Kurban Bayram

While we are celebrating the Christmas holiday this year, Muslims around the world will be celebrating Kurban (also spelled Q'urban). This four-day celebration is a time when they remember Abraham's sacrifices, as well as a time when they, out of obedience to the Koran (Q'uran), will offer sacrifices of their own. They gather with family, eating sweets, visiting neighbors, and giving charity to the poor.

Just down the road from our apartment stands this Kurban sheep shop. From what we can tell (in the five months we've lived here), he runs his shop year-round... letting his stock run low in normal times, but adding on additional tents to house extra sheep for the holidays. In the days before Kurban bayram (which means "holiday") started, the lines were starting to get long outside his shop as families began to come to try to get the best sheep by arriving early.

As I (Jess) spoke with my language helper this week about what this celebration means to her and her family, she communicated that it is a time of obeying what Muhammad taught, and of being holy and pleasing God. We talked about the Old Testament idea of sacrifice as being an atonement for sin, but this is not the way that she has been taught to understand this Muslim festival. For her, there is no meaning to the sacrifice that will be offered for her family... rather, it is a simple matter of obedience.
This is what the inside of the Kurban sheep shop looks like. Each family will celebrate for four days, first coming to a shop like this to choose a lamb (for one family) or cow (which can be for up to seven families) to be sacrificed. Then they will take their animal (usually a sheep) to an Imam (Muslim mosque leader) or holy man to be blessed and killed, and then they will spend the rest of the holiday eating all of the meat, being sure to give the skins (the most valuable part of the animal) for charity.