The New England Muslim Community Foundation held its first statewide Eid al-Adha festival in Manchester Wednesday. Festival goers started the day with prayers at Gill Stadium before heading to Derryfield Park for lawn games and halal food.
“This is tied in with one of our religious activities we are all required to do once in a lifetime — to visit Saudi Arabia, the holy house of Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala,” Humayun Kabir of Manchester said. He’s one of the event organizers and said that pilgrims to Saudi Arabia had completed their ritual the day before.
“We are celebrating with them,” Kabir said.
While Eid al-Adha is celebrated every year by New Hampshire Muslims, Kabir said most of the events held by the New England Muslim Community Foundation take place in Massachusetts. After the end of Ramadan in March, New Hampshire Muslims asked him, a former board member of the Islamic Society of New Hampshire, to start an outdoor event to celebrate Eid this month.
He plans to make the outdoor festival an annual tradition in the state.
“The day turned out good, the turnout is good,” Kabir said. “So, inshallah, we'll improve on it. It's a first step.”
Adina Jenkins of Manchester is part of the Islamic Society of New Hampshire and was excited to be one of the event volunteers.
“I think it's a very beautiful thing as a community to get together again to celebrate us and Islam and our pilgrimage,” Jenkins said.
She didn’t know some of the other volunteers she was working with who came from around the region, but she said everyone was in high spirits all day.
“That's the beautiful part of being Muslim – in Islam we're all considered brother and sister,” she said. “So it's immediate, heartfelt love. And we share this journey together.”
