Eid al-Adha Mezze: From Ibn Battuta to Malcolm X to Gaza - From Blue-Eyed Blondes to Black-Skinned Africans
Mezze - المزة - a wide selection of small dishes served as appetizers, including such delicacies as hummus, cheese, eggplant, brains, stuffed grape leaves, calamari, and much more
Eid Mubarak to all my Sisters and Brothers celebrating Eid al-Adha.
Good afternoon to my Family, Friends, Colleagues, and all who stand in solidarity against injustice.
Sunset on June 5, 2025, begins the celebration of Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice. I am grateful that I have been twice been blessed with the opportunity to don ihram and perform Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca.
This year’s Hajj comes at a difficult time for many Muslims; I had initially hoped to write a celebratory column - circumstances have dictated a different course.
Share my thoughts below with your friends and colleagues, especially with young ones.
Remind them: when they come for one people they come for all.
Salamaat,
Robert
From Ibn Battuta to Malcolm X to Gaza - From Blue-Eyed Blondes to Black-Skinned Africans
In 1325 CE - just 700 years ago - Ibn Battuta, a young man from Tangier [Morocco] joined a caravan and set off to perform Hajj - the annual pilgrimage to Mecca - the fifth of Islam’s five pillars that is the dream of every adult Muslim to complete if they are physically and financially able.
He traveled 3,000 miles eastward along the length of North Africa. He crossed into the Levant at Gaza, eventually arriving in Arabia at the Muslim holy cities - Mecca and Madinah - 18 months after he had left home.
Upon arriving in Mecca, Ibn Battuta, dressed in simple white ihram worn by all pilgrims (see photo), first went to the Ka'aba, which he described in his autobiography as being ...like a bride who is displayed upon the bridal-chair of majesty, and walks with proud steps in the mantles of beauty ... We made around it the seven-fold circuit of arrival and kissed the holy Stone; we performed a prayer of two bowings at the Maqam Ibrahim [a shrine which houses the footprints of Abraham] and clung to the curtains of the Ka'aba ... where prayer is answered; we drank the water of Zamzam...; then having run between al-Safa and al-Marwa, we took up our lodging there in a house near the Gate of Ibrahim. H.A.R.Gibb translation.
Muslims have gathered to perform Hajj for nearly 1,400 CE years. In 632 CE Prophet Muhammad performed both the first - and his last - pilgrimage. While some Hajj rituals have roots stretching back to Prophet Abraham, Prophet Muhammad's Hajj is considered the first official pilgrimage in Islamic tradition.
Over the past month more than 1,400,000 Muslims have traveled from all corners of the globe - from Samarkand and Malaysia, from Mali, Mashhad, and Minnesota – to perform Hajj, to gather as one to reaffirm the solidarity of the umma, the global community of Muslims.
Together, they have prayed for enlightenment, mercy and forgiveness; to renew their commitment to God and service to humankind.
They gather to honor Prophet Muhammad's final words to worshippers: O People! listen to me in earnest, worship Allah, say your five daily prayers, fast during month of Ramadan, and give your wealth in Zakat. Perform Hajj if you can afford it.
And those who can afford do come, from heads of state to the most marginalized of sojourners who have saved for a lifetime to fulfill the last of Islam’s Five Pillars.
And among that community in Mecca today, I am sure, are Muslims descended from America’s earliest enslaved peoples, Americans who for centuries have struggled to affirm their right to be American, to be Muslim, to be Black – to be Free.
There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world, Malcolm X wrote in The Autobiography of Malcolm X, describing the pilgrimage he made in 1964 after he embraced Sunni Islam. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and non-white.
Today, true fulfillment of that spirit is still elusive. In too many lands too many people struggle to survive, and to my mind no place illustrates the failure of all humanity to embrace and protect the marginalized, the disenfranchised, the oppressed and occupied, than Gaza.
And Gaza’s on my mind this Eid because my government is complicit with the war crimes being committed there.
Ibn Battuta described Gaza as The first of the Levantine lands after Egypt, spacious, with many buildings, beautiful markets, and many mosques without walls around them.
Today, we witness Gaza as a land of few buildings, no markets, no mosques, no walls.
We witness genocide, cruelty, forced starvation, death.
We witness few Samaritans willing to stand and nourish the oppressed.
Since the second day of this past Ramadan, when it - with American support - unilaterally breached a cease-fire with Hamas, Israel has continued to escalate its bombing and strafing campaigns, kill dozens of civilians daily, and deny humanitarian assistance to Gaza’s over two million Palestinians.
There are no clean spaces within which to pray. There is no Eid feast for those who have yet to succumb to Israel's forced starvation, no new clothes for the children who remain alive.
There is no food, water, medicine, electricity, shelter, or security of any sort. There are only barbarians illuminating night skies with American-supplied weapons.
How shall we pray?
Islam is not foreign to America.
Islam, which arrived in the Americas at least as early as 1619 – a year before the Mayflower – when 20 enslaved Africans were brought to Jamestown, is believed to have been the religion of perhaps 15 percent to 30 percent of the enslaved peoples abducted from Africa to work in lands stolen from indigenous peoples throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Today, the American Muslim community - a community of descendants of enslaved peoples, of converts, of migrants and refugees and their descendants from around the world who have come to America for opportunity and/or sanctuary; a racially, ethnically and socially diverse community ranging from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans who insist upon expanding its engagement in our Public Square.
I am one of them.
Insistent upon affirming that Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, for example, the oldest of 14 children and the first person in her family to graduate from high school and college, could become America's first Palestinian-American congressperson.
She is one of them.
On June 6th, to mark the completion of Hajj, the world’s roughly 2 billion Muslims – will celebrate Eid al-Adha to honor Prophet Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his first-born son Ishmael as an act of obedience to God and when, at the last moment, through God’s Grace and intercession, a ram was offered instead.
I'm conflicted.
I will join the prayers and community - I'm not sure about feasting.
Traditionally, on Eid, where we are called to commemorate and honor God’s Grace, Muslims sacrifice an animal whose meat is divided into three portions: one-third for the poor and needy; one-third for relatives, friends and neighbors; one-third retained by the family.
Children get new clothes, adults wear their finery, communal prayers are performed, special sweets are shared, and the holiday is spent with family and friends.
How do we ship the meat to Rafah, deliver new clothes in Hind Rajab's memory, spend the holiday with family and friends many of whom are buried in anonymous body bags?
How to we reclaim the sight and stories of the over 220 Palestinian journalists targeted and killed - many along with their families?
It will be celebrated in Malaysia, Mali and Mexico. It will be celebrated by Muslim communities in Minneapolis, Memphis, and Manchester.
But not in Gaza.
There will be prayers, but little celebration.
Today, as a child of Abraham I'm thankful that In 1790 President George Washington wrote to Congregation Jeshuat Israel in Newport, R.I.:
May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants – while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.
Eid will be celebrated here because, I am told, there shall be none to make us afraid.
I'm afraid.
Salamaat,
Robert
Robert, Thank you for this compact history of a very long tradition, which many of us have not, until recently, known much about. Thank you also for including Minnesota in your comments. There are many in Minneapolis and St. Paul who have Free Palestine on their doors and windows or Ceasefire Now or Divest Now or Jews for Peace in Gaza. We have the largest Somolia population of any city i the U.S. and we hear the call to prayer from the nearby mosque.