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There’s hardly any person at least slightly familiar with either Torah, the Bible or the Qur’an, who wouldn’t know the story of Abraham and his eagerness to fully rely on God and sacrifice his long-awaited and beloved son, and not less amazing eagerness of the boy himself to face his doom. And, of course, of a wonderful rescue of the young man after the father and the son have proved their readiness to follow the God’s prescriptions. This feast not only teaches us to rely on God in everything, but also to be attentive and merciful for those nearby. To extend a helping hand to people who found themselves in hard life situation.

It times like this, many people have thrown off their disguise and showed their true preferences — be it devotion to the Lord’s will in order to face Him on the Day of Judgement with conscience as pure as possible, or stick to the here-and-now profit, ignore somebody’s grief, or, moreover, betray people relying on that person.

Necessity to repulse the attack from abroad for the second year in a row became a huge challenge for our country. And this is a common problem. It appeals not only to the people of annexed Crimea or ruined Donbass; it appeals not only to soldiers defending Ukraine; not only to those who couldn’t greet their relatives and close ones returning from the frontline, but had to meet their coffins instead — it appeals to everybody. And if the Lord tries those people with the loss of their close ones, their property, their safety and the slightest confidence in future, He at the same time tries us,— are we eager to live the values we declare? Are we willing to stand for those values, struggle for them, sacrifice our property and our comfort?

No need to wait until the war comes to our house directly, because if we act as nothing happened and do nothing, it will. Don’t pretend that the death notification received by your neighbours is only their loss, because it was their son, husband, brother or father who sacrificed his life to protect us all.

Don’t paint all the forced resettled with the same brush for your own convenience, and leave them dealing with their problems alone. Yes, there are people who left their homes on expensive cars with their property with them — most of the refugees, however, had to leave everything behind and run for their lives.

This year, we decided to give the meat of the sacrificial animals for the forcefully resettled people from Crimea and Donbass again, in addition to those poor local people we help regularly.

We, however, must not limit our care and mercy for others to some special days of the year, as we ourselves hope that the Lord will send us His blessings and His mercy every second of our lives. Let’s make good deeds everyday, as much as we can. If everyone is honest in that, to oneself first of all,  — only in that case we can overcome both external and internal problems of our country and make a better, fairer, happier and wealthier society.

Happy Eid al-Adha, dear fellow Muslims, and God help us all save our pure spirits and our compassions to those around!