Violent days ahead?

Wednesday the 7th is Ashura. As much as a holy day it is for Muslims--the Shiites in particular--it has also been punctuated with violence:

On June 20, 1994 explosion of a bomb in a prayer hall of Imam Reza shrine
in Mashhad[31] that killed at least 25 people.[32] The Iranian government
officially blamed Mujahedin-e-Khalq for the incident to avoid sectarian conflict
between Shias and Sunnis.[33] However, the Pakistani daily The News
International reported on March 27, 1995, "Pakistani investigators have
identified a 24-year-old religious fanatic Abdul Shakoor residing in Lyari in
Karachi, as an important Pakistani associate of Ramzi Yousef. Abdul Shakoor had
intimate contacts with Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and was responsible for the June 20,
1994, massive bomb explosion at the shrine Imam Ali Reza in Mashhad."[34]

The 2004 (1425 AH) Shi'a pilgrimage to Karbala, the first since Saddam Hussein was removed from power in Iraq, was marred by bomb attacks, which killed and wounded hundreds despite tight security.

On January 19, 2008, 7 million Iraqi Shia pilgrims marched through Karbala city, Iraq to commemorate Ashura. 20,000 Iraqi troops and police guarded the event amid tensions due to clashes between Iraqi troops and members of a Shia cult, the Soldiers of Heaven, which left around 263 people dead (in Basra and Nasiriya).[35]

Juan Cole has a neat post on this; he starts with the following observation:

The Gaza War is coming at a poignant time for the Shiite world, since the opening 10 days of the first month of the Muslim year, Muharram, are a time of mourning for the martyred grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, Husayn b. Ali. The tenth of the
month, called Ashura, is especially sacred. Some Shiites hold public processions and beat, whip or cut themselves in grief that Husayn was struck down by forces of evil. It is therefore a season of heightened emotionalism, in which the focus is on grieving for the weak, cut down by powerful forces of oppression.