Are we losing the spirit of Eid ul Adha?
by Naeem Mayet When I was growing up, back in a little suburb of no more then 1000 Muslim families, most of our family friends and relatives used to take a 10 or 20km drive out to the nearby farm areas and slaughter our sheep. We used to have a braai (b.b.q) for lunch with freshly slaughtered sheep. A hilarious incident involved my elder brother stepping into a little hole filled with blood, wearing his brand new sneakers! We did warn him not to wear new clothes to the farm as we all rough it out a bit. As the years passed, we sometimes cut at neighbour’s houses, at our house, there was no need to visit farms anymore. But then the whole ’send your qurbani abroad’ thing started. Suddenly families decided – We don’t need this mess, the overpriced sheep, the messed up garden, worry to have the meat cut up and refrigerated – So they bought their sheep from local charities at a fraction of the price and have their sheep cut in Malawi, Mozambique, India and other poor countries. Now in my 20
