The spirit of sacrifice

Eid-ul-Azha is much more than an annual celebration in the life of a Muslim. It is, in broad measure, a comprehension of the degree to which we have engaged ourselves with faith and indeed with its injunctions in our efforts to obey the Almighty that is important. The sacrifices that we offer on this day are, therefore, an intensely religious invocation of all that is beautiful and spiritual about life. It is, at the same time, a reminder in stark worldly terms of the realities we need to handle --- in terms of helping the needy in our families and clans and across the larger spectrum of society. Eid-ul-Azha, in that sense, is a celebration of life both in our world and in the hereafter not through a seeking of pleasure but through a reassertion of values.
It is in such light that this year, as in earlier years, we go into an observance of the majesty of Creation, glory which we on earth are expected to recreate in our own humble measure through offering up sacrifices in the name of the Almighty. For Muslims everywhere, indeed for men and women across the world, there come those special moments when the mundane manifestations of life must be subsumed to a higher purpose. In brief, on Eid-ul-Azha we recall the entire nature of the elements and factors which have gone into the making of our world and of the universe. Through such remembrance, we add substance to the quality of our existence and remind ourselves of the responsibilities enjoined upon us by the Almighty and by His prophet. Let this day be given over to a purification of the soul, to a rising ambition in us about helping the disadvantaged and dispossessed reach a plane of self-reliance through a reassertion of the values underpinning our religiosity.
Faith is always a matter of cleansing the body and the soul of all impurities that may seep into them through slow degrees. That being a cardinal lesson coming down the centuries, we will remind ourselves of the need to keep our homes, our streets, our villages and our cities clean even as we devote ourselves to the acts of sacrifice.
We wish everyone Eid Mubarak!