Eidul Azha: fellow feeling revival

Soon after sighting the Eid moon, citizens exchange messages of love, hope, peace and brotherhood verbally and via e-mail and cellular phones. What binds them together, whether they speak Urdu, Sindhi, Balochi, Punjabi or Pushto, is nothing but Islam which promotes tolerance and human rights irrespective of caste, creed and colour.
Islam teaches us there is only one God who addressed the problem of ‘roti’ (bread) for mankind prior to the birth of Adam and Eve. The sacrifice of animals in the name of God on Eidul Azha and distribution of meat among the poor and the needy by people who have fair means of income provides spiritual satisfaction to them.
The feast promotes fellow feeling which is the will of God. In the current class system many questions arise: for instance, does fellow feeling exist today in the same spirit as it was reborn during the struggle for Pakistan? What about the impact of surging petrol, energy and food prices on human relationship? Isn’t the rich-poor gap widening alarmingly? How much painful is the feeling of being deprived of Eid pleasures because of unjust distribution of wealth Nature has provided to Pakistan.
Many city elders say: “Leave the poor and the lower aside, even middle class people are not in a position to buy sacrificial animals whose prices have gone up about 100 per cent; only the millionaire can afford ‘qurbani’ (slaughter) of five to seven animals -- cows, ‘goats and camels -- at sky-high prices.
Worth recalling is one of Eid messages of the founder of Pakistan, which says that Islam emphasises the social as well as economic side of things. Every day the rich and the poor, the great and the small, living in a locality, are brought five times in a day in the mosque in terms of perfect equality of mankind, and thereby the foundation of a healthy social relationship is established through prayers.
But, say the city elders, all that is vanishing; we’ve not effected any meaningful change in the political and economic system we inherited from the foreign rule at the time of independence; we spend billions on general elections, but very little on health and education of common people and children who realise on Eid days how much deprived they are.
By the way last year also, it wasn’t easy to buy an animal and find an experienced butcher in the midst of soaring prices of kitchen items, increase in fuel and electricity tariff, and raise in transport charges and wagon fare.
The rich and the God-fearing class, if any, need to revive the spirit of sacrifice and fellow feeling.
zasarwar@hotmail.com