Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch
On February 22, 2002, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that "thousands of Muslims are to gather downtown in [St. Louis, MO] to celebrate Eid ul-Adha, the end of the hajj and Islam's second most celebrated day... 'It's one of the two biggest celebrations of the year,' said Aftab Ahmad, 38, a former Islamic Center board member. 'We might have 3,000 or 4,000 people downtown'... Imam Muhamed Hassic, a religious leader of the Bosnian Muslim community, will say the holy day morning prayers at the downtown service. In midafternoon, Muslims will have a reception at Daar-Ul-Islam mosque... in west St. Louis County. Many families also will have multigenerational receptions at their homes... About 35,000 Muslims live in the region. About 30,000 are Bosnian refugees... Eid ul-Adha (pronounced eed-al-ODD-ha) means 'festival of the sacrifice' and commemorates the biblical Abraham's preparation to offer his son Ishmael as a human sacrifice to God."