First of all, this writer would like to take the opportunity to wish all the readers a blessed Eid, though a bit late. May Allah accept all our good deeds and may all pilgrims have a safe journey back home with fond memories of the holy lands.
Due to my educational obligations most of the time I have to celebrate Eid Al-Adha in the United Kingdom.
I feel blessed to have been born in the holy city of Makkah. My family, I and other Makkans have never really celebrated this Eid in the way other Muslims across the world do. This is that period of year when everybody and everything in Makkah is devoted to serve the pilgrims, which is indeed a great honor. This leaves very little time for us Makkans to celebrate this Eid like other Muslims.
I vividly remember whenever we wished to hold a little get together; we never used to find basic stuff in supermarkets. Every one would just say, “Haj, Haj.” That indicated how serving the pilgrims, was, and still is top priority for all the Makkans.
I also remember that many families used to vacate their homes and either rent them out for the season or just vacate them and go to nearby cities like Jeddah or Taif until the season finished. One of my sweetest childhood memories is about Haj seasons when women and children would gather in one house because all men used to perform different duties in Haj. Those days were so precious, gathering with family children and staying up late into the night was so precious. We would pretend that we were asleep and when our moms left us we would go and party and refuse to wake up early the next day. We also used to gather and make special sweet pastry filled with date called Maamool. Apart from that, there was no real celebration. No new clothes and no special feast. But here in the UK, I was surprised to see people from the Muslim community shopping for Eid. To me, shopping is only during Eid Al-Fitr after Ramadan. I also decided to celebrate. I ordered a sheep from the local butcher for the second day of Eid, and for the first day, I went to Coventry to gather with the Saudi students there and my children had a great time. And the next day I had my sheep after giving away one third of it and invited relatives and friends over Eid feast. I cooked meat the traditional way and we had great fun celebrating and I think I will continue to celebrate even upon my return to the Kingdom.
By the way, most of us have heard about the famous dialogue between Bill Maher, Sam Harris and Ben Affleck, and I don’t want to go into the details of the dialogue as it is available on the web in addition to the fact that I am not here to discuss deep philosophical ideas about religions. I just want to stress on the huge public recognition Ben Affleck has received from Muslims worldwide. Affleck defended Islam and was obviously shocked by the racist and gross comments given by Maher and Harris, but for me I felt offended. Until when are we going to applaud anyone who defends Islam as a religion? Is our great religion a suspect that we wait for someone to defend it? Although I personally liked Affleck’s comments because they were rational and fair, but I would not call it “defending Islam,” he was defending values and morals, but to wait for someone to defend a religion in my opinion is like agreeing that it could be a suspect and this is beyond comprehension. If anyone in the information age with the availability of all sorts of viable information sources still wants to believe that any religion from any sort is the “mother of all bad ideas” then it is his own problem and he/she doesn’t deserve the energy wasted trying to convince him/her, at the end, those gross feelings will only harm him/her.
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@HatoonKadi
