This Eid, Muslims must make a pledge to introspect and engage

The Muslim world celebrates Eid Al Adha today. Eid Al Adha is celebrated across the length and breadth of the Muslim world and now increasingly across the west by the Muslim diaspora to commemorate and honour Prophet Abraham’s (Peace be upon him) sacrifice. Abraham (RA) was , in a test of faith, instructed and asked by God to sacrifice his son Ishmael in accord with God’s Will. Abraham(RA) willingly went ahead and so did Ishmael(RA) only to discover that this was merely a test for him. [caption id=“attachment_1174401” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] Eid Al Adha then is a supreme honorarium and testament to the spirit of sacrifice. Symbolic as well as substantive, the spirit of Eid Al Adha and the Hajj enjoins Muslims to transcend their selves, devote themselves to God and His Will, and again in both symbolic and substantive terms celebrate and submit to the essential unity of the cosmos. Different creeds, races and nationalities get so absorbed and engrossed by Divine and Cosmic energy that the mundane and the ordinary is forgotten and the world for them moves accord to a Divine rhythm. Unity and Sacrifice underpins is the theme that underpins all this. This is the spirit and essence of Eid Al Adha and the Hajj. By and large, Muslims across the world, correspond to this. The overall experience is a spiritual, a cleansing and a purifying one. Cosmic and spiritual energy is radiated outward. However, the overall, cumulative effect is ephemeral. Muslims after Eid revert to quotidian life and the spirit and essence of both the Eid and the Hajj is soon forgotten. This is a bit of a travesty: the spirit and essence of the Hajj and the Eid should inform Muslims’ existence. And the purification and cleansing that is the trademark of both should determine Muslims’ approach and orientation to life. New pledges , after cathartic introspection should be made and the world be made a better place through the spirit and essence of Eid and the Hajj. What could be the pledge that Muslims all over the world make on this Eid? The collective contemporary condition of Muslims is not very sanguine, to say the least. Be it the civil and sectarian war in Syria, the depredations of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the misery and strife in other parts of the Muslim world, our condition needs remedial action. The need of the hour then is collective introspection and then vigorous follow up. What could this introspection look like? We have collectively turned inward but at the same time there is a bit of a paradox in operation here. This, among other things, has bred immense and humungous problems-political, economic, and social- we blame the outside world for our problems. The first step then is to diagnose the nature of our problem(s). If we look within, we will discover that many of our problems are self made and accrue from within and therefore the remedy would lie within too. Once a consensus is reached on the nature and the source of the problem(s), this could then be followed by looking outward. That is, we have to look inward, probe for solutions there and then look outward. This means engaging the world. The idiom that Muslims should and must engage the world should not be informed by the past. The world has and is changing. We need to keep pace and our engagement should be premised on this. This does not mean jettisoning the spirit and essence of Islam but rather corresponding to it. We must inculcate and imbibe the values of tolerance, amity, the essential and underlying unity of mankind, and the brotherhood of man. Starting from this premise, we should commence engaging the outside world. The inculcation of the inside outward perspective will be revelatory. It will open up the world for us and expand our vistas and horizons. The world will once again be bold and beautiful for us and we can potentially once again contribute to the amelioration of the human condition and the efflorescence of civilization. Given that Muslims constitute a substantive chunk of the world’s population, the inside outward perspective, vigorous engagement with the world will have a significant impact. The world will be a better place if Muslims engage with it in a fresh, healthy idiom smelling of roses. We should not, for one moment, think that this engagement is altruistic. It has been a while since we have retreated into our collective shell, have paid a price for it and made the world pay a price as well. It is about time that we jettison the past and make a new beginning. Let the year 1434(AH) by the Islamic calendar and the year 2013 be a new, bold, beautiful and auspicious beginning for the world and for Islam.