Bismillah Hir Rahman Nir Rahim. Blessed Eid to all who observe. // Today (here) Muslims celebrate Eid al-Adha, a holiday in memory of Ibrahim’s (Abraham) readiness to sacrifice his son Ismail (Ishmael) to Allah (God). There isn’t the same popular mudik/migration in most of Indonesia around Eid al-Adha as there is around Eid al-Fitr. Many people go to the mosque and pray, and some who can afford it purchase a (non-human) animal to kill, or to have killed, as a ritual of sacrifice.
I have complicated thoughts and feelings regarding ritual (non-human) animal sacrifice, and I will not personally participate in it. (It’s optional, for a Muslim, so I don’t break any rules there.) But the story of Ibrahim, and especially his readiness to sacrifice, as well as the thing, (the child), and the promised lineage, (the historical, embodied, coming-to-be and passing-away, of the future), that he is ready to sacrifice, I find that to be an extraordinary lightpost. (Relating to what I wrote yesterday, about Īśvarapraṇidhāna.)
Ibrahim is brave, he does not fit with his community, (who worship idols), and he fights to establish his own relationship with the divine. He does not hide. He listens to dreams. He barely hesitates. His devotion can be interpreted, (or rather, felt), as cruel unresponsiveness to his human relationships and blindness to his own limitations. We are rightly terrified.
(Of Ibrahim, and his daemonic readiness.)
So Allah provides Ibrahim with a substitute, the ram. This serves a double purpose, both to reward his readiness, and to contain the terrifying nature of it. Ibrahim, “in the end”, does not need to kill his child, and all of humanity can breathe a sigh of relief. (Although later, he will send him, and his mother, into the desert. It seems a never-ending trial.) In Islamic tradition, the memory of it (Ibrahim’s readiness) has been further contained by this day, every year, Eid al-Adha.
As I understand it, this is something of the purpose of religion. To contain the terrifying (and otherwise problematic) in human being, to build laws and customs around it, to codify prayer in relation to it, thereby to tame it, and to make possible the establishment of political communities of trust and moderate prosperity. Not to forget the terrible readiness of Ibrahim, but somehow to live beside it, as we play out our animal lives, on earth.
By containing Ibrahim’s terrible readiness inside the symbolic act of killing the ram, the tradition builds a barrier around this moment in Ibrahim’s heart. It is a veil through which one may never see, a hijab in the relationship between finite and infinite. My interpretation of scripture is that this barrier, while accepted gladly by the community, is ultimately provisional. The entire thing that differentiates Ibrahim from the idolators is his stubborn insistence on direct relationship with Allah. This makes him receptive to infinite demand. Indeed, what makes the sacrifice holy, and not idolatrous, is the awareness that, at any moment, the ram might not be enough. No. The ram is already nowhere near enough.
(And the veil is already lifted.)
Ibrahim’s heart is the human heart. And his readiness is what is demanded of human beings, who bridge an otherwise inconceivable gap, between creature and creator. An animal responsible both to finite and infinite. The very nature of our in-between nature is terrible. Terror at Ibrahim is terror at what we ourselves are called upon to do, every day of our human lives.
I myself love the story of Ibrahim, but I have never been supplied with a ram. (Or a human child.) I have been given certain gifts in my life. I work to pay back my finite debts, and I struggle to share whatever I have, that is good or might be helpful, with family, and friends, and community. But not once has it seemed to me that this speaks to the story of Ibrahim’s readiness. In view of which, I find myself quite poor. Poorly supplied with sacrificial substitutes for myself. For myself, and the whole extent of my meaning, in this historical (embodied, coming-to-be and passing-away) world. I am not a patriarch. I am not a king. I myself am all that I have. Myself, and whatever work I can do. Whatever (broken, imperfect) things I can make, things that say “me”, that I might put into a fire.
(To show that none of “me” belongs to me. Is to say that I am… something else.)
It is a personal practice. To have spent one’s life preparing, not really knowing what for, not yet understanding that preparing has always been the work itself. Not having any idea it would lead to where one is now, doing work that one still does not fully comprehend. It has sometimes resembled madness. (And still does.) When it doesn’t resemble hubris. (Which it does fairly often, I guess.) One can neither recommend it nor require it of others (unless one is feeling very grouchy that day, which, patriarchs also had grouchy days). In fact, the lesson (for Ibrahim, for others) might be one of compromise, if not compassion. To let people have their sacrificial ram, for as long as they find themselves supplied.
I myself have never been supplied with a ram. But I have, in my life, been given (metaphorical, and also, metaphorical) cats. For better or worse, a steady supply. (Our boy cat is even named Ismail, in another coincidence, strange even for here.) I have also been given certain other gifts. One of which is the ability to step back and see that this story shows two things: the veil (the sacrificial ram), and the thing behind the veil (the sacrificial child). What it shows is different from what it seems to recommend. So that the story itself is also a veil, and the tradition of sacrifice, another veil. That there is a multi-layered (un)veiling of (un)veiling going on, related to self and sacrifice, responsibility and creation, human demands and human limitations. That the sacrifice, as a container, has a fascinating shape, and one takes care not to miss the point.
(So, “in the end”. I click “publish post”. And draw a veil closed, behind me.)