Spirit of Sacrifice

[Guest guest]

Namaskar,

 

Read a article on the net regarding sacrifice of thousands of Goats

by the muslim families on the occasion of ID-UL- JULHA.Would like to

share it with all :

 

 

LIVING beings, other than humans, are like programmed robots. They do

not deviate from the ways of life fixed for them. A particular bird

has always been building its nest in the same particular way since

time immemorial. There has never been a change. A tiger has, as

always, been hunting down deer and such other animals in the jungles

for his food. There has never been a change in the way he hunts. And,

by the way, there is nothing immoral in the way he digs his teeth

deep into his hapless prey's neck, sucking its blood till it drops

dead. It is but natural for him to do so. He would go hungry

otherwise. He has no choice. He, like other animals, has to submit

himself completely to Nature. Nature has not given him any freedom in

this regard. Human beings, on the other hand, have a certain degree

of freedom to choose their ways of life.

 

One such messenger was Abraham. God tested him by asking him to

sacrifice his son Ismael. When He found both father and son quite

ready for the sacrifice, He sent down to them a sacrificed goat.

Abraham was informed that he had passed the test successfully and

that there was no need then to sacrifice Ismael. The sacrificed goat

was a token of Abraham's success in the supreme test.

 

We, Muslims, celebrate Eid-ul-Azha or the Bakr-Eid all the world over

to commemorate this success. It is a Sunnah and not an absolute

obligation - to sacrifice a herbivorous animal, like a goat, on this

occasion. Ideally, the sacrificial animal would be the one that we

have been rearing as a pet for at least a few days, so that we start

feeling some attachment towards it. We would then have a little taste

of the real spirit of sacrifice behind the token.

 

We should never ever mistake the token sacrifice as the real thing.

We should be ever ready for the supreme sacrifice of our dearest

thing in this world at the call of God, our Creator. That is the

ultimate test for salvation, which lies in complete submission, by

one's own free choice, to the Will of the One and Only Creator. That

is the real spirit behind the token sacrifice.

 

The question of the perceived cruelty to the sacrificial animal may

disturb some uneducated minds. The reference made herein above, to

the tiger killing a deer for his very survival may give some peace to

such minds. They can perceive therefrom that it is in the nature of

things sometimes for one species of living beings to kill another,

for sheer survival. The disturbed minds themselves would not be so

much disturbed at killing mosquitoes; for, otherwise, they may not

get sleep at night and may even get afflicted by some mosquito-borne

diseases. Take the goat, the very animal commonly used for the

sacrifice, for another example. Its flesh is used the world over as a

common item of food by human beings. A little reflection would show

that God has created goats in such large numbers, specifically for

the purpose of providing human being with an item of food for them.

Thousands of them are being killed every day for food, and yet there

is no dearth of them in the world. Imagine what would happen if a ban

were to be imposed on goat-slaughter, the world over. Perhaps there

would be no food left then for even the so-called vegetarian humans.

 

Logically speaking, therefore, there should be no eyebrows raised for

choosing the animals for the sacrifice. Experiments have proved that

the Islamic way of slaughter is the most humane and the least painful

to the animal being sacrificed. The cutting off of the main artery in

the neck cuts the blood supply to the brain wherein lie the cells

which make a living being feel any pain. The sudden cutting off of

the blood supply makes the brain die instantaneously. So, no brain,

no pain. Some such thing may also be happening in the case of the

tiger digging his teeth into his prey's neck, the prey

instantaneously becoming brain-dead and thus feeling no pain.

 

Lastly, let us not forget that on account of this sacrificial

practice thousands of the poor get the rarely available chances of

enjoying the luxury of a meal of meat.

Source: www.islamicvoice.com

 

 

OM SHANTI