Ishmaelite lessons on the sacrifice

1. Beyond the limits of a narrow debate about worship, qurban (sacrifice) should be rethought as one of the central concepts of human existence, historical conflicts, and modern politics. As the history of sacrifice, its contexts, and the transformations it has undergone are traced, it becomes clear that the subject in fact opens onto other, far deeper questions: What does a human being live for? What does he give up for? Which costs are legitimate, and which are tyranny? Whose death is mourned, and whose death is passed over in silence? Which submission liberates, and which obedience enslaves? For this reason sacrifice confronts us not merely as a religious concept but as one of the fundamental translations of the human condition.

2. In the history of sacrifice, for instance, the image of Ishmael's Smile emerges as both the symbol and the critical measure of all these debates. Because the smile shows that the excluded one is still alive. Throughout history many forms of sovereignty have not been content with merely controlling bodies; they have also wanted to control joy, hope, and dignity. The suffering of the oppressed is acquiesced in; but the smile of the oppressed is not tolerated. That is why Ishmael's smile is a silent but shattering objection directed at regimes of chosenness, racist narratives of legitimacy, and monopolies of property. That smile is the return of what was planned to be erased from history.

3. Sacrifice is a level of existence. The human being is a being who makes choices; every choice is at the same time the sacrifice of other possibilities. In this respect sacrifice is inherent in the structure of human action. One who turns toward a truth leaves a comfort. One who defends a justice gives up other interests. One who chooses a love leaves other centers. Ritual sacrifice is the visible and concentrated form of this broader truth. Hence sacrifice is not a ceremony added on from outside life; it is the stage that reveals the meaning of life.

4. Modern individualism often sees submission as weakness. Yet a person who does not submit to the truth very often submits to his ego, to fashion, to power, or to fear. Ishmael's attitude is not unconscious yielding; it is the highest form of trust. Here love emerges as the power that removes contradictions. Because where there is love, sacrifice is not tyranny, and certainly not foolishness; it acquires meaning. The relationship between intention and form also becomes clear here: The same act can be violence in one hand and worship in another. What determines sacrifice is not only its outer form but the truth toward which it is directed.

5. While modern life divides people into classes, identities, specializations, and loneliness, hajj and sacrifice suspend this fragmentation, if only temporarily. Ihram covers over differences of status. Arafat brings people together in the same mortality. Mina and Aqaba produce a shared consciousness of the test. The shared meat establishes between rich and poor a closeness that is not only economic but moral. Thus the sociological meaning and function of sacrifice becomes visible: To bring people closer to one another. "Qurbiyyat," the original meaning of the word, is drawing near not only to God but also of human beings to one another. It may sound strange, but a person's feeling compassion toward other created beings, toward the sacrificed animal as well, is his drawing near to it. How distant, how alien, how much of an object is the source of the meat that comes to our table as food every day, is it not? By reminding us that the source of this meat is something created by a living God, sacrifice produces a sense of debt and closeness toward living things.

6. Throughout history, powers have used sometimes temples, sometimes wars, sometimes law to produce their own legitimacy. But although the methods change, the logic has often remained the same: To deem some lives worthy of protection and others expendable. Although the modern world presents itself as having "overcome human sacrifice," mass wars, colonialism, economic impoverishment, regimes of forced migration, and policies of selective compassion show the opposite. Sacrifice has become secularized, invisible, bureaucratized. It now takes place not at the altar but at the border gate; not in the temple but in media silence; not by the knife but by the embargo. Of course here the sacrifice takes place as a victim, as a victim who is not sanctified, as one oppressed.

7. Since the test of sacrifice in fact began through a dream, one side of it has always been about interpretation. Even today it is still a matter of debate whether Abraham's dream was interpreted correctly. For that reason Abraham's dream raises the relationship between revelation and human understanding. Religious texts and experiences are not merely transmitted; they are interpreted. That is why in every age readings oscillating between literalism and excessive symbolism have emerged. Sacrifice must be surrendered neither to crude materiality nor to empty allegory. The truth of sacrifice lies both in the act and in the meaning. The symbolic depth of an act of worship does not eliminate its historical and bodily reality. Likewise, its physical performance does not reduce it to a thoughtless mechanism.

8. Gaza appears before us as the most burning Aqaba or Moriah of our age in the matter of sacrifice. There, what is visible is not only a war but the limit of the modern conscience, a road on which human conscience, action, and choices are tested in all their dimensions. The abyss between the discourse of universal law and actual silence is revealed in Gaza in its barest form. Bombed hospitals, starved children, normalized practices of collective punishment show that the contemporary world can still deem some lives worthless. But Gaza also teaches another truth: Those who are meant to be sacrificed do not always remain silent. Resistance is sometimes born in the poorest hand, in the most besieged city, at the most impossible moment. For this reason Gaza is not only a tragedy; it is a rupture against the myth of invincibility of modern sovereignty. And this rupture does not simply emerge as a bill, a revenge, or an anger placed before humanity after the Jewish Holocaust. On the contrary, from there, in the smiles, the resistance, the stance, and the discourse of the Ismail Haniyehs, Yahya Sinwar, Abu Ubaida, Muhammad Deif, a glad tiding of salvation emerges for humanity. The people of Gaza do not weep as victims, nor do they prostrate themselves at anyone's feet for the sake of their temporary lives. Whatever Allah has commanded, that is it. They display the Ishmaelite stance that must be displayed to win eternal life. In doing so, in sacrificing themselves, they also show people the path of salvation.

9. Without the concept of sacrifice we cannot fully understand religious experience, politics, or human psychology. Because human life must constantly establish hierarchies of values. Deciding which value will prevail over another always involves a kind of sacrifice. The problem is not the existence of sacrifice, but its direction. What is the human being sacrificing, and for the sake of what? When a child is sacrificed for the sake of the myth of security, this is tyranny. When an ego's arrogance is abandoned for the sake of truth, this is purification. When a fortune is shared with the poor, this is mercy. When a people is spent for the sake of colonial interests, this is modern barbarism.

Ishmael's Smile makes this distinction visible. Because that smile is the refusal, by the one who is meant to be sacrificed, of the sacrificial role. It means "I am not merely a supporting character in your story." This is the Palestinian's insistence on existing. This is the dignity of the poor. This is the self-expression of those subjected to racism. It is the sign of being able to remain human despite injustice. That is why Ishmael is reread not as a passive victim but as a theo-political subject.

10. Islam's understanding of sacrifice is only the continuation of existing traditions, their rectification and restoration. Against conceptions of a bloodthirsty god, the logic of bribery, ideologies of chosen lineage, and economies of atonement, Islam places sacrifice back on the axis of tawhid. Allah needs neither meat nor blood; it is the human being who is in need. Sacrifice does not feed God; it awakens the human being. In this respect sacrifice is a powerful education reminding the human being that he is not an owner but a trustee.

In the modern age this reminder is needed more than ever. Because our age confuses having with being. The human being thinks he grows as he accumulates; yet very often he becomes the captive of what he owns. Sacrifice teaches the opposite: A human being sometimes multiplies by giving, is purified by sharing, and becomes free by renouncing. For this reason sacrifice is not only a ritual of the past but the ethics of the future.

11. Every human being has an Aqaba: The threshold where fears, whisperings, and interests are stoned. Every human being has a Mina: The field where renunciation is taught. Every human being has a Hagar: The forgotten but central truth. Every human being has an Ishmael: The side that is meant to be silenced but continues to smile. And every human being has an Abraham question: The question of how to position what he loves for the sake of truth.

Because the ultimate meaning of sacrifice emerges not only in an obligation performed on feast days but in the decision of which world's side a human being stands on every day. The order of tyranny or the price of justice? The arrogant narrative of property or the consciousness of trusteeship? Silent comfort or risky truth?

Ishmael's smile continues to echo amid all these questions. That smile reminds us of this: History is not only a text written by the powerful. Sometimes the smile of an excluded child is more enduring than the archives of empires.

Note: Developed from the conclusion section of our book titled Ishmael's Smile (Beyan Publications, 2026).