(RNS) — Eid al-Fitr is supposed to be a day of joy marking the end of a month of spiritual striving, of fasting, prayer and giving. It’s the day when, after a month of self-denial, the entire community comes together — dressed in new clothes, exchanging gifts, embracing one another in celebration.
This year, joy was elusive.
On the morning of Eid, as we prepared to gather in prayer, news began to trickle in from Gaza. Children had been slaughtered — again. Multiple children had been bombed to death by Israeli airstrikes as the sun rose, ending their Eid excitement and their lives. One image in particular will not leave me: a child dressed in brand-new Eid clothes, now wrapped in a burial shroud clutching a toy with his lifeless hand. What was supposed to be a morning of sweets and celebration had become another chapter in a long, unending nightmare.
Just hours later, I stood at an Eid prayer in America, watching hundreds of children — my own included — running around in colorful outfits, holding new toys, laughing and hugging their friends. The sight should have filled me with joy, but the deaths of the children in Gaza made it almost unbearable.
I wasn’t alone. A doctor from my community in Dallas who is currently volunteering in Gaza messaged me with his own heartbreaking witness. “Today’s been the worst day by far. Bombing most intense at Fajr when people were getting ready for Eid. Children in their Eid clothes and jewelry are in the morgues.”
This is the backdrop against which Muslims around the world tried to celebrate.
What do we do with that kind of sorrow?
Islam teaches that Ramadan is a month of cultivating empathy. Eid is meant to continue that empathy, even into our celebrations. On the morning of Eid, every Muslim is required to pay Zakat al-Fitr — a form of charity designed to ensure that no one is left out of the feast. It is a beautiful practice: a way of saying that joy is only complete when shared, that our celebration is meaningless if others are starving.
How do we fulfill that responsibility when an entire population is being starved intentionally? The blockade on Gaza has made it nearly impossible to deliver aid. Humanitarian convoys are bombed, bakeries are destroyed, access to clean water and medicine is deliberately withheld. Zakat al-Fitr — the alms given by Muslims at this holy time — is supposed to feed the hungry. But in Gaza, even bread is a casualty of war.
And yet, amid the devastation, there was a moment that gave me hope.
A young boy named Adam, a survivor from Gaza receiving treatment here in the U.S., came up to me on Eid morning. He was hobbling on his new prosthetic leg — a reminder of what he had endured. But as he approached, he smiled wide and gave me a huge hug. In that moment, I thought about the children who didn’t survive and prayed that they were now embracing their loved ones in the gardens of paradise, celebrating a different kind of Eid — free from bombs, from fear, from sorrow.
And I prayed that those still with us, like Adam, can have a future that honors what they’ve been through — a future where they don’t have to trade limbs for safety or childhoods for survival.
Eid is meant to be a day of celebration. But this year, it was also a day of mourning. A day of tension between gratitude and grief. And in that tension, we find a deeper calling — not just to grieve, but to act. Not just to celebrate, but to remember.
Because joy, when denied to some, cannot be fully enjoyed by others.
And because children like Adam deserve more than our tears — they deserve a world that never again forces them to say goodbye before they’ve even had the chance to live.