I for one celebrat Ibriham's willingness to sacrifice Ishmael in my own way. In case you're wondering, it doesn't have anything to do with wondering how God's demand for a man to murder his child and then calling "psyche" at the last minute isn't kind of sick, if not outright bullying. Nope... sure don't do that...
I see we disagree once again, my friend. First, need I remind you that the moral of the tale is "Human Sacrifice is no good, don't do it!" ? This moral may seem fairly obvious now, but we have to remember that Abram is the first historical person (as it is) to adhere to monotheism. At the time, many, many religions were doing the human sacrifice thing, and he had no real reason to think this newly revealed "true" God was any different. So why did God (or Allah, since we're discussing Eid Al-Adha) even ask him to sacrifice Issac/Ishmael? Precisely to make the distinction between obedience to the Lord and the emptiness of vain sacrifice. Obedience frees one from the excesses ritual sacrifice. This is echoed later on in Samuel: "Behold! To obey is better than to sacrifice!" when King Saul refuses to execute the divine plan, preferring to mumble some pieties and sacrifice some sheep. Does this seem appalling in 2006 A.D. to a secular audience? Of course it does, and it should. If someone were to advocate sacrificing their son for the psyche-out value today, we would rightly arrest them. So if we make the mistake of applying Abram's story directly to today, we miss the point. It happened in 1900 B.C. (or thereabouts) in an entirely different world. He had to learn the point of symbolic sacrifice and the divine will. The purpose of the celebration is commemorate our passage from a bloody, pre-monotheist ignorance to a more enlightened state. But being on the other side of that barrier means we appreciate that we *are* on the other side of it and how we got there. Thus, Eid.
I was mainly joking around last night, but that was an hnestly beautiful and eloquent interpretation of the story. As I understood the day, I thought that the idea was to celebrate Ibriham's (as he is called in Isl.) devotion to Allah, but I like your version better. Also, I can't say anything disdainful about a holiday wherein the community comes together to make sure that the least among them are fed. Would that we could have something like that in the west.
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Hmm..... Aujang didn't comment on this post. Maybe I'll have to try harder and say how great the Persians are!
I for one celebrat Ibriham's willingness to sacrifice Ishmael in my own way. In case you're wondering, it doesn't have anything to do with wondering how God's demand for a man to murder his child and then calling "psyche" at the last minute isn't kind of sick, if not outright bullying. Nope... sure don't do that...
I see we disagree once again, my friend.
First, need I remind you that the moral of the tale is "Human Sacrifice is no good, don't do it!" ?
This moral may seem fairly obvious now, but we have to remember that Abram is the first historical person (as it is) to adhere to monotheism. At the time, many, many religions were doing the human sacrifice thing, and he had no real reason to think this newly revealed "true" God was any different.
So why did God (or Allah, since we're discussing Eid Al-Adha) even ask him to sacrifice Issac/Ishmael? Precisely to make the distinction between obedience to the Lord and the emptiness of vain sacrifice. Obedience frees one from the excesses ritual sacrifice.
This is echoed later on in Samuel: "Behold! To obey is better than to sacrifice!" when King Saul refuses to execute the divine plan, preferring to mumble some pieties and sacrifice some sheep.
Does this seem appalling in 2006 A.D. to a secular audience? Of course it does, and it should. If someone were to advocate sacrificing their son for the psyche-out value today, we would rightly arrest them.
So if we make the mistake of applying Abram's story directly to today, we miss the point. It happened in 1900 B.C. (or thereabouts) in an entirely different world. He had to learn the point of symbolic sacrifice and the divine will. The purpose of the celebration is commemorate our passage from a bloody, pre-monotheist ignorance to a more enlightened state.
But being on the other side of that barrier means we appreciate that we *are* on the other side of it and how we got there. Thus, Eid.
I was mainly joking around last night, but that was an hnestly beautiful and eloquent interpretation of the story. As I understood the day, I thought that the idea was to celebrate Ibriham's (as he is called in Isl.) devotion to Allah, but I like your version better.
Also, I can't say anything disdainful about a holiday wherein the community comes together to make sure that the least among them are fed. Would that we could have something like that in the west.
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