"This shows why you cannot be Abraham"

The Prophet Abraham was commanded to sacrifice his "only" son, as he understood from the dreams he saw one after another. Undoubtedly it is a difficult trial. Difficult is hardly the word; it is the most difficult trial a human being in the world can face. At first he does not want to believe the dream he saw. How could God, who says do not kill people, want an innocent child to be sacrificed? If the life asked for were his own, he could give it gladly, but the life in question is that of his only child, whom he loved more than his own life, whom he was able to have toward the age of a hundred, and whom he had awaited with longing until that age, and moreover it is harder to be able to decide on another's life.

Again, more importantly, how could God want to kill his own child, so clearly contrary to the rule He Himself set, "the rule of not killing people"? Could this be true? For the rule-maker to make an exception to the rule he made is a right belonging to his sovereignty, but the God of whom he was the Friend was not such a deity. By this logical inference alone it was possible to dismiss the event as an empty dream. But his dreams were not of a kind to be dismissed.

Upon the dreams he saw one after another, Abraham, in complete submission to God, showed that he would not hesitate to sacrifice to God even the being he loved most. If he is caught between his own child and God, if the two have diverged in direction, he will move away from the child in order to draw near to God. Just as he moved away from everything else in order to draw near to God. Does life not constantly bring its believing servant to the threshold of this choice and leave him there? We go on living the experience of faith without sacrificing the many worldly things with which we fill our lives at the price of moving away from God, of removing God from life.

Abraham (peace be upon him) reminds us every year that a sacrifice is missing from our lives. Ishmael, the "only son" of Abraham who is asked to be sacrificed, shows the same submission. To his father, who shares his dream with him, he says he would never hesitate to give his life, and advises him not to hesitate to do what has been commanded. Both of their magnificent submission to God is engraved in the genes of humanity as a state that carves the depth of meaning of the word Islam. But this submission is never exempt or protected from the assaults and attacks of Satan. The two set out on the road for the sacrifice. They will pass through the place called Aqaba...

THE QUESTIONS THAT COME WITH THE SACRIFICE: EVERY SACRIFICE PASSES THROUGH AQABA!

That journey is lived in its own right as a model of all of humanity's journeys of trial on earth. Satan approaches from the right and the left, from front and behind, from known and unknown points, and whispers. He tries to spoil the state of submission, to loosen it, to make him give up. With the whisperings he whispers, he provokes Abraham to doubt his decision. Often he tries to dissuade by telling the truth. With perfectly correct information, such as that what he saw is, after all, a dream, that God cannot want anything other than people to be killed, least of all want him to take the life of his own child, and how heavy a sin it could be to take the life of a young boy, he tries to persuade Abraham to resort to an indifferent path toward the command he has received.

What he says is in fact normally true, but in this particular event they are truths that must be set aside for Abraham's very special trial. The one who set the rule is God, and God now wants this. The servant cannot have any choice against what He wants.

The road of Aqaba is a harsh road through which everyone who wants to experience sacrifice must pass. Today too we pass through this road in every choice of ours, and as we pass through this road we are exposed to the whisperings of Satan and of satans. With these whisperings we get stuck on the meat of the sacrifice. When we have fully grasped that, in the end, it is not its meat but piety that will reach God, Satan approaches from another side and tries to persuade us that, in that case, slaughtering a sacrifice is not necessary.

Naturally many people fall under the influence of this whispering. Since God Himself says in the Holy Qur'an that it is not the meat of sacrifices but piety itself that reaches Him, slaughtering a sacrifice is in fact unnecessary. The person who falls for this seduction has already also sunk into the error of seeing himself as perfect in piety. His heart is quite pure, and there is in fact no one better than him.

Since the aim is to make meat pass through the throats of the poor, buying meat from the butcher and distributing it accomplishes the same thing. Not a bad argument for giving up the sacrifice. Is there not someone who was persuaded by this and gave it up? And if the aim is to help the poor, sacrificeless, bloodless, hygienic aid can also be given. Give the poor man his food and clothing, see his urgent need, bind his wound, there, that is your sacrifice. On the road of Aqaba, satan(s) have various tactics for dissuading from the sacrifice. Sometimes he whispers to have a rooster slaughtered instead of the sacrifice, sometimes he makes one think that giving the money to other charitable works instead of the sacrifice accomplishes the same thing, and dissuades.

In the end, when the place of sacrifice is reached with determination, all of Satan's whisperings have dispersed, and the choice made yields its fruit with all its blessing.

God completes the trial successfully by Himself giving the human being the ransom for the great choice he has made. Yes, that God Himself paid the ransom in place of Ishmael is a truth mentioned at the end of the story in the Holy Qur'an. The truth is that Ishmael belongs neither to Abraham nor even to Ishmael himself. Moreover, the ram slaughtered in his place also belongs to God, and no one can surpass the mercy of God who wanted it slaughtered. That is why the one who pays Ishmael's ransom with the ram is not Abraham but God, and Abraham understands this very well. By the time the ransom comes, he has already sacrificed Ishmael.

Abraham has no preparation or confidence that this ransom would come in the end anyway. That is, there is no (God forbid) collusion between him and God. Had it been so, Abraham's story would have been something very absurd, ordinary and meaningless. Yet in this event Abraham knew God, and himself, and saw Ishmael most clearly through the ransom that God paid in his place.

Let us conclude with the answer that the Sudanese social scientist Abdelwahab El-Affendi gave to a Marxist friend, whose mind was shaped by modern beliefs, who said that "if God came to him and commanded him to kill his son, he would never do it": "this shows why you are not Abraham." (A. El-Affendi, Kendi Hareketimi İncelemek: Kinizmsiz bir Sosyal Bilim, Postmodernizm ve İslam, Küreselleşme ve Oryantalizm, (ed. Yasin Aktay, Abdullah Topçuoğlu, İstanbul: Vadi Yayınları, 3rd Edition, 2017, p. 362).

May your Eid al-Adha be blessed, may it bring you closer to the Truth.