Eid’l Adha celebration in BARMM peaceful

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Clerics took turns urging worshippers to support multi-sector peacebuilding efforts in their sermons during outdoor congregational Eid’l Adha prayers here and in Bangsamoro towns on Wednesday morning.

The Eid’l Adha, also known as the “feast of sacrifice,” and the Eid’l Fit’r that marks the culmination of the yearly Ramadhan fasting season, are the two most important religious holidays in Islam.

Christian local executives in central Mindanao were markedly visible in helping Muslim religious leaders organize the Eid’l Adha congregational prayers in designated areas, guarded jointly by teams under the Bangsamoro and Region 12 police offices and units of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division led by Major Gen. Alex Rillera.

Bangsamoro Local Government Minister Naguib Sinarimbo told reporters Wednesday they are thankful to local government units, the police, the military and Islamic groups for cooperating in ensuring a peaceful Eid’l Adha worship rites in towns and cities in the autonomous region.

“Credit also has to go to the local officials who were in the forefront of our collective efforts for their constituents to have a peaceful Eid’l Adha celebration,” Sinarimbo, regional spokesperson of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said Wednesday.

Eid’l Adha also marks the culmination of the yearly hajj season, or pilgrimage to Makkah in Saudi Arabia, that lasts for about three weeks.

Performing the hajj, at least once in a lifetime, is obligatory to Muslims who are physically capable and can afford the cost of travel to Saudi Arabia.

Muslims celebrate the Eid’l Adha with an outdoor morning congregational prayer rite, where community leaders and preachers distribute food and quorban, or meat of animals slaughtered as sacrifice, as part of the Eid’l Adha tradition.

The essence of Eid’l Adha is centered on the biblical narrative on how Abraham, Ibrahim in Arabic, was to offer as sacrifice his son, Ismael, in a test of faith that, according to the bible, climaxed with an angel’s replacement of the child with a ram for his father’s having shown total subservience to God.

The chairman of the Moro National Liberation Front, Muslimin Sema, who is also BARMM’s labor minister, said they will respond positively to appeals by preachers for cross-section support for promotion of peace and unity among communities in the Bangsamoro region in their kutbah (sermon) during the outdoor prayers on Wednesday morning.

“Fostering unity among the Muslims, the Christians and the indigenous people in Mindanao is what we in the MNLF have been doing for a long time now. Religions must not set walls to separate us. Islam teaches tolerance and respect for other religions,” Sema said.