Eid Mubarak (again) !

Hey yaars!

Today is Eid-Ul-Adha for me. Yes, Muslims celebrate 2 Eids. Eid-ul-Fitr is a celebration after a month of fasting, while Eid-ul-adha is best described as follows:

Eid-ul-Adha—the Festival of Sacrifice—is an occasion to remember and pay homage to the unselfish act of Prophet Abraham. Out of his impeccable devotion and obedience to the One God, Allah, Abraham once resolved to sacrifice his own son Ishmael and fulfill God’s will. But Ishmael was saved by Allah in the nick of time and replaced by a lamb. Eid-ul-Adha celebrates this great sacrifice and is a time for Muslims to look back upon the selflessness of Prophet Abraham.

The spirit of sacrifice is at the heart of this holiday of Eid-ul-Adha. However, it’s not simply an occasion to sacrifice a lamb, ram, goat or any other animal to commemorate Abraham’s sacrifice. The values of self-denial associated with a sacrifice form the rudiments of Eid-ul-Adha. This holiday is especially significant to the Muslims all over the world precisely because Eid-ul-Adha fosters the virtue of sacrifice or ‘qurbani’, which is central to the Islamic doctrines. The sacrifice on Eid-ul-Adha, however, does not have any expiating value. Rather, this Eid-ul-Adha sacrifice solely marks and honors Abraham’s act by sacrificing something living to Allah and thereby harps on the values of self-denial, ceding to the will of God and it is meant to be followed thus.

Usually my mother sends money to her brother back in Pakistan to pay for a lamb to be sacrificed, I have no clue as to this years plans. It is suppose to be a big deal there, where people will buy a lamb a month in advance, feed it, raise it, and then hire the local specialty butcher to slaughter it in the halal way (slitting it's throat and letting it bleed to death while saying a specific prayer). My mom and brother have been in Pakistan to see this and my brother still cringes at the memory of all the blood, whereas my mother says her and her sisters would look forward to watching it as girls! They REALLY didn't have entertatinment back then!

For my family, our plans are quite simple. Our prayers are at 10 - inside a restaurant's basement if you can beleive it - about two blocks from our home. The geniuses' that run our religious sect locally decided that each suburb should have it's own separate prayer location to prevent disasters like the previous Eid's, where we all go off into No-Man's Land and get stuck on the highways and then in the parking lots!

After prayers, my mother's inviting her best friend over for tea and halva puri, which is kind of like the equivalent of a pancake breakfast, but not really. Any of you non desi's will have to come over to try it sometime (as long as your arteries can take it!). Along with her best friend, she managed to invite a family whom I haven't seen in years, and tend to get a little annoyed at. They're the inquisitive type, who never stop asking questions and always manage to grind your gears to the point that you want to shoot yourself! Thank goodness my mother has planned to have the "children" (yound adults my age and my 17 year old brother) go to a restaurant to eat lunch. I'm hoping for the Mandarin buffet!

I'll leave it at that for now, I need some sleep for tomorrow. I'll have the full post-Eid wrap up for you all as soon as possible.

Quick notes before I go:
- I still am laughing at the witty analysis of this Eid being "Eid 2 : Back with a Vengeance"
- The correct plural form of the word is yaars, not ya'ars (I'll still forgive you :P )
- The Madden Bowl final : Carolina (Naveed) vs. Jacksonville (Zan)
(The Panthers have totalled 3 of the 4 wins I've had in all of our faux playoff games - I've lost 6 times to Zan, and he's already starting the psychological mindgames with me!)