Pressat

Eid al-Adha 2017

Saturday 26 August, 2017

Let us, as Muslims, take the first step to break this cycle of the
slaughter of the innocent.

All Islamic
rituals and devotions are directed towards the
sacrificing of our own desires to please Allah and to serve humanity.
One such act of worship, which is a pillar of faith, is the Hajj — an
occasion when Muslims from across the world gather to worship the One God of
all nations. This act of Hajj has many aspects. For example, all men and
all women together, clad in simple white sheets, go round the Holy Ka‘ba to
show that it is the humanity of a person that matters and not his or her
colour, rank or creed. As people gather for the Hajj, there are no signs
of distinction or segregation. One cannot tell who is a prince and who is a
pauper!

The act of sacrifice, which is an essential part of the Hajj,
symbolizes the sacrifice of our desires. The ongoing slaughter of innocent
human beings around the world show how important it is to curb our rampant
desires. The violence wrought within and upon Muslim countries such as
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Pakistan and the relentless killing of the
innocent in those countries has given rise to a desire on the part of many
within the Muslim Ummah for revenge, which has led to the indiscriminate
killing of the equally innocent in the West. It is to eliminate such cycles
of violence that Islam asks Muslims to curb their desires, including the desire
for revenge, through its acts of worship. The Hajj is one such act
of worship and features in its rites the sacrifice of an animal, standing for
the ‘slaughtering’ or relinquishing of our wayward, all-too-often destructive
impulses or desires.

The members of this organization
earnestly request all Muslims to reflect upon this and to help break this cycle
of revenge which is tarnishing the beautiful face of Islam.

·The Ahmadiyya Association for the Propagation of
Islam (Ahmadiyya Anjuman
Ishaat Islam) was established in 1914 at Lahore to promote the informed
understanding of Islam in the West. In the UK it operated the Shah Jehan Mosque
in Woking until the early 1960s. Its new headquarters is at Dar-us-Salaam,
15 Stanley Avenue, Wembley, HA0 4JQ, UK. In 1924, in Berlin, it built
the first mosque in Continental Europe of the modern era. The Berlin Mosque is now
recognised by the German government as part of the German national heritage.
From its European and other centres around the world this organisation has
taught that Islam promotes peace, harmony and mutual respect between all
communities and nationalities.



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