For six years, it has been a tradition for Muslims in the Research Triangle: After morning services on the first day of Eid al-Adha -- the "festival of sacrifice" -- scores of families leave the tweedy environs of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill and head toward an obscure plot of land on a two-lane country road.
They come to visit Eddie Rowe, a hog farmer.
The children typically run around among Rowe's loose chickens. The women prepare picnic sandwiches. And the patriarch of each family awaits his turn to slit the throat of a lamb or a goat that Rowe has sold him.
To Muslims around the world, this is an important ritual -- a tribute to Allah and to the prophet Abraham, who in both the Koran and the Bible is said to have offered his son as a sacrifice to God.
To research scientist Ahmed Mamai, 40, a native Moroccan, performing the sacrifice on Rowe's property allows him to maintain an ancient tradition that would be difficult to square with his lifestyle in suburban Raleigh. If he slaughtered an animal in his backyard, Mamai said with a smile, "My wife would sacrifice me."
But this year, things are not going as planned on Rowe's farm.
Last week, the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services obtained a restraining order alleging that Rowe was operating an unsanitary and illegal slaughter facility.
And so on Wednesday, the first day of the three-day festival, confusion reigned in place of celebration.
...
Many of the Muslims said they felt no ill will toward the Agriculture Department -- the law was the law; they just wanted a place to practice the ritual.
...
But Rowe, 34, was angry. The Carolina native said the lost revenue was not the issue -- he hardly made anything off Eid al-Adha. More important, he said, he has come to count his Muslim customers as friends. He knows many of them by name and has been invited into some of their homes for dinner. And though raised in a Pentecostal church, he has come to respect their convictions.
Read Full Text http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... &cset=true
They come to visit Eddie Rowe, a hog farmer.
The children typically run around among Rowe's loose chickens. The women prepare picnic sandwiches. And the patriarch of each family awaits his turn to slit the throat of a lamb or a goat that Rowe has sold him.
To Muslims around the world, this is an important ritual -- a tribute to Allah and to the prophet Abraham, who in both the Koran and the Bible is said to have offered his son as a sacrifice to God.
To research scientist Ahmed Mamai, 40, a native Moroccan, performing the sacrifice on Rowe's property allows him to maintain an ancient tradition that would be difficult to square with his lifestyle in suburban Raleigh. If he slaughtered an animal in his backyard, Mamai said with a smile, "My wife would sacrifice me."
But this year, things are not going as planned on Rowe's farm.
Last week, the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services obtained a restraining order alleging that Rowe was operating an unsanitary and illegal slaughter facility.
And so on Wednesday, the first day of the three-day festival, confusion reigned in place of celebration.
...
Many of the Muslims said they felt no ill will toward the Agriculture Department -- the law was the law; they just wanted a place to practice the ritual.
...
But Rowe, 34, was angry. The Carolina native said the lost revenue was not the issue -- he hardly made anything off Eid al-Adha. More important, he said, he has come to count his Muslim customers as friends. He knows many of them by name and has been invited into some of their homes for dinner. And though raised in a Pentecostal church, he has come to respect their convictions.
Read Full Text http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... &cset=true
