Ali A Rizvi on the horrific roots of Eid-al Adha
I do celebrate Eid with my family. I enjoy it, and this year is no different. But there are things about it I wish we could do away with.
The first is the glamourisation of its history. This day celebrates Abraham, a psychotic monster who decided to behead his own son because God - like an insecure high school girlfriend - told him He would like it if Abraham would prove his love for him in this way.
And so this delusional patriarch of the three great Abrahamic religions - putting stock in the voices in his head - set out to MURDER HIS OWN CHILD, in a completely reprehensible and downright idiotic moment that adherents of all three of these great religions hold to be eternally sacred.
Of course, at the last minute, God decided Abraham had passed his slave test, and replaced his son with a goat (or lamb, or sheep, depending on your myth).
And since then, to commemorate this horrific near-sacrifice, billions of his followers mutilate their healthy baby boys' genitals right after birth - a symbol of Abraham's sacrifice; they irreversibly cut and hurt their own babies at the very organ that will transmit their own progeny, because God wants to know for sure that they're still His b**ches. Which they are.
*This, my friends, is the seminal incident of pure idiocy that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam arose from.*
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| Stoning the devil is an activity that is still, to this day, practised in Mina, Saudi Arabia, during the Hajj pilgrimage. (Photo credit: Reuters) |
Stoning the devil, another ritual that also takes root in Abraham's profoundly deranged, psychosis-ridden mind (he thought he saw the devil three times, and threw stones at it like a circumcised Gazan to a circumcised Israeli soldier - oh, the symbolism!) is an activity that is still, to this day, practised in Mina, Saudi Arabia, during the Hajj pilgrimage.
Just like metzitzah b'peh (Google that right now - you won't be sorry), it's the kind of ritual that would be considered utterly moronic if only one man did it. But when millions partake, the exact same act becomes sacred. (Don't look at me, I didn't make this up.)
Last year in Mecca, over 700 people took part in this completely useless ritual lost their lives. This is when it stops being funny anymore.
That is 700 families out there whose loved ones were ripped from them for absolutely NO REASON. In 1990, it was 1,426 people. They all died for nothing.
Do you really want these incidents to be at the root of your values? Going out to kill your first-born son because an invisible, un-hearable Entity tells you to, via voices in your head?
Mutilating your child's genitals as allegiance to Him?
And then spending your life's savings to make a trip to a faraway desert just so you can throw a bunch of pebbles at a pillar - only to be trampled to death by a horde of fellow pebble-throwing co-delusionalists who would've done better to instead donate their airfare to the millions of poor people living in their home countries?
So I wish you a happy Eid - enjoy the food, your families, friends, children, and all the rest of it, as I will.
And hopefully someday we can get past the horrific roots of this day (and of these three cultish religions) and enjoy it like we enjoy Thanksgiving and Easter - where it's not about the imbecilic stories they are rooted in anymore, but a spirit of togetherness based on community, not ideology.
And second, let's stop having our kids watch as we say "Allahu Akbar" as we slit the throats of their pets.
In case you missed it, hear Zameer Rizvi and I talk about it here - he wrote a song about it.
(A version of this post first appeared on the writer's Facebook page.)