Today is Eid al-Adha, the major Muslim holiday commemorating Abraham’s devotion to God.
It’s been a busy day for the millions of Muslims in Mecca performing the Hajj pilgrimage. On this day they circle around the Kaaba seven times. After leaving the Grand Mosque, they hurl pebbles at each of the three Jamrah walls — walls meant to represent Satan — while walking eastward on the path toward Mina, an area nicknamed the “City of Tents” because of all the pilgrims sojourning there.
Outside of Mecca itself, Muslims around the world are likewise commemorating Abraham’s act of obedience. Countless Muslim families, among those possessing means, have had animals slaughtered — typically a goat, sheep, cow or camel — to imitate the slaughtering of the ram which had been sacrificed in place of Abraham’s son. A portion of the meat, in such cases, is intended to be donated to those in need.
The Quran, unlike Genesis, never specifies which son of Abraham was called to be sacrificed. Islamic scholars generally think that son to have been Ishmael, rather than Isaac. Isaac, the father of Jacob (Israel), is indeed recognized as a prophet in Islam. But it’s Ishmael who happens to be Muhammad’s ancestor, according to Islamic tradition, rather than Isaac. Thus, the reinterpretation of the biblical account was expedient.
After all, the biblical prophecy of Ishmael does contain some rather mixed words concerning him. Genesis presents Ishmael’s descendants in ambiguous terms, describing him as “a wild ass of a man, his hand against everyone” (16:12).
St. Paul elaborated on the spiritual significance of these two half-brothers in his allegory on Christian freedom, saying, “The son of the slave woman [Ishmael] was born naturally, the son of the freeborn [Isaac] through a promise” (Galatians 4:23).
Hagar had, according to Islamic tradition, become Abraham’s second wife, after having initially entered into Abraham’s household as a servant. It was shortly after Ishmael’s birth that Abraham had escorted Hagar and their infant son to the desert region of the Hijaz, where Mecca stands today, and abandoned them there, after having been directed to do so by God.
Muslims believe that for the mother and infant son’s sake the Zamzam well in Mecca had been miraculously opened, or unhidden, after thirst drove Hagar and little Ishmael to desperation, in an account bearing some resemblance to Genesis 21. Abraham, having been an absent father, returned once again to the Hijaz some years later, upon having been directed by God to sacrifice his son, who’d ended up having to encourage Abraham to proceed with Allah’s commands. Abraham later went on to build what is now the Kaaba, along with Ishmael’s help.
Of the two major Muslim holidays, this is the one that highlights what Islam actually is: a reimagining, rather than a “correction,” of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Practicing Jews, Christians and Muslims all agree that this call for Abraham to nearly sacrifice his own son was a test of the common patriarch’s submission to God’s will. But the near-sacrificing of Isaac was, in fact, far more than a mere test: it was a foreshadowing of the Son who truly would be sacrificed.
Islam is a mixture of affirming, as well as denying, those truths that compose the Truth.
The Quran affirms the miraculous birth of Our Lord to the Virgin Mary, as well as his prophethood. It likewise denies his divinity, and that his saving death on the Cross was anything more than a mere illusion.
Islam strictly affirms monotheism, and yet it dismisses the Holy Trinity as a thinly veiled polytheism, as though there somehow could have been any Love without there having been the existence of a Beloved prior to creation.
It acknowledges prophets of the Old Testament, and yet it glosses over any and all of the major sins that any of those figures ever committed in the course of their lives, as though God would have used only superhumans.
It acknowledges the existence of Satan, and yet it insists that he’s a rebellious jinn, a creature of ancient Arabic folklore, rather than a fallen angel, for the angels have never been granted the free will to fall from grace, according to Islam.
It acknowledges that there is indeed a Heaven, and yet the Quran describes it in detail as a paradise filled to the brim with earthly pleasures, rather than alluding to a spiritual union with God in which such sensual pleasures need not be given a second thought.
And, as a result, Christianity and Islam do have a fair amount of overlap, and yet possess wildly different interpretations of the meaning of love and of life itself. “I did not create jinn and humans except to worship me” Allah purportedly revealed, according to the Quran (51:56).
We, on the other hand, believe in a Triune God who didn’t consider himself too “dignified” to dwell among us, who didn’t care to establish any great worldly empires during his years of ministry on Earth, who was sooner willing to die himself than to merely watch us continue destroying ourselves.
We believe in a God who didn’t merely say that he loved us, but who demonstrated it with his own rescuing actions, and what one does speaks far more loudly than what one merely says.
But nevertheless, it remains very much fitting to tell our Muslim neighbors across the globe: Eid Mubarak!
