Rokan's Journal

Maj Gen HRM Rokan Uddin (Retd)

The season of Eid ul Adha arrives each year with the sound of takbeer, the smell of incense in freshly laundered clothes, and the anticipation of sacrifice. For hundreds of millions of Muslims across South Asia – in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, and beyond – it is among the most spiritually charged moments of the calendar. Yet beneath the surface of this profound observance, a quiet crisis persists: the essence of what Qurbani represents has, for many, been gradually displaced by customs, assumptions, and social pressures that have little to do with the act Ibrahim, peace be upon him, was called to perform. Understanding what Qurbani truly means requires first examining honestly what it has too often become.

Perhaps the most widespread misconception is the belief that the primary purpose of Qurbani is the distribution of meat. In countless households across Bangladesh, Pakistan and India, the success of the sacrifice is measured almost entirely in kilograms – how much was distributed to the poor, how many neighbors received a share, whether the portions were generous enough. The act of giving meat is unquestionably a blessed dimension of Qurbani, and the Quran explicitly mentions that its benefits extend to both those who offer it and those in need. But the Quran is equally explicit in Surah Al-Hajj: “Their meat will not reach Allah, nor will their blood, but what reaches Him is piety from you.” The sacrifice is fundamentally an act of the heart, not a logistical operation. When the distribution becomes the point, something essential has been lost.

Closely related to this is the confusion between Qurbani as worship and Qurbani as charity. Many people in South Asia, particularly those of modest means, choose to forgo the sacrifice and instead donate an equivalent sum to feed the poor, reasoning that the outcome is the same or even more beneficial. The intention behind this reasoning is genuinely compassionate, and feeding the hungry is a deeply meritorious act in Islam. But Qurbani is not a charitable donation with an animal as its vehicle. It is an act of ibadah – worship – with a specific form ordained by Allah and demonstrated by the Prophet, peace be upon him. A person does not substitute Salah with charity on the grounds that giving money helps people more than standing in prayer. The two categories are distinct. Qurbani for those upon whom it is obligatory cannot be replaced, however generously motivated the substitute might be.

Another deeply rooted misconception in the subcontinent concerns the spiritual credit of the act itself. It is widely believed, and openly stated, that the animal must suffer for the sacrifice to be accepted, or that the person performing the slaughter accumulates reward with each drop of blood that falls. This understanding, besides being distressing, is theologically unsupported. The hadith literature makes clear that the animal should be treated with gentleness, that the blade should be sharp to minimize suffering, that the animal should not be distressed in sight of other animals being slaughtered, and that water should be offered beforehand. The Prophet, peace be upon him, explicitly condemned causing unnecessary suffering to animals and praised Ihsan – excellence and compassion – in the act of slaughter. The reward lies in the sincerity of surrender, not in the spectacle of blood.

The social dimensions of Qurbani in South Asia have also accumulated their own layer of distortion. In many communities, the size of the animal has become a marker of status. Families stretch budgets they cannot afford to purchase the largest bull available, not from an overflow of devotion but from fear of social judgment. Neighbors compare. Relatives comment. The pressure to be seen offering a grand sacrifice has, in some households, turned a deep personal act of surrender into a public performance of wealth. This is precisely the inversion of what Ibrahim, peace be upon him, was tested with. His trial was not about displaying sacrifice to a community – it was about surrendering what was most beloved in absolute privacy of soul, between a father, a son, and their Lord. The magnificence of that moment lay entirely in its interior truth.

There is also a tendency particularly in South Asian Muslim communities to treat Qurbani as an annual obligation to be discharged rather than a spiritually transformative event to be inhabited. The arrangements are made, the animal is purchased, the meat is divided, the day passes. A year later, the same process repeats. Very little time is devoted to understanding the story of Ibrahim and Ismail, peace be upon both of them – to sitting with the terror and the tenderness of that moment on the mountain, to asking what in one’s own life is being withheld from Allah, to reflecting on whether the submission being enacted through the animal is reflected in the actual choices of one’s days. Qurbani without this reflection is a ritual emptied of its soul.

The story itself, when genuinely encountered, is shattering in its depth. Ibrahim, peace be upon him, had waited decades for a child. Ismail came to him in old age, a gift of impossible sweetness after years of longing. Then came the dream – not once but repeatedly, for the scholars note that the prophetic dream is a form of revelation – commanding him to sacrifice the very gift that had been given. What Ibrahim then did was not rush to prove his obedience. He told his son. He consulted him. And Ismail, peace be upon him, responded with a serenity that staggers the imagination: “Father, do what you have been commanded. You will find me, if Allah wills, among the patient.” Both submitted. Not one. Both. And now of completion, Allah called out that the trial was fulfilled – not when the knife descended, but when the submission of the heart was total.

This is the spirit that Qurbani asks Muslims to carry into their lives. It is not asking for the animal alone. It is asking: what is your Ismail? What is it that you hold so tightly that surrendering it to Allah feels like losing a part of yourself? Is it a career, an attachment, a pride, a resentment you refuse to release, a comfort you would not sacrifice even if Allah called you toward difficulty? The animal on Eid ul Adha is a symbol – magnificent and real – of that interior surrender. When the knife is raised, the question being answered in the truest sense is not how much meat will be produced, but how much of the self has been genuinely offered.

For Muslims, who carry one of the world’s richest traditions of Islamic scholarship, poetry, and spiritual practice, the season of Qurbani is an invitation to return to this depth. It is a moment to separate the inherited customs from the divine instruction, to ask with honesty what the ritual has become in one’s home and community, and to reclaim its original force. The takbeer of these days – Allahu Akbar, Allah is the Greatest – is not merely a festive chant. It is a declaration of priority. It is the heart announcing that no possession, no relationship, no ambition, no fear is greater than its Lord. Qurbani is the enactment of that declaration in flesh and blood and surrender. Observed in that spirit, it does not end when the animal falls. It continues in every choice made in the days and months that follow, in every small Ismail quietly laid at the altar of genuine submission.