Eid-ul-Azha and refrigerator sales

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The sale of refrigerator shoots up every year on the eve of Eid-ul-Azha. This does indicate a relationship between the sacrificial meats and the rising sale of refrigerators. People in our country, who make animal sacrifice, do no doubt like to keep big stocks of the sacrificial meats in their freezers. Some are known to eat the meats stored in a refrigerator in the previous year well into the next year.
But how far consistent is this mentality with the right observance of Eid-ul-Azha? Of course, the ones who sacrifice animals can keep a part of the meats obtained for their own consumption. But at least one-third are to be given away compulsorily to the poor according to religious injunctions. How many observe this dictate very scrupulously? If most of us followed the religious dictate faithfully, then not only the compulsory one-third but a greater part of the sacrificial meats would be distributed to the poor.
Bangladesh is a land of the poor. Forty per cent of the poor in its population are unable to buy meats to any satisfaction round the year. Should not they be helped out with generous distribution of ‘Korbani’ meat? The rich who make animal sacrifices can afford to buy ample good meats throughout the year. Why then they still want to be stingy and stock up their refrigerators with sacrificial meats instead of giving much of the same away to the poor.
Indeed, the piling up of freezers with meats of the sacrificial animals and competing with neighbours with showy sacrifice of bigger and bigger animals, are regrettably becoming the features of Eid-ul-Azha than the religiously ordanined principles.
Mustafa Anwar
Banani, Dhaka