IB World Religions 5.2.4. Festivals: Sunni and Shi'ah Celebrations Notes
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5.2.4. Festivals: Sunni and Shi'ah Celebrations
The Islamic calendar
Muslim festivals run on the hijri calendar, twelve lunar months of twenty-nine or thirty days making a year of about 354. Every observance therefore moves back some eleven days a year against the solar calendar and travels through all four seasons.
Dates begin at sunset and are settled by the new moon. A festival may accordingly be kept on different days in neighbouring countries, or even in neighbouring mosques, depending on whether sighting or calculation is followed.
The word for a festival is id, also written eid, meaning a recurring occasion. Muslims greet one another on the day with Id mubarak, blessed festival.
Sunni and Shi'ah Muslims agree on two festivals: Id ul-Fitr at the end of Ramadan and Id ul-Adha during the days of hajj. Both are grounded in the Prophet's practice at Madinah.
Everything beyond those two is contested in some degree. Shi'ah Muslims keep a fuller calendar tied to the family of the Prophet, while Sunni opinion divides over whether later celebrations amount to bid'ah, innovation in religion.
Both Ids follow one shape. Muslims wash, dress well, gather in the morning for a prayer of two rak'ahs followed by a sermon, then eat together, visit relatives and give to the poor.
Definition
Id means a recurring religious festival.
Two Ids are kept across the whole Muslim world.
Each opens with a morning prayer of two rak'ahs and a sermon.
Fasting is forbidden on both days.
Id ul-Fitr
Id ul-Fitr, the festival of breaking the fast, falls on the first of Shawwal, the day after Ramadan ends. The same moon sighting that closes the month announces it.
Every household must first pay zakat ul-fitr, a measure of staple food or its cash value for each member, children included. It falls due before the Id prayer so that the poorest can share in the day.
The prayer is held shortly after sunrise, ideally outdoors or in the largest hall available, and carries extra calls of takbir, Allahu akbar, before the recitation. Sunni and Shi'ah practice differ over how many are said.
Food carries the day. Sweet dishes are so central that Turkish speakers call it Seker Bayrami, the sugar feast, South Asian households serve sheer khurma, and Indonesian families keep open house with ketupat and rendang.
The festival moves people. Indonesians travel home in the mudik, the largest annual human migration on earth, while Muslims in Britain and North America take the day off school and work where they can.
Local custom fills out the rest. Egyptians and Palestinians visit family graves, children across the Gulf and South Asia receive Idi, money given by elders, and new clothes, cards and henna are widespread.
Definition
Zakat ul-fitr means the charity due from every Muslim as Ramadan ends.
One measure of staple food, or its value, is given for each household member.
It must be paid before the Id prayer to count.
Its purpose is to let the poor join the celebration.
Example
Turkish speakers call the day Seker Bayrami, the sugar feast.
South Asian households serve sheer khurma, a milk and date pudding.
Indonesians travel home in the mudik and eat ketupat.
Northern Nigerians call it Karamar Sallah and hold durbar processions.
Id ul-Adha and sacrifice
Id ul-Adha, the festival of sacrifice, falls on the tenth of Dhu al-Hijjah while pilgrims are at Mina, and it runs for three days more. Most traditions treat it as the greater of the two festivals.
It commemorates Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son at Allah's command, and the ram sent in the son's place. Islamic tradition generally identifies that son as Isma'il rather than Ishaq.
Muslims who can afford it perform qurbani, the sacrifice of a sheep, goat, cow or camel, killed by the halal method with the name of Allah pronounced over it.
The meat is divided in three: one share for the household, one for relatives and neighbours, one for the poor. The day is therefore experienced as a redistribution as much as a feast.
Practice adapts to place. Many Muslims in Europe and North America pay a charity to perform the sacrifice on their behalf where meat is scarce, since urban slaughter is tightly regulated.
Sunni and Shi'ah Muslims keep this festival together. In both branches the takbir is called aloud after every prayer through the four days, and the Id sermon follows the prayer rather than preceding it as at Friday worship.
Definition
Qurbani means the animal sacrifice offered at Id ul-Adha.
A sheep, goat, cow or camel is killed by the halal method.
The meat is split between household, relatives and the poor.
Muslims unable to slaughter locally may pay a charity to do it abroad.
Common Mistake
Muslims do not hold that the sacrifice feeds Allah.
Qur'an 22:37 says that neither the meat nor the blood reaches him.
What reaches him, the verse says, is the piety of the giver.
The rite remembers Ibrahim rather than paying anything.
Mawlid ul-Nabi
Mawlid ul-Nabi commemorates the birth of the Prophet Muhammad. Most Sunni Muslims keep it on the twelfth of Rabi al-Awwal, while Twelver Shi'ah Muslims keep it on the seventeenth of the same month.
The observance is later than the two Ids. Public celebration is usually traced to the Fatimid rulers of Egypt in the eleventh century and to Irbil in the thirteenth, long after the Prophet's lifetime.
Its forms are verbal rather than sacrificial. Communities hold processions, decorate mosques and streets, recite devotional poetry such as the Burdah and South Asian na't, and retell the story of the Prophet's life.
Food and charity go with it. Sweets are distributed in Egypt and Libya, communal meals are served in Indonesia and Malaysia, and many communities time gifts to the poor to the day.
Not all Muslims keep it. Salafi and Wahhabi scholars, and some Deobandi ones, reject the observance as bid'ah on the ground that neither the Prophet nor his companions marked the date.
Practice therefore tracks authority. Mawlid is a public holiday in Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia and Nigeria and is not observed in Saudi Arabia, so one date carries very different weight from country to country.
Definition
Mawlid ul-Nabi means the commemoration of the Prophet's birth.
Sunni Muslims usually keep it on 12 Rabi al-Awwal.
Twelver Shi'ah Muslims keep it on the seventeenth of that month.
Poetry, processions, food and almsgiving are its usual forms.
Note
Sunni Muslims disagree among themselves about this observance.
Those who keep it argue that honouring the Prophet is always praiseworthy.
Those who reject it argue that nothing may be added to what he taught.
Both sides appeal to the same hadith literature.
Ashura and Muharram
Ashura falls on the tenth of Muharram, the first month of the year. Sunni and Shi'ah Muslims both mark the date, for different reasons and in very different ways.
Sunni observance is a voluntary fast. It remembers the deliverance of Musa (Moses) from Pharaoh, and hadith report that the Prophet fasted the day and recommended adding the ninth to it.
Shi'ah observance is mourning. It commemorates the killing of Imam ul-Husayn, grandson of the Prophet, with his family and companions at Karbala in 680, which Shi'ah Muslims treat as the defining stand against unjust rule.
The season opens on the first of Muharram and builds for ten days. Black is worn, weddings are postponed, and communities gather nightly for the majlis, an assembly of preaching and elegy.
Forms vary by region. Ta'ziyah passion plays are staged in Iran, replica shrines are carried in procession in South Asia and Trinidad, and matam, rhythmic beating of the chest, accompanies the recitation.
Some practices are disputed within Shi'ism. Senior jurists including Ayatollah Khamenei have ruled against tatbir, striking the head with a blade, and urged blood donation instead, while forty days later Arba'in draws millions of walkers to Karbala.
Definition
Ashura means the tenth day of Muharram.
Sunni Muslims keep it as a voluntary fast for the deliverance of Musa.
Shi'ah Muslims keep it as mourning for Imam ul-Husayn.
One date therefore carries two quite different meanings.
Ghadir and the imams' birthdays
Id ul-Ghadir falls on the eighteenth of Dhu al-Hijjah, days after Id ul-Adha. Shi'ah Muslims call it the greatest of their festivals and speak of it as the Id of Allah.
It commemorates what happened at the pool of Ghadir Khumm as the Prophet returned from his final pilgrimage. Shi'ah tradition reports that he took Ali by the hand and said that whoever held him as mawla held Ali as mawla too.
The branches read that report differently. Shi'ah Muslims take mawla to mean master and the moment to designate Ali as successor, while Sunni Muslims generally read it as friend and hear an appeal for loyalty rather than an appointment.
The day is kept with festival prayers, sermons retelling the event, new clothes, charity and shared meals. In Iran and Iraq it brings street decorations and public celebration on a scale close to the two Ids.
Shi'ah communities also keep the wiladat, birth anniversaries, of the Prophet's family. The birthday of Fatima, on the twentieth of Jumada al-Thani, is observed in Iran as Woman's Day and Mother's Day.
Other dates fill out the year. The births of Imam Ali on the thirteenth of Rajab and of the twelfth imam on the fifteenth of Sha'ban are widely celebrated, and each imam's death is marked as well, giving Shi'ah Muslims a calendar Sunni communities do not share.
Active recall
Why do Muslim festivals move through the seasons?
What must be paid before the Id ul-Fitr prayer, and why?
Which event does Id ul-Adha commemorate, and how is the meat divided?
On what grounds do some Sunni scholars reject Mawlid ul-Nabi?
How does Sunni observance of Ashura differ from Shi'ah observance?