Eid

It was the day of Arafa today. And tonight is the night of Eid-e-Qurbaan, yay! Eid Mubarak to everybody!!! Eid e Qurbaan is the day to sacrifice your nafs, your desires and your wishes for the sake of Allah SWT. Just how Hazret Ibrahim (a.s) did when he obeyed Allah and was about to sacrifice his beloved son for Allah's sake. But wait, Allah turned the Prophet Ibrahim's son into a nice li'l goatie just as he was about to sacrifice him. It was just supposed to be a test for Prophet Ibrahim (a.s) SubhanAllah. And that's what the day of Eid is supposed to be about. It's about being Allah's pious servants, to do things for the sake of Allah, to live for Him and do die for Him. To dedicate your life to him and to die in His way. And it's not about being that just for one day, but Inshallah all our lives. Like Imam Ali once said: "Blessed is he who sincerely devotes the entirety of his actions, knowledge, love, hatred, receiving, relinquishing, speech, silence, deeds, and statements absolutely to God."- [Bihar-ul-Anwar, vol. 77, p. 289] And that's how our life should be; and what better way to start this sort of life than the day of Eid-e-Qurbaan! It's sad how muslims around the world treat days of Eid. Eid e Qurbaan is especially construed around feasting on mutton, mutton and more mutton. Don't get me wrong. It's mustahab to sacrifice a lamb and distribute it's meat to the needy and have some yourself too. The Prophet (S) ate meat himself. Although he ate meat rarely (Reference needed.) But we can't have our minds preoccupied by the mutton biryani and mutton rogan josh and the paya and the kaleji and other makrooh items (Everything except the meat i.e flesh of the halal animal is makrooh to eat. For example Paya, kaleji, etc. I'm too lazy to look up for the english translations for these parts. Sorry.) So, let's take out time from the feasting and reflect on why this day is a day of Eid. What does Allah want from us? What is the ultimate good? In what lies Allah's pleasure and our own bliss? Consider the following passage from Imam Zainul Abidin (a.s)'s Treatise of Rights. "Know that God has Mercy upon you, and that God has rights against you, and that these encompass you in every movement through which you move, every rest through which you rest, every way station in which you reside, every limb which you employ, and every instrument which you put to work." Eid Mubarak :) Remember us in your prayers!