On 7 April, Muslims will remember the sacrifice of Abraham who was ready to submit to the will of God, sacrificing his only son Ishmael if he had not stopped at the last moment.
It is the festival Aid el adha (feast of sacrifice) and it is the most important solemnity of Islam that follows, after two months, the period of fasting of the “ramadan” and starts the period of pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the five pillars of Islam. This year the Islamic festival falls in our Holy Week; moreover, other Islamic recurrences are concomitant with our Lent, time of fasting and spiritual and material sacrifice which ends with the great celebration of the Resurrection on April 12th.
These two religious recurrences, even if in different ways, intend to prepare the faithful for the ultimate purpose of life: the resurrection in the world promised by God. We want to quote Cardinal Arinzo who in his message to the Muslims says: “We, Christians and Muslims, are seekers of God, engaged in a search that is a sign of hope for every man. We can work together to give more hope to humanity. Therefore, we must accept ourselves as different, respect one another and love one another, under the gaze of God who bestows his mercy on all. We want to present ourselves to the world as believers in God and faithful to man, to his dignity and to his rights. ”
While we send our best wishes to our brothers of Islamic faith and in particular to the faithful of the nearby mosque, we ask ourselves, and we ask our readers, some questions that seem interesting and current:
»What kind of relationship exists between our parish and the Islamic Cultural Center?
»How do we deal with the cultural baggage of new immigrants, through which they see and interpret the society that hosts them, assimilated by them to the Christian society?
How can we help new immigrants to know the true face of the Christian outside the clichés of the mass media?
Is there any voluntary activity that can be undertaken together?
We invite our readers to give some answers to these questions and to the solicitations that religious celebrations, mentioned in the note opposite can arouse.
Giuseppe Samir Eid
Free web translation from the original in Italian
The published articles intend to provide the tools for a social inclusion of the migratory flow, shed light on human rights and the condition of life of Christians in the Islamic world from which the author comes.
Knowledge of the other, of cultural and religious differences are primary ingredients to create peace in the hearts of men everywhere, a prerequisite for a peaceful coexistence and convinced citizenship in the territory.