Father’s Day for Abraham: Eid-al-Adha the End of Human Sacrifice?

This Sunday, the 16th of June 2024, Americans will observe or ignore Father’s Day, a day my own father always said was an afterthought.? Now that neckties are hardly worn, Dad needn’t worry as much about receiving another useless fashion accessory.? Perhaps he will receive instead some accessories for the backyard grill, not an entirely bad thing, making Father’s Day a not entirely bad day to be Papa.?

Sundown on the evening of this Father’s Day will be a very bad time to be a goat.? Many of the world’s approximately three billion Muslims slaughter a goat (or sheep, or cow) as a commemorative sacrifice for the feast of Eid-al Adha (Arabic), or Eid-e-Ghorban (Persian).

In the Holy Bible (both the Jewish Tanakh and the Christian Bible), the 22nd Chapter of the Book of Genesis, and the Holy Qur’an, the 37th Sura,? As-Saaffat (‘Those Who Rank Themselves in Order’), vv. 102ff, the story of Abraham/Ibrahim (Patriarch to Jews and Christians, Prophet to Muslims) and his only son, Isaac, or, in the Qur'anic narrative, Ishamael, is a tale of deep pathos.? ?Ha Shem, the Almighty, Allah, commands Abraham/Ibrahim to take his son to Mount Moriah and to sacrifice him there as a holocaust, a burnt offering.? In Genesis 22, that son is Isaac, who has to be tricked into following his father who says nothing of the fact that he, Isaac, will be the victim of the sacrifice.? In Qur’an 37, Ibrahim tells his nightmare vision to his obedient and willing son, Ishmael.? In both accounts, the altar, fuel and victim for the sacrifice are prepared and an angelic messenger stays the hand of the grief/stricken father.? Viewed as a teleological myth, the angel′s halting of the sacrifice of Isaac/Ishmael at the very last minute spells the end of child and, for that matter, human sacrifice.?

As a dear Kurdish friend of mine who describes himself as "just a Muslim” says, “Eid-al-Adha is for all of humanity.? It means we are freed from all that.? From that time on, we are to worship God by loving our children, not by slaughtering them like a goats.”??

Quite a thought, and quite a thought for Father’s Day.? So, Dads, how have we been doing since that hike up Mount Moriah four millennia ago?? Century upon century of shaken baby syndrome and all other manner of child abuse made it difficult for Dostoevsky’s Dmitri Karamazov to believe in God, or at least a God who said NO! STOP! to the killing of children, a God whom Christians believe stood by one Friday and watched much the same thing done to his own son on a Roman cross.? Is the besetting sin of humanity perhaps not lust or rage but rather deafness?? Is no one hearing God’s NO!? STOP! that saved the father of Isaac and Ishmael from being a murderer?? If we are deaf to the word of Scripture, are we also deaf to the pangs of conscience?

Every news report every morning of every day indicates that we are deaf, and profoundly so.

Fathers of the Umma of Islam, whether in Tehran and Qom or in Riad and Mecca, Fathers of Israel in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Fathers of Holy Mother Russia in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Fathers of the ancient Sudanese nation, do you not hear?? NO!? STOP!? Not the children!? Not their mothers!? Not the women and girls!? Not the families!? Not the?? women, young and old, in the trenches defending freedom, defending their country and their neighborhoods!? Not the doctors and nurses, trying to heal the war-wounded with their bare hands, without light, without water!? NO!? STOP!? NO MORE!? Isaac survived.? Ishmael survived.? Brothers and fathers of brother nations they were, and those nations can and must survive together.?

This Father’s Day, this Eid-al-Adha, let God be glorified in your love toward the infants, the little children, the girls and boys, the youth and promise of tomorrow’s joy, the promise of peace.? Let the Almighty be glorified in these, in life and not death, and may the nations stop now what God stopped long ago.?

God bless you this sunset and fill you with hope for a new sunrise of humanity.? Xodofas!? ??

?Guy Christopher Carter, 13.vi.2024