For 30 days, starting this year on July 9, Muslims fast from dawn to dusk, and abstain from smoking, swearing and sex. But believers in New Zealand would have spent far less time fasting than Islamic followers elsewhere.

Up to 10,000 Muslims are expected to unite at ASB Showgrounds to celebrate the third annual Auckland Eid Day on 9 or 10 August 2013 (lunar dependant), from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Muslims from across Auckland as well as members of the non-Muslim community have been invited to attend the joyous Eid al-Fitr festival. During Eid al-Fitr, Muslims come together in celebration of both spiritual observance through prayer and charity, as well as merriment and achievement marking the end of the 30-day fast through the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

When Ramadan falls is calculated by the lunar Islamic calendar, which means it moves about 11 days every year on the Gregorian date, which follows the solar calendar.

Islam is the third-fastest-growing religion in New Zealand and growth in Auckland is twice as fast as anywhere else in the country.

Making up 0.001 per cent of New Zealand's population in 1986, Muslims rose to 1.8 per cent by 2006.

Today, the Federation of Islamic Associations estimates the number of Muslims here to be between 50,000 and 60,000, with 11 mosques and more than 20 Islamic centres.

The diversity of the local Muslim population - from Africans, Indians and Southeast Asians to Middle Easterners - made it impossible to describe a typical fast-breaking meal, said association president Anwar Ghani.

"We share a common faith and Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam, but Muslims in New Zealand, most of whom are immigrants, are a truly diverse lot," Dr Ghani said.

"Even what we call the festival is different. For example, Malaysian Muslims would often refer to Eid as Hari Raya."

Source

• The New Zealand Herald
• Scoop.co.nz

Such was the media hype that anyone even sleep-walking through Britain last week couldn't have failed to notice the news of the country's "first female Muslim Cabinet Minister", Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, launching a spirited defence of Christianity against "militant secularism" on a "historic" visit to the Vatican where she had a private audience with the Pope.

There was breathless media coverage of her speech in which she told the Vatican that British Muslims stood "side by side with the Pope in fighting for faith"; warned against "militant secularisation" of Christian Europe; and argued for Europe to become "more confident and more comfortable in its Christianity".

Christianity, she said, was an intrinsic part of British and European life and Christian values were as important to its followers as to the people of other faiths.

"You cannot extract Christian foundations from the evolutions of our nations any more than you can erase the spires from our landscape," she said pointing out that her own life, growing up in a northern England milltown, had been influenced by Christian values.

A picture of Baroness Warsi with the Pope, her head respectfully covered with a black dupatta, splashed on newspaper front pages became a defining image of her Vatican visit.

Sceptics can be forgiven for dismissing the event as a tacky political gimmick by the Conservative party to demonstrate its "inclusiveness" and cultural pluralism. Remember — they may remind you — the fury that Prime Minister David Cameron caused among Muslim immigrants when in a speech in Munich last year he savaged multiculturalism saying it encouraged "passive tolerance" of Muslim extremism? And that, too, on a day when the racist English Defence League was holding a major anti-Muslim protest in a predominantly Muslim town. He was accused of "writing propaganda material for EDL".

Similarly, Baroness Warsi can be accused (indeed she has been by a section of her community) of allowing herself to be used by the party as a token Muslim to promote its agenda. Read more

Sources

• Hasan Suroor in The Hindu
• Image: The Telegraph