Bakrid, as it is popularly called, derives its name from Bakri (goat) Baqr (cow). Its not just about sacrifice of the animal but its about remembering the great sacrifice Prophet Ibrahim (Peace Be Upon Him) was asked to make.
Allah (SAW) asked him to sacrifice his son, his beloved son was born in his senility after decades of prayers, as a test of his belief on the All Mighty. Prophet Ishmael (PBUH) (son of Prophet Ibrahim) was replaced by a lamb, just before the knife was drawn on the throat. The other famous incident related to Eid-ul-Adha is the Zam Zam fountain. Prophet Ibrahim and his wife Mother Hajera (Peace Be Upon Her) were put to another test. He was asked to leave his son and wife in the desert of the present-day Mecca, the place of Masjid e Haram. When little Prophet Ishmael cried for water, his mother started looking for a source nearby. Mirage on the nearby mountain peaks of Safa and Marwa compelled her to run between them several times. In the end she was surprised to find the water ooze out of the sand near Prophet Ishmael’s ankle, the fountain emerged near the place of constant rubbing of sand by his ankle. These two great incidents of sacrifice mark his auspicious day.
This Eid was particularly important to me because I was to actually make the sacrifice. I recently joined the ranks of bread earners for the family and thus I was particularly excited about the Qurbani. Eid-ul-Adha prayers are scheduled early in the morning so as to give the worshipper enough time to make arrangements. Being a Friday, the prayers were held as early as 7:30 in some of the mosques. Prayer was scheduled at 8:30 in our mosque. We reached at 8:15 but the mosque was still empty. This reminds me of my prayers in the Badi Masjid in Chennai; they deliberately keep the prayers very late because they fear that early prayers would make the mosque deserted as no one in the locality wakes up early! People started gathering in huge numbers as the clock slowly ticket 8:30. The Imam of the mosque was making his scheduled lecture on the importance of this day. After the prayers and Qutbah, the congregation dispersed. Everyone stood up to embrace each other thrice, as the tradition goes. The boundaries between servant and his master were diluted on this auspicious occasion and everyone embraced each other without any hesitation. First standing shoulder to shoulder and then embracing someone lower in stature to you makes you respect the other. This is one of the the reasons why congregational prayers hold so much importance in Islam.
We then returned back through a route different than the one we took while coming in the morning. This is again a Sunnah, something the Prophet Muhammed (Peace Be Upon Him) followed diligently. The Bakrah was ready to halaaled. I have a great, and I mean great, fear of animals. My fear covers a wide variety of animals from rats to goats. On my request, 2 people were asked to hold the goat; my only job was to recite the prayers and move the knife.
I only realised later that my bakra was not Sharukh or Salman but it was a bakri.
By afternoon the preparations were complete, and I got to taste the first bite of my sacrificed meat. The preparations ranged a wide variety of delicious delicacies. It was definitely a change for me as I had spent the past 5 years eating idli and non-veg sambar on Eid; the sambar used to have few minuscule pieces of chicken floating and they used to call that ‘Chicken Special’.
Sadly Eid around the globe hasn’t been as peaceful as it was for me. The bloody bombers don’t even celebrate Eid. They detonated a powerful bomb inside a crowded mosque in North-Western Pakistan on Friday, killing at least 50 people and injuring 80. Few morons at home were busy buying goats for insane amounts of 5 lakhs
IMB wishes its readers a very prosperous and blessed Eid.
Pictures courtesy- Ashish T and CNN IBN
Taha and other muslims here, stop this answering back. This is our festival and our duty, just keep quiet and do your duty.
And as matter of fact let me clarify the meat of the sacrificed animal is also distributed amongst poor and our relatives. And the meat is not discarded. Most of the muslims freeze and use the meat on an average for atleast a week, which means that muslims don’t buy meat for atleast a week after eid.
This way there is no wastage logically.
If you feel killing animals is entirely bad, then probably this debate should be broadly raised between all Vegetarians and non-vegetarians, not particularly directed at muslims.
I am a vegetarian.
Alice Walker should convince Lions to let the deers be, even chimpanzees eat meat,
utter nonsense passing for logic.
Unfortunately there are people like you who do end up taking away the rights of people to celebrate their religion their way. Jayalalitha banned animal sacrifices by tribals, the tribals, quite rightly refused to put up with such blatant imposition on their way of life and Jayalalitha was forced to remove the curbs, that God for universal vote.
And of course there are forms of life which are lower than humans and killing them is no big deal, those who do not believe so should stop taking antibiotics when they fall sick.