Eid al-Adha, an Islamic holiday which honors the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of obedience to God’s command, is an opportunity for believers to approach God.
Eid al-Adha is one of the two great events of Muslims all around the world in which they ritually sacrifice lambs, resembling the Quranic narrative according to which God provided a lamb for Abraham to sacrifice instead of his son Ishmael when he proved that he won’t disobey God’s command to sacrifice his son.
The Quanic narrative portrays Abraham’s high level of belief in God and his surrender to God’s will which is a great lesson for the believers.
Eid al-Adha is the final rite among Hajj rituals in which Hajis (pilgrims) sacrifice lambs, camels or cows. During the Hajj season Muslims from around the world gather in the sacred land in Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, which is the birthplace of Islam, to practice Hajj rituals.
Mohammad Reza Rahmani-nia, a Shia cleric and researcher at IRNA, said that the story of Abraham and Ishmael is a metaphorical one in which Abraham is the symbol of the Reason and Fitrah (innate nature) and Ishmael is the symbol of the Ego.
The story tells humans that you should sacrifice the ego in favor of the reason and Fitrah, Rahmani-nia said.
He also noted that sacrificing animals in this day is a way to help the poor by distributing the sacrifice’s meat among them.
Sacrificing in Eid al-Adha day is a ritual peculiar to Hajj and it’s obligatory for the Hajis to practice it. However, many people in Iran also sacrifice animals and distribute its meat among the poor and their relatives as means of approaching to God, although they’re not in Hajj pilgrimage and not obliged to do so.