Eid Al Adha is a time to celebrate with family and friends, a time to rejoice and one of remembrance. It’s a time for giving, sharing with others, or an opportunity to perform Haj in a faith that embraces 1.8 billion people around the world and touches so many others. While we in the UAE are blessed to live in a land that is flourishing with wise and visionary leaders and a government that works for all, there are so many more now at this time of celebration who are afflicted by suffering from social and political unrest, from the forces of nature and from historical wrongs.
Across this wider Middle East, there are millions who live not knowing what the next year will bring — whether they will be able to return to their broken homes and communities across Syria, or whether they will face many more months and years depending on others. And as the terrible conflict in Syria now winds down, there are still those who suffer there, enduring shot and shell, not knowing if these days will be their last, or the start of a new and more tragic chapter in their lives.
In the southern Indian state of Kerala, there are hundreds of thousands who now are trying to put their lives back together, waiting for storm waters to recede, waiting for relief, cherishing every drop of clean water and morsel of food now as clearing and cleaning operations get underway. Yes, the response from the UAE, its leaders, government and all its diverse people has been tremendous, but there is still much that needs to be done, and much that still needs to be donated.
In camps scattered across Cox’s Bazaar and other monsoon-soaked regions of Bangladesh, nearly a million Rohingya refugees mark this Eid Al Adha unsure of their future, not knowing if they can ever return to their homes and villages across the Rakhine state in Myanmar. And should they indeed ever return to those homes and villages that have been burnt and razed, they will never again be able to look at their fellow Myanmarese without suspicion and without ever forgetting the horrors inflicted on their brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, simply because they were Rohingya and persecuted for their religion.
It’s Eid too across other parts of the Middle East, where hundreds of thousands suffer, living in camps, wondering what will happen, dismayed at what has happened. The desperate and desolate too who take to the seas for Europe must be remembered.
