Eidul Azha stands for worship and tolerance. Just like Eidul fitr is a gift from God to celebrate after an entire month of abstinence and from all sort of desires like eating, drinking, avoid using abusive language, not listening to music, refrain from all worldly desires. Similarly, Eidul Azha is an opportunity for everyone to seek Allah’s forgiveness and praying to him to forgive all one’s sins. It is an occasion to repent and look back into the past with the hope of a brighter future. Eidul Azha unlike Eidul Fitr is about sacrifice. It is essential to keep the sacrificial animals in your house for three to four days and feed them grass before sacrificing them. The animals include cows, camels, goats and sheep according to what one can afford! Qurbani is also a compulsion on those who can afford. The non-affording is exempted from it. The meat is distributed to the poor and the needy as well as relatives. Keeping meat for yourself and cooking it at home is also part of the ritual. Relatives get together and bring different dishes to a common house. The men share the responsibility of distributing meat to neighbours, friends, relatives, etc. The poor already go from house to house in want for meat which they can eat only once in a year, so it is all about sharing and caring. The new trend of buying meat from stores such as Zenith etc kills the spirit of Qurbani. No doubt the meat provided is neat and clean yet the whole idea is to remember the sacrifice Hazrat Ibrahim made by offering his son to god. But god works in mysterious ways and when he saw the staunch faith of Hazrat Ibrahim, he turned his son into a goat saving the life of the young boy; tears flowed from Hazrat Ibrahim’s eyes upon the kindness Allah bestowed on him. Eidul Azha unlike Eidul Fitr is about sacrifice. It is essential to keep the sacrificial animals in your house for three to four days and feed them grass before sacrificing them. The animals include cows, camels, goats and sheep according to what one can afford! The five basic pillars of Islam – tauheed, namaz, roza, zakat and Hajj – are all practiced in this ritual. The entire process of Hajj or pilgrimage is based on tolerance. The crowd throngs the place all around the Kaaba. With the growing population the holy Hajj has become vast and the distance between the Kaaba and the people has diminished. The Masjid e Nabvi is surrounded with umbrellas to shade the pilgrims from heat. However, the meaning of hajj is only complete when you don’t go on a VIP hajj. Staying in an air-conditioned room with all the facilities provided is not what the real hajj is about. Taking photographs in front of the Kaaba is a new trend that is not in conformity with the principles of hajj. The hajj done by the true Muslims is not all roses but it’s a bed full of horns which you must cross to reach the ultimate forgiveness. Just like Qurat ul in Haider’s book the ‘River of Fire’ it is this aag ka darya that you must be able to surpass if you want Allah’s gift in the form of all that you desire from your heart. It’s not necessary to make promises that you can’t fulfil after hajj if it doesn’t come from your heart. Allah himself has made Islam an easy religion. There must be a balance between both good and bad. So, maintain that balance because you live on earth in the world and not in heaven or Paradise. You can pray to Allah to make you one with the believers or momin and not the munafiq. Who is a munafiq? Someone who pretends to be who he or she is not! So, from here comes the concept of ‘how your action depends upon your intention” as I quoted earlier from Etsko Schuitema’s book Intent vs Action. To conclude, be it Eidul Azha, Eidul Fitr, or any other Muslim holiday the primary concept is to create tolerance within one self and to understand the difficulties the poor undergo and help them by giving the food, clothes, etc as per the slogan by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto said, “Roti, kapra, makaan. Yet, be it Bhutto’s, Ziaul Haq, Musharraf, Nawaz Sharif or Imran Khan, true leader is only the one who takes care of the poor. Like in the era of the Ottoman Caliphates the zakat system is practiced so nobody was poor. Hazrat Omer at night used to secretly visit the houses to see who really was needy! Such is Islam – all encompassing and all inclusive. A religion of peace, kindness, honesty and generosity! The writer can be reached at beenishmhmd@gmail.com