spare the poor goat or lamb or cows life. The purpose of sacrifice is to understand the spirit of parting with what you hold dear (your wealth), it is not some muqabla against four-legged animals.
Please pause and think … That, after all, is what religion should make us do rather than blindly following ritual.
According to the many organizations that will perform the sacrifice for you if you live abroad, the cost of one goat/sheep is US$ 160 in the US (that is more than one month’s salary for a college educated Pakistani professional). The price in Pakistan is cheaper, but not by much. Only the well wheeled can afford it. The Poor cannot even budget for a kilo of meat a month.
Is there a better way to ‘sacrifice’ the 150-200 dollars or the Rs. 10,000 or more in the name of Allah that is useful to His bandas? A way that captures the spirit of sacrifice that qurbani entails and helps us meet our religious obligation as well as the social welfare and redistribution that is its deeper purpose?
The Qur’an reminds us that Allah looks at intent not the blood. Maybe we too should pay heed to the intent of qurbani? For those who want to sacrifice this writer instead, please read Chapter 22, Verse 37 from the Holy Qur’an (I have looked at translations by Marmaduke, Yusufali, Asad and Usmani) and they all talk about your own devotion, piety, God-consciousness and taqwa that reaches Him.
The meat from the sacrificial animal is intended to be divided into three parts: 1/3rd each for your self, family and friends, and for the needy and the poor. I would suggest we fore go our share, and give the whole amount to the poor including poor relations. Charity and alms should be given throughout the year, and many people do. But with this added emphasis around Eid ul Adha I would suggest we consider giving more to the poor including poor relations.
Allah looks at intent not the blood. What better way to celebrate this Eid?
On my last visit I saw a lot of people drive up to a certain “hotel” (Pinglish for restaurant) and pay the owner X rupees to feed X number of hungry folks lined up outside. That is a noble idea. But would it not be better better to teach them to fish?
A manual sewing machine for a widow or unemployed poor woman? Tuition Fees or books for a poor student? Some money to ease the days for the unemployed people? A small monthly stipend to the poor that may bring a ray of hope in their lives and may perhaps deter them from abandoning their children to the fogs of terrorist factories?
We can think of many ways to make Him happy and spare the lamb. May Allah bless you and your family.
Note: This is based on an earlier post published on temporal’s blog Baithak.
Sorry i am also little confused like Ahmer Muzammil and Adnan Siddiqi. For brutality done on road, how come it is ok if we brutally kill animal behind closed doors and eat it. I as a kid saw all those animals being scarified in front of me, the only thing we use to make sure is that it is done by professional and with sharp knife and by armatures and now we take it to the butcher shop where its done by professional who do that all year round. This qurbani is just to remind us that there were pious people of Allah who were ready to sacrifice their son in this way and today we are saying that just sacrificing an animal in the name of Allah is cruel. If you really think that than either you are a vegetarian or you should become one because even if an animal is killed behind closed doors its very cruel. Yes but at the same time I say that the qurbani should only be done by professional and only at designated places not all around the city.
As for giving to poor, we should be doing that all year round not just on Eid. Not giving any thing all year round and then saying that on eid that we wil donate money and not sacrifice an animal I don’t agree with that. If Allah wanted us to donate money on this eid, He would have told us to do so. For this wid he wants us to sacrifice and animal and share it with everyone, that’s why three parts of qurbani so that very one feels part of it. I know in Pakistan some people keep all the good parts for themselves and the rest is distributed, that’s also wrong we should mix it all and then distribute so that we get the same that we are giving to poor and our relative.
As for donating the money to poors, we should be doing that all year round, this sacfi
Can’t understadn the defensiveness of Majid and Ahmer. Religion cannot be against common sense, certainly not Islam. And Islam is very clear that the purpose is SACRIFICE – the purpose is NOT the murder of animals or showing off. It is to sacrifice what you hold dear. In this case money, really. And to sacrifice it so that Allah’s people benefit from your generosity in HIS name.
There is no magic in what animal you sacrificed. They had camels in Arabia as the unit of wealth so they sacrificed that. if they had ostriches, then maybe they would have done that. If they had stocks and bonds then a part of them would be parted with.
The point is do you do sacrifice because some jahil mullah is telling you to kill animals? Are you doing sacrifice so that the skins can be collected by jihadist moulvis? Are you doing sacrifice to show off to your neighbor how much you wasted on the animal? Or are you doing SACRIFICE to please Allah by making the lives of His people better and spreading the goodness that you have been blessed with.
If you are doing it because of any of the first three reasons then keep bleeding animals. If you are doing it to please ALLAH then maybe rethink why you were asked to sacrifice in the first place and make sure that you sacrifice makes Allah happy by making your felling humans better off, esepcially the poor.
First of all it’s very distrubing that writer did not mention his or her real name. This topic is a typical manifestation how people put their minds to get empirical ideas about religion. Qurbani is an act of earning virtue which has to be done this way. If you have money and you want to help poors, do it, but don’t equate/ replace it with the act of sacrificing. Difference between Qurbani and other virtues are taught in very basic levels of sheriah. It is not difficutl to understand the difference of earning virtue by sacrificing a goat and by helping a poor. Buy a quadruple as per sheriah rulings, and on the day of Eid try to sacrifice it with your hands, you will get to know some of the uncountable benefits of Qurbani. I don’t know how much empirical ideas can work for other religions but for Islam, we need to act upon it’s rulings and try to understand them rather than devicing empirical ideas for islam. We did the evolution like this in Physics. Where we gave the ideas some of which are now believed true and some false, but at the time of their presentation, they were Right. But we must not pust Islam to this process of evolution, rahter we need to put our minds in the poress of evolution to understand the rulings of Islam. We need to know the difference between Ijtihad and puting our minds in devicing empirical formulas for Islam.
Meengla jee,
i dont quite understand whether the rant is on islam being a savage religion or pakistan as a country not being able to properly manage eidu-ul-adha. If its the later i agree and i shall add that we are also not providing apt education, clean water, justice, public healthcare either.
As for militancy is concerned, germany didnt celebrate eidul adha with same vigor however they slaughtered millions of jews regardless. When you have a perpetual rule of armed military in a country for 60 years then that sense of getting things done at the barrel of a gun trickles down. Its that phenomenon for the most part that is unfolding in front of our eyes in pakistan and not a by product of eid ul adha. Again i agree that i wouldnt want to be in a situation where i have to explain why someone is slaughtering an innocent looking cow and it should be done in a more hygenic and discrete manner but in context of pakistan..hazaroon khoahishein aysi kay har khoahish pay dam niklay.
by the by there is an interesting talk by Dr. zakir nayik on veganism and what would happen if the whole world would become vegetarian, supposedly it would be bad for the environment and we would have cows and goats outnumbering human beings in alarming proportions. i dont claim to be a scientist, i just find excuses to have steak whenever i can
How you practice in this case depends if one believes in literal meaning of Quran/Sharia or Muqasid (purpose) of Sharia.
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