If we were true in our faith, we would stay in sujood and recite the names of our martyrs, or we would rise from it and go to them. Instead, we went to the mosque, took our photos, sat down to breakfast, and sent our Eid Mubarak texts. We made dua for Palestine and Lebanon between the takbirs, and then we left, as if God said ask and then turn away while your people are crushed beneath the rubble, as if the Gazan or Lebanese child is not God testing you and your indifference.

Three Ramadans have passed and we have not learned the thing that should have been obvious from the first, which is that faith cannot be separated from the material life and death and occupation of the people you claim to love in God’s name.

This Eid, Al-Aqsa is closed and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is closed, and we took our photos anyway and drove to breakfast and the coffee was hot and the table was full and somewhere in the West Bank on March 15th, four days before we were celebrating, Othman and Mohammad Bani Odeh, six and five years old, were in the backseat of their family’s car coming home from Nablus at one in the morning when Israeli special forces opened fire for three minutes without warning and their parents died and the boys died and their older brothers, eleven and eight, got out of the car screaming for help and were beaten by the soldiers who then blocked the paramedics for thirty minutes while what remained of that family bled in the dark. And we knew this. We knew this when we put on our new clothes this morning. We knew that 351 Palestinian children are sitting in Israeli prisons right now, 180 of them without a single charge, the highest number ever recorded, and that they are beaten for trying to pass words to their mothers through their lawyers, and that the Red Cross hasn’t been allowed to see any Palestinian detainee since October 2023. We knew all of this and we made our dua and we said Eid Mubarak and we meant it for ourselves and we left.

The Prophet (p.b.u.h) said whoever among you sees an evil, let him change it with his hand, and if he cannot then with his tongue, and if he cannot then with his heart, and that is the weakest of faith.The scholars have always read that last line as a floor, the bare minimum below which there is nothing left to call iman. But we have turned the floor into a dwelling, have mistaken the heaviness in our chests for a heart that has actually refused the evil, have confused the ghost of faith for the thing itself, and this morning we stood in rows and made our takbir and went home and the children in Gaza were still under the rubble and the floor held us just fine.

Can you even conceptualize what 20,000 children means, over a thousand of them under the age of one, babies who were born into this genocide and never knew anything else, evaporated and crushed and shot and starved, and we said Eid Mubarak and meant it for ourselves. Have we no shame? Do we have any shame left at all? Is there anything underneath the performance of this day that resembles the thing we are claiming to celebrate, which is the mercy of God and the completion of a month of devotion, while devotion has meant nothing, while the month passed and the killing did not stop for a single day of it.

If you are like me and don’t know what to do with this day, the least we can do is offer supplication over the some of names of those in the graves. If you are looking for somewhere to put your money, the Lebanese Diaspora Relief Organization is on the ground across Gaza and Lebanon. Find them at instagram.com/lebaneserelief.

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Abdul Rahman Khattab Omar Al-Bahloul

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Abdul Aziz Adel Abdul Aziz Dehliz

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Abdul Fattah Jaber Abdul Rahman Abu Zarqa

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Salma Abdul Karim Eid Al Zahrani

Abdul Rahman Mazen Mohammed Maarouf

Basmala Saleh Maher Frouaneh

Abdul Rahman Fadl Tawfiq Al-Zant

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Abdul Karim Awad Rajab Shaaban

Abdul Rahman Mazen Abdul Rahman Al Qishawi

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Abdul Karim Mounir Mohammed Ghabayen

Al-Baraa Mohammed Samir Abu Taima

Asmaa Musa Mohammed Al-Nabahin

Abdul Rahman Ahmed Salem Abdul Wahed

Abdul Aziz Abdul Nasser Daoud Al-Halisi

Basimah Hassan Mesbah Abdel-Al

Riyad Shadi Riyad Al-Wahidi

Yacoub Ibrahim Yacoub Ahlaseh

Rima Fayek Hamdan Eid

Abdul Aziz Omar Saleh Farwana

Abd Rabbo Abd al-Rahman Abd Rabbo Abu Samra

Rakan Hossam Hussein Musa

Asmaa Salem Kamal Al-Nabih

Ramadan Ibrahim Suleiman Al-Najjar

Al-Zahra Ibrahim Mohammed Gouda

Ramadan Mohammed Ramadan Kassab

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Ramadan Abdul Hamid Mohammed Al-Shabrawi

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Sally Ramez Mohammed Abu Muammar

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Taqa Mohammed Imad Shalaq

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Basil Saleh Mohammed Al-Bardawil

Dhafer Ahmed Khamis Abu Younis

Al-Harith Ahmed Zidan Al-Hawajri

Rajab Ibrahim Mohammed Aqdih

Ahmed Hossam Amin Hassouna

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Abdul Muti Ibrahim Abdul Muti Al-Habil

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Ahmed Hassan Ali Hassouna

Abdul Hadi Alaa Abdul Hadi Masoud

Asmaa Mohammed Montaser Shaaban Halasa

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Abdul Hamid Ahmed Abdul Hamid Mkhaimer

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Abdul Rahman Mohammed Abdullah Shaheen

Atef Hamdan Mohammed Al-Shaer

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Abdul Rahman Ahmed Mahmoud Saidam

Bamat Amal Mohammed Sobhi Bahar

Diab Nihad Diab Karim

Thaer Abdullah Mohammed Omar

Wissam Abdullah Abdul Aziz Afana

Abdul Karim Hamid Ahmed Al Sharif

Tasneem Bassam Abdullah Abu Shammala

Tamim Nidal Ismail Abu Ajami

Amena Mohammed Rabie Abu Humaidan

Ahmed Hassan Ahmed Abu Seif

Abdul Fattah Diab Ibrahim Deif

Abdul Halim Fawzi Abdullah Halawa

Abdul Rahman Kamal Awad Khattab

Safaa Hassan Mohammed Amara

Balsam Ramadan Mohammed Obaid

Salma Lutfi Hassan Al-Suwerki

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Abdul Hamid Mohammed Salamah Abu Qouta

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Abdul Fattah Abdul Nasser Mohammed Mahmoud

Al-Hassan Rajab Mahmoud Sahloub

Saeed Talal Saeed Al-Dahshan

Asmaa Youssef Salem Thabet

Balsam Basil Mohammed Al-Azayza

Abdul Karim Eid Salamah Al-Zahrani

Baraa Fayez Ibrahim Al-Tanani

Yahya Abdul Rahman Ahmed Osaiah

Wissam Mohammed Khalil Sukayk

Asmaa Saber Mahmoud Al Khawaja

Ahmed Hamto Ahmed Al-Satri

Abdul Rahman Adam Abdul Rahman Al Balawi

Tayseer Amin Mohammed Al-Mobasher

Asmaa Sami Mahmoud Abu Shakyan

Wissam Rahn Mahmoud Al-Daghma

Abdul Rahman Ahmed Abdul Rahman Shehab

Abdul Ati Amer Abdul Ati Abu Saeed

Alaa Abd Rabbo Ali Tuman

Safa Mansour Abdul Sobh

Diaa Kamel Mahmoud Mustafa

Ahmed Hani Abid Kali

Basma Ramadan Mohammed Abu Warda

Wissam Musa Shehadeh Eid

Tayim Imad Naeem Hegazy

Salim Kamel Salim Abdul Nabi

Abdul Rahman Mahmoud Abd al-Razzaq al-Ghalban

Rima Mounir Ali Al-Hawm

Abdul Aziz Hatem Jabr Al-Rai

Saeed Tawfiq Ali Al Fleet

Ramadan Mohammed Mohammed Zaghra

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Abdul Aziz Mohammed Abdul Aziz Al-Ghoul

Basma Saleh Ali Hassouna

Safa Mahmoud Mohammed Al-Shorbaji

Abdul Jawad Mohammed Abd al-Jawad Abu Ras

Riyad Ramadan Salem Salman Alai

Tamam Hassan Ismail Adwan

Abdul Karim Harb Hussein Abu Hilal

Wissam Omar Zuhair Al-Daour

Abdul Mohsen Mohammed Othman Abu Al-Rus

Ahmed Hani Khaled Abu Al-Naga

Ahmed Hisham Ratib Nofal

Al-Shaima Nabil Ahmed Abu Saif

Wissam Musa Mohammed Abu Draika

Abdul Aziz Bassam Mohammed Annan

Abdul Karim Mohammad Musa Al-Liqtah

Sally Ibrahim Youssef Mahdi

Eid Mubarak to the ones who insist on life, again and again, under conditions that should make insistence impossible. Eid Mubarak to those whose lives were the price paid for our indifference. Free Palestine until Palestine is free cannot be separated from what it means to practice this religion, and until we understand that, we are joining the ranks of hypocrites, and we know it, and we have known it for three Ramadans now, and the knowing without the doing is the thing we will have to answer for.

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