On Sadness and Happiness During Eid Mubarak

Today is the 28th Ramadan and insha'allah in two or three days, we will celebrate Eid Fitri of 1430H. At the office, many of my staff are already on leaves and perhaps few of them are already on thier ways to thier hometowns for the celebration. Those still working are practically just waiting to go home and essentially festive mood has overwhelmed the desire to do anything. We were told that for today we can go back one hour early and I am definitely sure this is a welcome news to everyone.

I did not quite fulfill my target to have a perfect Tarawih jemaah this year as I already missed three days. But overall, I am quite please and thankful to Allah as I did not really suffer prolong gout or headache that limit my ability to go to the mosque. This year also is quite a strange year for me as I did not get a single Buka Puasa invitation from any company except from my own. Perhaps, I am already out of the radar or could be people just become fed-up to invite me again because I always prefer breaking fast with my family and shunt the invitations. Whatever the reason is, I actually feel releived as I do not have to brace the evening traffic jam to go to some of this functions and more often than not, miss more tarawih prayer .

On one of the Ramadan Kuliah Subuh I attended, the Ustaz mentioned that for some reason we the Malays like to associate Eidfitr with the feeling of sadness and despair. This can be observed in many ways such as they way we melodize our Takbir Raya and also the way we sing the Raya songs ! Full of sadness, full of hopelessness :-(

Granted that some Raya songs are rhytmic in nature but majority of our Raya songs I would say, are very sentimental and touching. The true spirit of Eidfitri should be a joyous one and that is why Allah ban fasting on the first day of Eid so that all muslims can celebrate the joyous occasion.

As a muslim, , we have been guaranteed by Allah to be free from the feeling of fear and sadness as qouted in the following ayat:


What I understand is that if we do all the things asked by Allah and avoid all the things that are forbidden, we will be among those that will be at peace all the time ! Hence..why do we need to be sad especially during Eid ?