Muslims’ adherence to the sacrifice (uḍḥiyah) today is a reflection of their broader tendency to cling to the outer shell of religion while neglecting its essence. We need not exert much effort to prove this neglect - a quick glance at the current moral and behavioral state of Muslims suffices as evidence.
It is well known from the Prophetic tradition:
“Religion is interaction (al-dīn al-muʿāmalah)” and “I was only sent to perfect noble character.”
Yet today, Muslims are adrift. Some of them perform religious rituals in a lifeless and mechanical fashion - devoid of spirit, absent of vitality. These acts have become subject to the dominance of habit and fail to influence either their character or the character of those around them.
Thus, the core of the religion has departed, and only its external shell remains - leaving Muslims no different from Christians and Jews who merely perform outward forms of religion, without religion.
They go to places of worship in a mechanical, habitual manner, which yields no real transformation in their morals or spiritual stature. In doing so, they fall under the ominous warning of the infallible Prophet (peace be upon him):
“You will surely follow the ways of those before you, handspan by handspan, and arm’s length by arm’s length - until if they were to enter a lizard’s hole, you would enter it too.”
They said: “The Jews and Christians, O Messenger of Allah?”
He replied: “Then who else?”
Today, the sunnah has disappeared among them, and Islam has returned to being a stranger, just as it began.
In another narration of this ḥadīth about the disappearance of the sunnah, it is said:
“Islam began as something strange, and it will return to being strange as it began - so glad tidings to the strangers!” They asked: “O Messenger of Allah, how will it be strange?” He said: “As when it is said of a man in such-and-such tribe: ‘He is a stranger!’” In another version: “They are those who revive my sunnah after the people have abandoned it.”
(Al-Iʿtiṣām, Vol. 1, p. 3)
Ibn ʿAbbās said:
“Not a year passes over the people except that they invent a new innovation and abandon a sunnah - until innovations come to life and sunan die out.”
(Al-Iʿtiṣām, same source)
Also in Al-Iʿtiṣām, Vol. 1, p. 9, are early signs of the disappearance of the sunnah:
Narrated from Abū al-Dardāʾ: “If the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) were to come out to you today, he would not recognize anything of what he and his Companions were upon - except the prayer.”
Al-Awzāʿī said:
“What if he saw us today?” ʿĪsā ibn Yūnus said: “What if al-Awzāʿī himself saw our time?” Umm al-Dardāʾ said: “Abū al-Dardāʾ entered one day angry. I asked, ‘What has upset you?’ He said: ‘By Allah, I do not recognize anything among them of the matter of Muhammad - except that they all pray together!’”
Narrated by al-Bukhārī.
Maymūn ibn Mahrān said: “If one of the early Muslims were to come among you today, he would recognize nothing except this Qiblah (direction of prayer).”
Sahl ibn Mālik, from his father, said: “I recognize nothing of what I saw the people doing except the call to prayer.”
These are all signs of the early disappearance of the sunnah - which began at the end of the prophetic or rightly guided era - and the gradual collapse of the sunnah until Muslims reached their current state of religious decline. This marks their entrance into the second era of darkness, or the second age of ignorance (al-jāhiliyyah al-thāniyah).
One of the first signs of the death of the sunnah today is the dividing of Muslims into sects, parties, and factions:
“Each faction rejoicing in what it has.” (30:32)
This division has occurred because the sunnah is no longer clearly understood.
The Prophet warned of this outcome:
“The Jews split into seventy-one sects, all in the Fire except one. The Christians split into seventy-two sects, all in the Fire except one. And my ummah will split into seventy-three sects - all in the Fire except one.”
They asked: “Who are they, O Messenger of Allah?” He replied: “Those who are upon what I and my Companions are upon.”
Today, Muslims widely take innovations (bidʿah) to be the sunnah - such as the practice of tarāwīḥ prayers - and take customary practices to be acts of worship - such as the beard and the sacrifice - while at the same time neglecting the true sunnah, which lies in perfecting worship and refining conduct.
Their insistence on the sacrifice (uḍḥiyah) is a clear illustration of this blind adherence to the superficial. The Prophet clearly lifted its obligation, and the Companions rightly followed him by abandoning it. Yet, each year at Eid al-Aḍḥā, the sacrifice is promoted as the central religious symbol among Muslims!
This blind attachment either stems from ignorance of the fact that it is no longer a religious obligation, or from performing it as a social ritual far removed from genuine devotion or religious redemption.
In both cases, it is a departure from the spirit and text of religion.
Worse still, there are those who are meticulous about offering the sacrifice - while they neglect the most basic religious obligations in worship and conduct!