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Roughly 750 needy Montgomery County families will soon receive food donations, but it will not be the traditional Thanksgiving baskets full of canned cranberry sauce and mashed potato flakes.

Friday marks the Muslim holiday of Eid ul Adha, which celebrates the biblical character Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son. The holiday is strikingly similar to Thanksgiving, some Muslims say, in that the holiday marks a time to give thanks for your family's good fortune by donating to those less fortunate.

This Friday, the Montgomery County Muslim Council will donate money collected from local mosques, Muslim community centers and Muslim families to pay for several cows to be slaughtered, packaged and frozen for needy area families. The donations will be given to families in need—regardless of their religious affiliation—on Dec. 6 at the Silver Spring Muslim Community Center, according to council President Irma Hafeez.

"It's similar [to Thanksgiving], because you're giving thanks to the bounties that we enjoy," Hafeez said. "I think that's the spirit of Thanksgiving, as I understand it. And Eid ul Adha is simply a combination of that. It's the Abrahamic tradition of sacrificing for the sake of paying homage to God and then sharing the bounty with everyone."

The holiday follows the day of hajj, a traditional Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. It celebrates the story of Abraham as told in the Quran, the Bible and the Torah. According to the story, God tested Abraham by commanding him to sacrifice his first-born son. Just before the sacrifice was supposed to take place, a ram was substituted as the sacrifice. The lesson of faithfulness, thanks and sacrifice is interpreted today to be a day of donating to those less fortunate and spending time with family.

Hafeez and others say that though the holiday has a religious undertone, it is celebrated much in the same way as Thanksgiving. Other than the donations, families call their relatives and visit each other's homes for meals. Children are given small gifts, but the main act of giving comes in the form of meat donations.

"Both holidays are about the people and the community and how you get connected to them," said Rockville Muslim Zahira Malik, who said she is trying to teach this lesson to her 7-year-old daughter. "The best way to get involved in that is through the spirit of giving."

Malik said she plans to buy a share, or about one-seventh, of a cow through the Muslim Council for $160. Her donation helps her remember that not everyone in the world is as fortunate as her family, she said.

Abdul Gheyaszada, manager of the Islamic Madina Market in Herndon, said the market gets between 75 to 100 orders for slaughters of lambs, goats and beef for the holiday. Traditionally, a Muslim family is supposed to order three equal shares: one to keep, one to give to relatives and one to donate to the less fortunate.

The council finds families in need through mosque sign-up sheets, county low-income housing programs, food stamp lists and other similar sources, organizers say.

"The basic purpose of this donation is that people are in need of meat more than anything, and it costs the most money," Gheyaszada said, noting a cow costs about $1,000. "Mostly, [the poor] eat bread or lentils or beans, so it's just to let people have a good meat. That's why we sacrifice animals."

Rashid Makhdoom, a member of the board of directors for the Muslim Community Center, said every year since 1970, he has donated both to the local community as well as to his home country of Pakistan. He asks his brother in Pakistan to sacrifice a lamb for him as he remembers the desperate financial situations of some people abroad, he said.

"It's a Thanksgiving in the sense that God has given us our hand as the upper hand, and somebody else's hand is on the receiving end," he said. "We could have just as easily been at the receiving end also, so it is a Thanksgiving-type thing."