Choirul Mahfud

In This Season of Sacrifice, Less Is More

Idul Adha, like Ramadan and Idul Fitri, is one of those holidays Indonesian Muslims welcome every year. For millions of citizens, who rarely put meat on their table, the Islamic Day of Sacrifice is a highly anticipated festival.

During this time, selling goats and cows is considered big business, while bulls are lined up for slaughter at the mosques. As tradition goes, cattle will be butchered for their meat late in the morning, with the meat then given to the poor, orphans and other less fortunate members of society.

But for a majority of Muslims in the country, celebrating the feast itself isn’t as important as imbibing its spirit, as Idul Adha calls for sacrifice, as exemplified by the Prophet Ibrahim and his act of faith ordained by God.

The moral of the story — in which God asked Ibrahim to sacrifice his beloved son Ismail — is that we must be prepared to part with our most precious possessions. Ibrahim’s willingness to obey God’s orders and give up his own son is an exemplary act of faith. As written in the Koran, a ram was later sacrificed in Ismail’s place.

As a result, the Prophet Muhammad began the Islamic tradition of encouraging Muslims, who have the means, to give up their cattle during Idul Adha, a demonstration of their willingness to make sacrifices. Now, the question we need to ask ourselves is, what can we take from Ibrahim’s story and apply to our own lives now and in the future?

We hope Idul Adha can inspire all Muslims to reflect on the numerous problems that require us to make sacrifices in order to reach a resolution. In this context, we need more people to surrender their individual interests for the sake of the greater good, just as Ibrahim was ready to give up his own son.

But most of us seem to have been doing the opposite, instead sacrificing the best interests of the public for the sake of indulging in personal luxuries. It’s no wonder then that corruption and poverty continue to pervade this country.

This reality almost mirrors the time of the political and economic crises in 1998, when the government disproportionately expended large amounts of money to bail out mismanaged banks and giant corporations rather than using the funds to help millions of citizens who, through no fault of their own, lost a lot of their money to inflation and a major economic contraction.

In a country with a predominantly Muslim population, the government needs to join hands with leaders of various religious groups and communities to extend the noble message of Idul Adha to everyone, Muslims and non-Muslims. We all must be reminded that we should be ready to give up what we have — sometimes even more — for the sake of others.

Now, as the global crisis continues to bite Indonesia, we are seeing how most people — particularly those who are on top of the economic ladder — are bent on looking out for their own interests rather than coming to the aid of those who desperately need assistance.

Even government policies responding to the financial crisis are more focused on bailing out troubled companies instead of helping the thousands who have lost or are about to lose their jobs and the millions more who are struggling under abject poverty. Isn’t this the perfect time for the rich to give something of themselves to the needy?

In addition, Idul Adha is also a kind of social therapy, serving to revitalize the importance of family and brotherhood and reaffirm the ties that bind us all together. The celebration of Idul Adha is a time for solidarity and cooperation among all individuals, as sermons nationwide preach charity and compassion for the poor

Muslims might correctly perform the rituals on holidays like Idul Adha year in and year out, but that doesn’t automatically mean people understand what these celebrations are all about. Sometimes, these rituals have little impact and are of little consequence to people’s everyday lives, especially in terms of basic human relationships. We know how religion can influence society, and now people need to draw on their faith to make their lives more meaningful.

In the aspect of ritualism in religion, believers are more concerned with following the hows of their faith and put the whys on the peripheral. It is in this context that many Muslims rarely find common ground.

Specifically, there is a lack of conformity among Muslims in terms of what must be done to develop the different aspects of society, like education. Blind ritualism could lead to corruption, illiteracy, social injustice, violence, underdevelopment of social institutions and other problems.

It is time for Muslims all over the world, particularly in Indonesia, to begin demonstrating the true essence of their religion. This requires spreading the message of Islam in a more realistic, more sensible tone and upholding amr maruf, nahi munkar (enjoying what is just, forbidding what is wrong). This requires Muslims to be more polite to their fellow man, to be ready to defend the oppressed and to help the needy. This requires turning one’s back on graft and corruption. This requires rejecting violence and those who support terrorism, and instead, spreading the message of peace everywhere.

Choirul Mahfud is a lecturer in Islamic and Western philosophy at Muhammadiyah University in Surabaya.

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