AFP: Piety, defiance and bloodshed mark Middle East Eid

AFP: Piety, defiance and bloodshed mark Middle East Eid
Piety, defiance and bloodshed mark Middle East Eid

DUBAI (AFP) — Piety, defiance and bloodshed marked the feast of Eid al-Fitr, ending the holy month of Ramadan, across much of the Middle East on Friday.

Charitable groups, rulers and governments met their obligations to the third pillar of the Muslim faith — carrying out zakat, or charitable acts.

The jihadists, or holy warriors, used the occasion and the Internet to spur their followers to greater zeal.

In divided Iraq, where Eid began for Sunnis on Thursday evening and starts for Shiites at sunset on Friday, at least two deadly attacks brought bloodshed to ordinary Iraqis, including children, as they prepared to celebrate.

In Saudi Arabia, the home to Islam’s holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, King Abdullah signalled “Muslim solidarity.” He ordered forgiveness of debts for the families of deceased men and women who had taken loans with the housing development fund and the Saudi loan bank.

Crown Prince Sultan Bin Abdel Aziz gave 200,000 riyals (54,000 dollars) for orphans in the southern province, while the local press said the country’s 411 official charitable bodies and 40-odd private association had mobilised to “meet the needs of the poor, widows and orphans.”

Last year, the official bodies spend more than 2.1 billion riyals (562 million dollars) on welfare work.

In other Gulf and Arab states, Eid began on Friday for the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan and Lebanon.

The faithful in Iran, Oman and Egypt, meanwhile, would have to wait until Saturday to end their fast.

Eid al-Fitr is a three-day festival. On the first day, Muslims gather early in the morning in outdoor locations or mosques to perform the Eid prayer. This consists of a sermon followed by a short congregational prayer.

Afterwards, people usually visit various family and friends, give gifts, especially to children, and feast.

It is a time of intense spiritual renewal for those who observe it, particularly those who have followed the commands for Ramadan, during which people are expected to abstain from food, drink, smoking and sex from dawn to dusk.

In northern Lebanon, refugees who had fled the devastated Nahr al-Bared camp during weeks of fighting between the army and Islamists, returned to celebrate Eid.

“Overnight they lit candles inside the camp to mark Salat al-Eid,” Samir Lubani, an official with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said, referring to the special prayer to commemorate the end of Ramadan.

Earlier, families of some of the 166 soldiers who died fighting the Islamists briefly prevented some Palestinian refugees from returning to the camp.

An isolated Gaza Strip marked its first Eid al-Fitr on Friday since Hamas wrested control in a bloody takeover from the secular Fatah party of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

Addressing a packed football stadium in the heart of Gaza City, the head of the sacked Hamas government urged his nemesis, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, not to concede to Israel at a US-sponsored meeting expected next month.

“There will be a new peace conference later this year, but this conference will bring great losses, not only for the Palestinian cause but the entire Arab and Muslim world,” said Ismail Haniya after leading thousands in prayer.

After the prayers, hundreds of people went to cemeteries to visit the graves of loved ones, including those killed in clashes with Israel or in the Fatah-Hamas fighting.

At one graveyard families gathered, with veiled women muttering Koranic verses and pouring plastic pales of water over the tombstones, washing away the dust and revealing white marble decked with green Arabic script.

Many of the newer graves commemorate those who were “martyred at the hands of treachery and betrayal,” referring to those killed by rival factions.

Away from the graves, Islamic internet sites were filled with congratulations to the “holy warriors” in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir and elsewhere.

In particular “special congratulations” were paid to the “emirs of Jihad”, notably (Taliban chief) Mullah Omar, Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Omar al-Baghdadi, head of the Iraqi branch of the terror network.

One such jihadist, in the northern Iraqi town of Tuz, marked Eid in a specially sinister way on Friday, exploding a cart of sweets on a crowded playground, killing a child, a father and wounding 20 children, officials said.