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A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with novelist and poet Zahid Hussain

Good Morning and Eid Mubarak!

This Eid signals the end of the sacred month of Ramadan.

After a month of spiritual retreat Eid feels like the sudden flourishing of a secret garden. It feels like Spring!
Muslims celebrate two Eids each year and they occur quite closely together in the Islamic calendar, just over two lunar months apart.
For me each Eid feels completely different.

This Eid which happens at the close of Ramadan it is shorter - just one day. It feels exuberantly intense. The other Eid marking the completion of Hajj, the Annual Pilgrimage is three days long. It feels joyfully generous.

Whether we鈥檙e celebrating the Little Eid or the Big Eid (can you guess which is which?) we stand shoulder to shoulder to offer our Eid prayers!
It is a tradition of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) that he offered Eid prayer outdoors, the only time when such a large congregation gathered outside a mosque.

In Manchester, as well as in other British cities, we are witnessing the revival of praying Eid in vast open spaces, usually inner-city parks.
Last year in Birmingham, 140,000 souls bowed down in Small Heath Park.

We only recently began doing this in Manchester, but this year thousands will come together in Platt Fields - just off the Curry Mile - to pray together. Give us a few years and I鈥檓 sure we鈥檒l crack the European record currently held by Birmingham!

Almighty Lord, today we have come together to remember you; remember us. All that is good is from you and we are grateful for your unending forgiveness. Permit us to share your generosity and love with others and pray for your infinite mercy to cleanse and renew the human soul. Amen.

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