Eid Mubarak and 9/11

When you read these lines, 1.4 billion Muslims around the world, including the ones on Duke’s campus, will be celebrating one of the two most important religious festivals in the Islamic calendar: Eid Al-Fitr. This festival marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan and is always a very big deal in all Muslim societies regardless of their ethnic, racial or sectarian backgrounds. Hundreds of millions of people start their Eid day by rushing to big squares or giant mosques to perform their Eid prayers, followed by exchanging peace greetings and a lot of hugging in a joyful manner. The greeting of the day is “Eid Mubarak!” It literally means “Happy/Blessed Eid!” This is a very helpful Muslim icebreaker to know today. Please feel free to try it with your Muslim friends and colleagues on campus.

The individual and collective joy of Eid is worth witnessing, especially in Muslim-majority societies. Every Muslim society developed its own unique and beautiful way of celebrating Eid Al-Fitr, but checking every member of the extended family’s well-being, visiting elders and honoring them and spoiling the children to the fullest extent possible with tons of gifts, candies and allowances are very common Eid rituals across the board.

Muslims celebrate their spiritual, mental, emotional and social achievements of the month of Ramadan during this festival. Practicing Muslims take on various physical and spiritual disciplines to force themselves to slow down and reflect on their lives in this month-long devotion effort. Through these deep intentional reflections, self-evaluations and self-auditing, Muslims are expected to achieve reconciliation in three main areas: reconciling their relationship with God, with themselves and finally with every one else in their lives. As they reflect on their past, they identify their pluses and minuses in all these relationships. They are invited to offer heartfelt thanks for the pluses and seek forgiveness and guidance for the minuses. They are asked to develop strategies and become more determined not to repeat past mistakes as they move forward in their lives.

This is a providential and timely internal preparation for all of us here in the U.S., as we are about to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11 in less than two weeks. We are much in need of the spirit of self-evaluation and reconciliation as we remember this heinous and tragic terrorist attack, which changed our nation in many different ways. As we honor the memory of the innocent victims of these despicable attacks through panels, conferences, prayer services and more, I hope we will not waste too much time dwelling on asking each other “What happened?” or “Who did it?” or “Why did it happen?” We have been there and done that. Maybe we did it way more than we needed to.

I hope we will spend a lot more time asking and reflecting on how we, as an American society and government, have changed in response to 9/11 and post-9/11 realities. It is time to look in the mirror, individually and collectively, and ask: Who have we become? How did we perform in these last 10 years? What kind of a generation did we raise in the post 9/11 realities? And more, try to identify our pluses (of which there are certainly many) and minuses (of which there are undeniably many more) as we plan to move ahead. What did we reveal about ourselves when anger and frustration took over? It is time to stop pointing fingers at others and prepare our own report cards through honest and candid self-evaluations and self-auditing of the last 10 years as we go approach this 10th anniversary.

More importantly, I hope the events around the 10th anniversary of 9/11 will not be another push for chauvinism and exclusive patriotism in American society, both of which are already on the rise. The blessed memories of the victims of 9/11 should not be abused to score cheap political points or misused to distract Americans from discussing the real issues that we face 10 years after these barbaric acts took place. Reveling in this kind of dialogue would only make the evil forces behind 9/11 happier and confirm their success. We are better than that and we certainly can do better than that.

Our ability to harvest as much common sense, wisdom and compassion as possible through these honest reflections will determine where we will be, as a nation, in the next decade or so. Our increased self-awareness through the candid self-auditing of the last 10 years will make us more determined to take the required steps in the right direction.

Eid Mubarak, my Blue Devil friends. May the spirit of Eid enable us to prepare ourselves to this promisingly difficult fall semester. Eid Mubarak!