Yesterday after dinner as I was getting ready for bed I experienced sudden vibrations. I was feeling fatigued so first I thought it is a dream. But when vibrations became stronger I jumped off my bed realizing that it’s an earthquake. Turned on the TV and the news was there “A major 7.2 magnitude earthquake rocked a remote area of southwestern Pakistan.”

Thousands of earthquakes occur around the world each day, but only a very small fraction of them are felt by people without the aid of electronic monitoring devices and sophisticated geological survey equipment. An even smaller fraction is dangerous, with strong enough tremors to cause damage and destruction. That minute number of damaging quakes, however, can abruptly cause thousands of dollars of damage and may affect thousands of lives.

List of Earthquakes in Pakistan
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Eid Ul Azha, or the ‘festival of sacrifice’, an important festival in the Islamic Calender that marks the end of the Annual Pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, known among the muslims as the “Hajj”.

During this three-day festival, muslims are mandated to slaughter designated animals such as sheep, goat, cows, and camels – depending on the availability and cultural norms of the region. All other animals’ sacrifice is forbidden during this festival.

This ‘sacrifice’ is carried out in commemoration of Prophet Ebrahim’s (Abraham) (PBUH) readiness to sacrifice his son to show obedience to God. But just as he was about to run the knife over his son’s throat, the son was promptly replaced by a sheep, and thus, this is how, or rather, why Muslims carry out this ritual.

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