LONDON: Europe’s first eco-friendly mosque held a community iftar over the Easter weekend featuring Christian and Jewish speakers to “celebrate our diversity.”
“In this special month, on this blessed night, I’m really honored to welcome so many people to tell them that fasting is all about abstaining and self-discipline,” Sejad Mekic, the head imam of Cambridge Central Mosque, said on Saturday.
“And I congratulate all different members of our communities who have come together here to celebrate our diversity.”
This year, Easter coincides with the Jewish holiday of Passover and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan for the first time in more than three decades.
People attend the community iftar featuring Christian and Jewish speakers to celebrate diversity on April 16, 2022. (@OpenIftar)
The mosque partnered with Open Iftar to host the event, during which key community figures, including the Rev. Devin Mclachlan of Great St Mary’s, the church of the University of Cambridge, and Dr. Rachel Berkson, a member of the Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, addressed the participants.
Open Iftar is an initiative that invites people from all walks of life and faiths to come together during the holy month of Ramadan to break bread and create spaces of mutual dialogue, engagement and exchange.
“We can stand together and we are united. Human solidarity is something that we all cherish and we want to prevail,” Mekic said.
Mclachlan said it was an honor “to speak and learn about fasting in Judaism, Christianity and Islam,” and that the event was a “very apt way to spend Holy Saturday.”
“It was wonderful to reflect about Jewish, Muslim and Christian traditions of fasting, and I think for a lot of Christians it has been a period of rediscovering that spiritual practice of fasting, and what it means and how it ties to charity, and how it ties to prayer. So lovely to have the witness of this community and to be invited,” he said.
