal sacrifices for Eid al-Adha are mostly a hands-off affair.