Eid: The Two Festival Prayers

Twice a year there is a prayer that is not one of the five, held in the morning, usually in a rented hall or a park because no masjid is large enough.

For a new Muslim it is the best day of the year to turn up. The community is at its largest, its warmest and its most welcoming to a face nobody recognises.

The two Eids

• Eid al-Fiṭr — the morning after Ramadan ends. The celebration of having completed the fast.
• Eid al-Aḍḥā — during the days of Hajj, about ten weeks later. Marking Ibrāhīm's willingness to sacrifice his son, and the sacrifice given in his place.

Both fall on the lunar calendar, so they move about eleven days earlier each year.

How the prayer differs

• Two rakʿah, prayed in congregation in the morning after sunrise.
• Extra takbīrs — several additional ones, hands raised each time, in both rakʿah. This is the part that catches everyone out.
• The khutbah comes after the prayer, not before. The opposite of Jumuʿah.
• No adhan and no iqamah. The imam simply begins.
• It is not obligatory in the way the five are — though it is strongly emphasised and you should go.

Before you go

• Ghusl in the morning, before setting out.
• Your best clothes. New if you have them, clean and good if not. This is the day to dress well.
• Perfume for brothers.
• Eid al-Fiṭr — eat something before you leave. Dates, traditionally, and an odd number of them. After a month of fasting, you do not fast this morning.
• Eid al-Aḍḥā — do not eat before you leave. The first thing you eat should be after the prayer. The two Eids are deliberately opposite in this.
• Zakāt al-Fiṭr must be paid before the Eid al-Fiṭr prayer, not after. A small amount per person in the household, given so that nobody is without food on the day. Your masjid will collect it and will tell you the amount.

The takbīrāt

From the night before Eid until the prayer, Muslims recite this aloud — on the way there, in the car, in the hall while waiting. It builds as the room fills, and it is one of the more moving things you will hear.

What to say to people

You will also hear Eid Mubārak constantly, which is simpler and equally correct. Either is fine. Say it to everyone, including people you have never met — that is the point of the day.

Sisters — including if you are menstruating

Women are encouraged to attend Eid, and this includes women who are on their period and therefore not praying.

The Prophet ﷺ instructed that the women come out to the Eid prayer — young women, women normally kept at home, and menstruating women too, who would keep away from the prayer area itself but be present for the gathering and the duʿā'.

So if Eid falls in the wrong week, go anyway. Stand aside during the prayer and join everything else. Being excused from the prayer is not being excluded from the day.

Eid al-Aḍḥā does not end in a day

The three days that follow it — the 11th, 12th and 13th of Dhu-l-Ḥijjah — are called Ayyām at-Tashrīq, the days of Tashrīq. They are part of the festival, not the aftermath of it.

You must not fast on them

This surprises people. Fasting is forbidden on these three days, as it is on Eid itself.

It is worth sitting with that for a moment, particularly if you have come from a tradition where devotion means going without. There are days in this religion on which you are commanded to eat well and enjoy yourself, and on which fasting would be wrong. Eating is the worship.

The takbīr continues after every prayer

You will notice this and wonder what is going on. From the dawn of the day of ʿArafah — the day before Eid al-Aḍḥā — until the afternoon prayer on the last day of Tashrīq, Muslims say the takbīr after each of the five obligatory prayers.

It is the same wording you said on the way to the Eid prayer. Say it once, aloud, after giving the salām, and before the usual remembrances.

That is roughly five days of it. If you have just become Muslim and are still finding the prayer itself difficult, do not worry about adding this. Notice it, join in when you remember, and let it become habit next year.

The sacrifice may still be made

The qurbānī is not restricted to Eid day itself. It may be offered on Eid and on the days of Tashrīq that follow, which is why charities and masjids are still arranging them days after the prayer.

◇ Scholars differ

The schools differ over whether the sacrifice may be offered across all three days of Tashrīq or only the first two. If you are arranging one, follow the timing your masjid or charity uses — they will already have settled it.

What happens afterwards

Everything. Breakfast, visiting, gifts for children, a great deal of food. Families move between each other's houses for the rest of the day and often the rest of the week.

For Eid al-Aḍḥā there is also the qurbānī — a sacrifice, with the meat divided between your household, friends and relatives, and the poor. Most people in Canada arrange it through their masjid or a charity rather than doing it themselves.