Whom does sacrifice bring closer to what, and whom does it distance from what?

Sacrifice (kurban) is an act of worship, a ritual, a cultural tradition that has existed everywhere and at all times throughout history. But sociologists and anthropologists who look at the diversity of its historical and social manifestations are very inclined to conclude that people adopted sacrifice by seeing it from one another and imitating it. According to this inclination, the continuity of sacrifice has to do with its functionality.

Just like the institution of religion in general. Even if in many places it rests on superstitions, and even if it is highly varied, religion resists time and change through the function it is seen to perform as an ideology that provides social solidarity. We can assume that sacrifice, too, confronts us everywhere with some social or psychological function of compensation, solidarity or substitution that it somehow fulfills.

The viewpoint we are conveying in summary from Terry Eagleton explains that Marxism's having neglected sacrifice as much as it neglected religion should be regarded as a serious deficiency in it. Eagleton traces sacrifice from the Greek philosophers to the Enlightenment and modern philosophers, from Judaism and Christianity to Hindu and Buddhist philosophies and practices, and tries to analyze the meanings it has reflected in minds. Among these meanings there are also diametrically opposed approaches and functions. Even if sacrifice exists everywhere, it has not been understood in the same way or practiced in the same way everywhere.

Nothing could be more natural, in fact. Just as a general defense of religion cannot be made, a general defense of sacrifice cannot be made either, presumably. The concept of sacrifice itself is already a choice. To approach one thing is to move away from an infinite number of things. For every choice we make in our social life, while bringing us closer to the thing we choose, comes at the price of distancing us from an infinite number of other things. Islam's understanding of sacrifice is drawing near to God through the choices we make, and therefore to the extent that we draw near to God, in the matters in which we draw near, it is also moving away from other objects, ideals, aims, friendships, loves, and servitudes.

Islam has not been understood in the same way by people in every period since Prophet Adam when it was offered to them, and the proposals of Islam have not been accepted in the same way by everyone, so are we to expect that sacrifice would be understood in the same way by everyone throughout history?

According to the information Islam gives, the first experience of sacrifice in human history was that of the two children of Prophet Adam, two people in the same family, receiving the same information and the same education, who diverged from each other in their conduct of sacrifice at the very source of knowledge. One of them calculated openly against God and, instead of seeing the act of sacrifice as an occasion of drawing near with love, saw it as a duty to be gotten over somehow, a debt to be paid, and offered his most worthless possessions. The other, with great faith, as a believer devoted in love to the one he believed in, not to get it over with, but as a way of approaching a beloved and of expressing his love and devotion sincerely, offered his most valuable possession as a sacrifice.

The difference between approaching with love and being compelled, out of fear and necessity, to do something inevitably shows itself in the practices of sacrifice as well. One dimension of the great trial that Abraham went through had to do with being caught between two loves. There was a lesson in sacrifice aimed at establishing the balance between "other loves beside the love of God" and "loving for God's sake."

Jacob, who was tested with his love for Joseph, had in fact faced this lesson as well. The moment he understood that he had allotted to Joseph a place beyond what he should have allotted him before God, his own son was given to him again as a ransom. According to the accounts, Zulaykha encountered the same test too. The moment she saw not Joseph but the One who created the beauty in him and directed her love toward Him, and Joseph became for her only a means (sacrifice) for drawing near to God, she was able to be united with him. What we give up, what we renounce for God's sake, truly becomes ours, but when they become ours, we also learn that, before the true beauty of God, they are things not worth dwelling on.

In the case of Abel and Cain, the difference in approach and understanding that was experienced at the very source of the ritual of sacrifice should not be thought too much when, over time, it diversified into far more different understandings among all people. Among the all-manner-of-sacrifice understandings whose inventory Eagleton lays out among philosophers, theologians and different religions and cultures, there is not a single one that is Islam's understanding of sacrifice. Yet Islam's understanding of sacrifice cannot be regarded as a bribe given to the heavens, nor a bargain, nor an atonement, nor a deception, nor appeasing God (God forbid), nor an investment in immortality, nor the reinforcement of a patriarchal power, nor a substitute that tries to avert God's wrath from us.

In essence, as in many matters, in the matter of sacrifice too, Islam, while rectifying in accordance with the belief in tawhid the knowledge and understandings that had spread and diversified enormously in history, puts forth a magnificent understanding that integrates the relationship of God, human being and existence in a very consistent way.

As Eagleton also points out, the reactions that, in response to this kind of distorted understanding of sacrifice, tend toward sacrificing sacrifice itself are in fact also a part of the history of sacrifice. With Yahweh's command, "for I desire loyalty, not sacrifice; I desire that you know me more than burnt offerings," Eagleton draws attention to an attitude against the ritual of sacrifice in the history of both Judaism and Christianity (p. 37).

In fact, this attitude has also been expressed in the Holy Qur'an in the verse "Neither their flesh nor their blood reaches God at all. But what reaches Him from you is piety" (Hajj, 37). But this is a warning given precisely in a situation where the meaning of sacrifice has been drowned in formalism, and love, piety and willingness have been lost.

This is a ruling given about the sacrifice of Cain. But this ruling neither invalidated the sacrifice of Abel nor made it unnecessary. A warning against worship losing its meaning, losing its love and affection, does not make that worship unnecessary; it only gives a warning to those who drown love in calculation.

What is often encountered concerning sacrifice is that these rulings given about bad approaches to sacrifice are again turned by the Cains, cleverly, into an opportunity for making sacrifice unnecessary. This is the case not only with sacrifice but with many other virtuous acts as well. Yet the rule in this matter is that each act of worship, each action, each drawing near has its own separate place and its own necessity within itself. Almsgiving does not take the place of sacrifice, nor prayer that of fasting, nor a rooster or a hen that of a ram.

In the end, the phenomenology of sacrifice, which we see diversified enormously throughout history, has been determined largely by the approach, meaning and intention toward it. And that meaning has been rectified by the Qur'an against all its previous and subsequent distortions.