December 27, 2006
I never cared to learn what Moslem holidays were about, but having a radio on gives one plenty of information not deliberately sought out – and Moslem callers to WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Kwanza segment enlightened me yesterday on the meaning of the upcoming Moslem holiday of Eid ul-Adha.
Turns out, the holiday celebrates – who would have imagined – Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of his son. Touted as a sign of “loyalty to God,” Abraham’s having a go at the abominable rites of his Moloch-worshiping neighbors who routinely sacrificed their children is turned by the Moslems into the exemplar of proper religious behavior.
Well, at least that sheds the light on some Moslem behavior which we in the West just cannot comprehend. We are puzzled by the psyche of suicide bombers, we are astonished that their parents and friends are as proud of them as if they won a Nobel prize. Well, now we know why – because they see Abraham’s act of “obedience to God” as praiseworthy, rather than damnable. What can be better than sacrificing yourself to God, as Abraham tried to do to his son? Hence, suicide bombers are the pride, the true heroes of the Moslem world.
But Abraham’s relapse into savagery, his attempt to imitate his primitive idol-worshiping neighbors is ought to be treated with pity, and as a lesson to all of us in how easy it is to fall into savage ways. William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” gives us a similar warning through a work of fiction; Nazism, Communism, and Talibanism are tragic real-life examples.
The lesson of Abraham’s attempt at human sacrifice is that we should be wary of such lapses of judgment, and be aware that even the wisest among us are liable to fall. But Moslems learn the exactly opposite lesson from that story – that God is weak and is in need of human help, of human sacrifice. To them, Abraham is a patron saint of suicide bombing. As a result, they got deeply sucked into the idolatrous morass of human-sacrifice culture that is in every respect identical to that of Abraham’s neighbors of old. As Eid ul-Adha demonstrates, Abraham’s attempt to extricate mankind from this morass of religious savagery had – at least in the world of Islam – failed utterly.