As Eman Abbas and her 14-year-old son, Ahmed Ghayedi, stood in line for a ride on a small motorboat at Henry Hagg Lake on Sunday, they took an unconventional approach. They allowed others to go ahead of them.

The small offering was a nod to Eid al-Adha, Arabic for “Festival of Sacrifice” and one of the most important holidays in the Muslim calendar.

Eid al-Adha follows the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudia Arabia known as the Hajj, and it was the occasion that drew over 200 people of Muslim faith to the shores of the lake southwest of Forest Grove.

To Abbas, who was born in Kuwait and moved to the Unites States when she was 2, the picnic was an opportunity to immerse children like her own in Islamic culture — and spread the goodwill.

“In the time of the Festival of Sacrifice, everyone is on their best behavior doing little deeds for each other, like allowing others to go first,” Abbas said. “This is my small sacrifice.”

Hosted by the Islamic Society of Greater Portland, a nonprofit organization that promotes relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims in the metro area, Sunday’s festivities included spirited soccer matches and serene moments of prayer on neatly arranged mats under the open sky, in addition to the joyous boat rides.

The multi-day holiday celebrates the time when Ibrahim dreamed that Allah had asked him to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience. Ibrahim’s willingness to do so prompted Allah to stop him, however, and Allah gave the prophet a lamb to sacrifice instead.

Modern celebrants recreate the spirit of that story by preparing goat or lamb and then dividing the meat into three portions — for family, for friends and for those in need.

This year, the suffering in Gaza was not far from people’s minds, with several saying they wished they could more easily share with families in the Palestinian territory.

“You can see they need food; people are dying because they are lacking,” said Josefina Salma Ahmad, president of the local Islamic Society.

The society’s Eid al-Adha picnic is a yearly event that hops between locations, but Hagg Lake is a favorite because of the possibility of boat rides.

The motorboat this year was provided by Amr Khalifa, a longtime member of the Islamic Society whose bigger boat was out of commission for maintenance. He took his smaller boat out of storage and made a makeshift motor with a car battery “just in time for Eid,” because he didn’t want kids to miss out.

The picnic attracted Oregonians from many Muslim backgrounds and countries, something that made Ahmad proud, she said. The group included people of the Rohingya ethnicity, Bosnians and Syrians, for example.

“This is our mission,” Ahmad said. “We collaborate.”

As the Eid picnic softly came to a close, people gathered near the neatly organized mats.

A gentle hum of the mid-afternoon prayer began to resonate across the meadow, the laughter and chatter giving way to a moment of communal reflection and gratitude.

— David Nuñez covers breaking news and public safety for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reach him at 503-294-7607 or dnunez@oregonian.com.

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