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The Festivals of Islam

My dear Gauri,
In Islam there are only two festivals: Eid-ul-Fitr (Ram-zan-Eid) and Eid-ul-Adha (Bakri-Eid).
Eid-ul-Fitr hails the culmination of the month of Ramzan. It is celebrated after one month’s fasting (between sunrise and sunset) during Ramzan. After complying with Allah’s mandate of purification of the soul, the mind and the body by fasting for one month, it is a day of thanksgiving and rejoicing. Eid prayers are really the thanksgiving prayers to Allah. Every Muslim who has the means is expected to distribute Fitr (alms) to the poor before the congregational prayers to enable them to celebrate Eid.
Eid-ul-Adha is celebrated by making a sacrifice to commemorate Prophet Abraham’s faith in God. And this is the story of Abraham.
Around 2000 B.C. the Prophet Abraham was preaching the gospel of One God. Abraham is credited with being the original founder of Ka'bah, the House of Allah in Mecca. While in Mecca, Allah commanded Abraham in a dream to sacrifice the thing he                   loved the most, as a token of his faith. Abraham loved his son Ismail the most, but he was willing to sacrifice him to show his faith. Ismail agreed to be sacrificed.
Thereupon Abraham took Ismail to a place called Mina, about three kilometers from Mecca. On the way to Mina, Satan tried to tempt Ismail into refusing to be sacrificed but Ismail threw stones at him and stood steadfast to the faith of his father.
Just before the sacrifice, Ismail asked his father to blindfold himself as otherwise he might not be able to go through with the terrible job. Abraham did so and brought down his knife. When he removed the cover, however, he saw that Ismail was safe, as the angel Gabriel had, at God’s command, put a ram in his place.
To commemorate Abraham’s explicit faith in God, Muslims make a sacrifice of an animal on this day and share the meat with relatives, neighbor urs, friends and the poor.
The remarkable thing about Abraham is that he has the distinction of being recognized as the religious head by all three religions that sprang up in the Middle East: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
It is important to remember that it is an article of faith in Islam to believe in the Day of Judgement. This belief is shared also by Judaism and Christianity. Unlike other religions, Islam does not believe in the reincarnation of the soul. Once an individual dies that is his end until, on the Day of Judgement, he is raised again. The Quran says.
O man, I have raised you from this dust (earth), I shall return you to this dust (earth) and I shall raise you again from this very earth on the Day of Judgement; man, beware of the Day when you will stand before thy Lord all alone to answer.
In Islam, there is no such thing as the theory of Karma. According to Hinduism the soul returns to the earth again and again in several births to work out its ‘sins’ until purified, when it returns to the Lord or, as we say, attains moksha. This is not so in Islam. A soul gets no chance to correct itself. Once the person dies, he has to wait for the Day of Judgement and be accountable to the Lord for what he has done. It is a frightful thought. On that last day, when man is resurrected, there is no escape: “On that day man shall be informed of all that he has done and all that he has failed to do. He shall become his own witness, his pleas shall go unheeded.” And the sinner will pay the penalty for his sins.
And yet, the mercy of Allah and his grace are unbounded and are to be bestowed alike upon His creatures. “By the light of the day, and by the fall of night, your Lord has not forsaken you, nor does he abhor you. The life to come holds a richer prize for you than this present life. You shall be gratified with what your Lord will give you”, asserts the Quran.
Elsewhere the Quran declares: “O thou soul which art at rest, return unto thy Lord, pleased and pleasing Him, enter thou among my servants and enter thou my garden of felicity”. According to one scholar, Ameer Ali, this is the pivot on which the whole doctrine of future life in Islam turns and “this is the only doctrinal point one is required to believe and accept”.
I have written to you so far on Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Islam. In my next letter I shall write to you about Confucius.

Your loving
Ajja

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