COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Few Muslims fired firecrackers and weapons in the air as they marked the end of the month-long fasting at dawn Friday.
At the city hall and Cotabato City Central Pilot Elementary School grounds, thousands of Muslims convened around 6 a.m. for their congregational prayer on the occasion of Eid’l Fitr, the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
Mayor Muslimin Sema told reporters that less gunfire was heard throughout the city at dawn as majority heeded an appeal not to fire guns. Muslims traditionally welcome the end of the fasting with guns and firecrackers.
“The Eid’l Fitr is not all about firing of weapons and firecrackers. The most important are prayers, unity, and sharing. Islam does not teach about such thing during Ramadan and Eid’l Fitr,” said Sema, also secretary general of the Moro National Liberation Front, once the country’s largest Muslim rebel group that signed a peace pact with government in 1996.
The road to Eid al-Fitr started in Muslim communities as early as Thursday night, when Islamic faithful observed the Takbiran, a procession in the old days but a motorcade in more recent times.
In the Takbiran, groups of scholars went around communities and recited “Allahu Akbar,” an Arabic chant which means “God is great.”
“We are happy that Ramadan ended peacefully,” Sema said.
As elsewhere in the country, Muslims gathered in their communities for prayers, and later shared food with relatives and neighbors’ as part of the Eid’l Fitr celebrations.
The government also declared Friday a national holiday.
For many Muslims, fasting during the Ramadan was more meaningful this year because of support from other faiths, said Mahid Mutilan of the Bishops-Ulama Conference.
On September 30 Catholic bishops and leaders of other Christian denominations hosted Muslim religious leaders in a Ramadan dusk dinner at the start of a two-day peace dialogue in Davao City.
Although interfaith outreach calls are not new in Vatican edicts, Filipino Christians who joined Muslims neighbors in the day long fasting during Ramadan gave ecumenism a new face in the interfaith dialogue with the minority Moro Muslims, according to Mutilan.
In the early 80s, peace activists organized the “Duyog Ramadan” not only as venue for Christian-Muslim dialogue, but followers of both faiths made Ramadan an occasion for deeper interfaith involvement in peace-building through basic understanding of comparative religions.
“Duyog” is a Visayan word which means “to do along with.”
Fr. Reynaldo Roque, who specializes on the church-media relationship, said while the Church was beset with issues generated by some reported cases of sexual harassment, Muslims were equally concerned about global problem of extremist violence and terrorism.
One participant pointed out that Muslims are enjoined to fast along with the “People of the Book,” when the Koran says: “O! ye who believe… Fasting is prescribed unto you as it was prescribed unto those before you that you may learn self-restraint.”
By “People of the Book,” the Koran refers with reverence to the Jews and the Christians, or the followers of Abrahamic religions, of which Islam is one, said Dr. Salipada Tamano of the Mindanao State University’s King Faisal Institute of Islamic Studies in Marawi City.
Tamano even quoted a Koranic verse that says: “Verily! You will find good friendship unto those who say, ‘We are Christians’.”
Shariff Julabbi, who has a doctorate in Lugatul Arabiya, the language of the Koran, said it is not true that the Muslims’ Holy Book refers to Christians and Jews as “unbelievers,” “pagans” and “hypocrites.”
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