I killed Mikey.

It sounds worse than it actually was. You have to understand that I didn’t kill Mikey because I wanted to do it. I killed him because God told me to do it.

I don’t suppose that sounds much better.

It helps, I think, to know that Mikey was a goat. He had bored brown eyes with rectangular pupils that made him seem a little creepy. Loud and obnoxious, he shat tiny round pellets all over the cramped garage he shared with three of his brethren. He was probably the only one of them who had a name. I know my parents didn’t name their goats, and my brother, Aamir, said that naming animals was stupid.

Mikey was the only pet I ever had. He was mine for about a week. I fed him dry straw, brought him buckets of water and asked him if he really wanted to be slaughtered for the sake of Allah at the upcoming Eid because, quite frankly, that seemed like a poor career choice. He remained stoic in the face of his grim fate, at least so far as I could tell.

Eid al-Adha marks the end of the Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca. The name of the celebration translates to “the Festival of Sacrifice.”

Yes, Islam has a marketing problem.