Eid Al Adha is celebrated by Muslims around the world today. The number of Muslims in the United States is estimated in the millions, many quiet about their faith for fear of repercussions and misunderstanding. Learning about the truth claims of this faith is an important piece to building bridges. Just as Christians do not want to be stereotyped, so it is with Muslims. Stereotyping puts people into a sealed box, disallowing real conversation and putting up a barrier to grace and understanding.

Our family spent many years living in the Muslim world and as I think about this celebration for Muslims, I am taken back to our years in Cairo where we learned valuable lessons on community and faith, one time through the love of a sheep.

The sheep had made it’s home in the bottom of our stairwell. With pleading brown eyes and a plaintive “BAA” it made its way into the hearts of our kids, an instant love affair. With the absence of a pet of their own, they were vulnerable to this beast, seemingly brought by God to their stairwell.

The trouble is, the sheep had an ordained purpose. It would serve as the sacrificial sheep for Eid Al Adha, Feast of Sacrifice, and the most important religious feast of the year for Muslims. Eid Al Adha is a big deal. The Eid celebration concludes the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca and one of the five pillars of Islam. New clothes, days off from work and school, visiting, and a feast were all part of the celebration.

We were living in Cairo, Egypt and our small walk-up apartment was in the middle of a regular neighborhood. Our friends and neighbors were beginning the preparations for the feast which would be in a couple of weeks. The preparation included the purchase and fattening of a sheep, goat, camel or cow, depending on the availability of any or all of those animals. We were guests in the country of Egypt, brought there for a job at the American University in Cairo. We had fallen in love with the people and city of Cairo. It was big, it was crazy, it was loud, it was dirty, it was chaotic and in a few short months it had become home. We were slowly building friendships with both expatriates from all over the world as well as Egyptians. Our children were magnets for friendship and had helped us navigate our new world simply by their wide-eyed acceptance of all of life.

The sheep was posing a different sort of problem. I knew that this was not a pet. The sheep was blissfully being fattened, unaware of the imminent slaughter as our neighbors counted down the days to the celebration. Daily leftovers from the sheep’s diet could be seen in the stairwell and we had to dodge bits of vegetables every time we went up or down the stairs. And then the day came.

As we walked out of our apartment, the silence was evidence that the sheep was no more. “Where’s our sheep? What happened to the sheep? Will it come back” The questions came rapidly through the mouths of confused kindergarten and pre-schoolers. I took a deep breath. I wanted to lie. But we were living in this country for a purpose, we didn’t want to live in a bubble of western thought and belief, we wanted to build friendships and with the friendships, increase understanding.

I began to explain to my children that the sheep had been killed. That it was symbolic of sacrifice for our Muslim friends and that on this, their feast day, they would eat the sheep and invite us to eat with them. As is often the case with children, when allowed to hear the truth, they accepted the reality. The neighbors were important to all of us. We were living in neighborhood and community, and that meant eating a “pet” sheep for an Eid celebration.  I needn't have worried. There was an acceptance, indicative of kids who already knew the world was bigger then their particular safety zone, and after a few sniffles we were ready to go out and wish people an "<em>Eid Mubarak</em>"

I often think about those years and my children’s trusting acceptance of the fate of the sheep, understanding that our neighbors and friends were of far more value than the sheep that had made its way into our stairwell and our hearts. It seemed like a little thing at the time, but I don't think it was. It was part of the daily commitment to seeing people as more important than ideas, or arguments, or sheep, and in doing so slowly pulling out a nail from the coffin of misunderstanding.

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