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This Eid al-Adha, Gaza is the Muslim world’s sacrifice [1]
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Date: 2025-06-06 13:00:00+00:00
As Muslims around the world prepare for Eid al-Adha, during which millions will sacrifice livestock to feed themselves and those around them, we must pause and ask ourselves: what are we truly commemorating this year?
While Muslim families across the world divide meat into thirds—one for the poor, one for relatives, one for themselves—Gaza starves.
In Gaza today, starvation is not accidental. It is an engineered reality by Israel and U.S. complicity. According to Oxfam, people in northern Gaza are surviving on just 245 calories a day, less than what’s in a single can of beans. A fraction of the 2,100 daily calories required to stave off malnutrition. The United Nations has declared Gaza the “hungriest place on Earth.”
Stop starving and killing innocent people in Gaza.pic.twitter.com/2OnKKK8EEU#WitkoffMassacre — سیانی کُڑی (@digitalchirrya) June 1, 2025
The qurbani or udhiya (sacrifice) of Eid al-Adha is meant to remind us of Prophet Ibrahim’s (AS) unwavering faith — his readiness to sacrifice his son and give up what he loved most for the sake of God. Qurbani is not just symbolic; it is a reflection of our moral conviction — a measure of what we are truly willing to sacrifice for a higher calling.
And what does God actually ask of us? The Qur’an is clear: “It is neither their meat nor their blood that reaches Allah, but it is your piety that reaches Him.” (22:37)
What matters is the intention behind the ritual — the God-consciousness with which we make the sacrifice. That is what reaches Him.
In Islam, piety (taqwa) is not passive — it is meant to be a shield, a living moral compass.
And if our sacrifices don’t forge that shield — if they don’t compel us to stand up for the oppressed — then what are they for?
If taqwa compels action, then we must ask: what do we see in the mirror this year?
The starvation & suffering we are seeing in Gaza is not an accident; it is a deliberate decision.
The true monstrosity of this ugly system lies the draping of a 'humanitarian' disguise as a means of displacing a population.#WitkoffMassacre #IsraeliCrimespic.twitter.com/hWuoozO43X — "Solidarity is a verb" (@SaveSJarrah) June 2, 2025
We see a Muslim world flush with wealth. Leaders who issue statements of concern but preserve their alliances with oppressors. Populations who raise prayers but not concrete actions — who do not demand to open the borders between Jordan and Gaza or Egypt and Gaza. Leaders “modernizing” traditionally conservative societies — filling stadiums with concerts and fireworks — yet showing no urgency in forcing the U.S. to allow aid in with the power of their billion-dollar investments and trillion-dollar bids.
Gaza’s suffering is policy-driven and profit-protected.
Ibrahim’s test and ours: when ritual replaces responsibility
There is no virtue in the faith of a people that clings to rituals while ignoring the slaughter of their brethren. There is no barakah (blessings) in sacrificial meat offered in the name of God while His people starve under siege.
“Labaik, Allahumma Labaik!” cried over 1.8 million pilgrims this Hajj. “Here I am, O God, at Your service!” But what does it mean to proclaim service to God in the most sanctified place on Earth, Mecca, if we remain silent in the face of injustice just beyond its gates?
Perhaps the deeper crisis lies in our shallow understanding of sacrifice itself.
Ibrahim was commanded to give up the most precious thing in his life: his son Ismael. It was a direct challenge to his attachment, his ego, his emotional world. Sacrifice, in that moment, wasn’t about death — it was about detachment. And he didn’t hesitate. He obeyed. His son, too, submitted — despite the gravity of the call. It wasn’t the act of sacrifice that mattered. It was the willingness, the trust, the submission to a moral command greater than the instinct of self-preservation.
In the end, Ibrahim and Ismael were both spared. God replaced the boy with a ram, but only after the test had been passed and Ibrahim had proven that he was willing to give up what he loved most.
What if Ibrahim had offered something easier instead? A token gesture instead of his son? What if he had said: “Surely God doesn’t want this,” or “This is too hard,” or “Let me offer something else.”
That hesitation is the Muslim ummah today, offering charity drives instead of protection forces, sending aid instead of stopping bombs, and raising awareness instead of pressure. We choose comfort over obedience, and convenience over courage.
Across the Muslim world, communities continue to donate generously, raising hundreds of millions of dollars for Gaza. Nonprofits launch campaign after campaign. Fundraisers go viral. Zakat, sadaqah (charity), and qurbani are offered in abundance, intended for those starving in besieged Gaza.
Yet much of that aid never reaches them — instead, it sits in warehouses in Jordan or is stuck in trucks in Egypt, some of it funded by Muslim generosity but blocked by political barriers.
“Some of the food we have is arriving at expiration in July,” said Jonathan Fowler, spokesperson for UNRWA, according to a report by Jane Arraf for NPR on May 30, 2025.
That aid includes 200,000 metric tons of flour. While some may be redirected to refugees in Jordan, Fowler admitted that “some of it will have to be dumped.”
These are the wasted offerings of a generous but immobilized ummah — aid collected in good faith, only to be locked behind Muslim nation borders and sacrificed to politics.
The ummah, too, has been given a command. As clear as Ibrahim’s vision: stand for justice, even against yourselves. Protect the oppressed. Spend from what you love. Speak the truth, even when it is bitter.
But we love ourselves too much to listen. Too much to obey what we’ve already been commanded.
We won’t give up what we love most — our comfort, our status, safety, or stability. So we offer Gaza instead. We sacrifice their children as the price of our indifference.
“They killed my mother — and before that, my brother. I urge everyone: do not go to the American aid distribution points soaked in blood. This bag only contains 2 empty flour sacks — nothing else — & yet they shot & killed my mother as she tried to get us something to eat today.” pic.twitter.com/1wuhzNfIq7 — Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده (@RamAbdu) June 3, 2025
It is the inversion of Qurbani and the corruption of sacrifice. We rewrite Ibrahim’s story — not as a tale of moral courage, but of moral cowardice.
True Qurbani is not about killing. It’s about giving and submission — about obeying a higher call even when every part of you wants to say no.
That call echoes in the cries of the starving, in the sobs of children, in the blood-soaked soil of Gaza.
True Qurbani is not in the meat of animals. It is in what you are willing to live for — by giving up something precious for justice, and the sanctity of human life.
This Eid, Gaza needs political will. It needs a Muslim world that remembers that faith without justice is hypocrisy.
May this Eid be more than a ritual or tradition. May it be a turning point — not just for Gaza, but for the sake of humanity and the God the ummah claims to serve.
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[1] Url:
https://mondoweiss.net/2025/06/this-eid-al-adha-gaza-is-the-muslim-worlds-sacrifice/
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