Message of Eid-ul-Azha

However, Muslims in every corner of the world are not so lucky to observe the occasion the way they would have liked to. For example, the Asian tsunami washed hundreds and thousands of people away, killed many more, and rendered a few million homeless, even rootless. On another level, the people of Palestine have not yet won their well-deserved independence. They are passing through a very critical phase of their existence following the death last year of Yasser Arafat. And Iraq is bleeding with the future of the nation being extremely unclear. So the sense of collectivity, the essence of Islamic brotherhood, is somehow marred by international politics. The holy Eid is an occasion to pray for an end to the sufferings of the Muslims in distress, and, in the same spirit, for mankind as a whole.

The misfortune that has befallen a section of the Umma must not lead anybody to believe that violent reprisals are the answer to it. Far from that, Islam is the religion of peace and it lays great emphasis on communal harmony. Religion must not be brought into local or international politics. Eid-ul-Azha evokes a deep sense of religiosity, so pristine that it does not lend itself to any mundane use of religion as such.

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It teaches us to sacrifice and not to indulge in mindless gluttony and feasting. The Eid festival is unique where celebrations and prayers take place side by side.

On a more mundane level, we need the municipal disposal services after a large number of animals are sacrificed with the entrails and blood splotches in evidence here and there. The DCC had done well to keep the city clean after the Eid in the last two or three years, and one expects that it will be doing even better this year. People in general should also show a greater sensitivity to the issue.

Eid Mubarak to all.