A better Ead-ul-Azha
The Ead break is over and everyone is back to work with tummies filled with mutton and beaf. Surprisingly, the part of Lahore I live in is pretty clean and I didn’t see any remains of the khoon-kharaba in any of the streets. I guess we need to thank the Afghan immigrants settled in the urban capitals who take care of our domestic garbage everyday of the year. They not only deserve a good share of the meat but Eidis, appreciation and love.
Ead-ul-Azha meat distribution
I personally don’t like doing all the khoon-kharaba at homes which results in creating a lot of mess in the city. It can lead to serious health-care problems. I have been advocating doing it at slaughter houses and distributing all the meat to the needy instead of filling in your own deep-freezers or giving it away to not-so-deserving friends and relatives. I trust Edhi and rely on them for this, they manage all the activity from slaughter to distribution once you give them the contribution.
To my surprise, I had to face several objections during my advocacy which I am listing:
- The meat can only be distributed to Muslims or preference should be given to Muslims over non-believers.
- You must keep one-third of the meat yourself, give another one-third to friends/relatives irrespective of the fact that they are deserving or not and the rest to be given away to the poor.
(i) You can give all the meat to the poor. (ii) You can give meat to non-Muslim poor as well. (iii) There is no ruling that you must give preference to Muslims. (iv) It is up to you to decide whether to give meat to non-Muslims or Muslims even when both are equally deserving.
(Source: http://www.khalidzaheer.com/qa/379)
Please have some empathy and pity over the poor. They go door to door asking for meat because it gives them a chance to secure their meals for a few days. They don’t want their self respect ruined. How good it would be if we go door to door to distribute the meat to the poor and stop filling our deep-freezers. If you still have saved meat in your deep freezers, please give it away to those who deserve. We eat it quite frequently throughout the year. Why save it for ourselves ?
If you are still concerned about religiosity in doing so, please consult any reputed religious scholar and he will tell you its perfectly Islamic to distribute whole of the ‘qurbani ka gosht‘ to those who deserve and not to keep it for ourselves or give it to not-so-deserving relatives/friends.
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