Tag: Eid-Al-Adha

London most popular destination for Eid

London most popular destination for Eid

Dubai, 16 hours, 53 minutes ago

London was the most popular overseas destination among Middle East travellers for Eid al Adha this year, marginally beating out last year’s favourite, Istanbul, from the top spot, a report said.

Leading hotel price comparison site HotelsCombined analysed its online hotel booking demand out of Mena in the lead up to Eid and found that within the GCC, Dubai retained the top destination position yet again, followed by Abu Dhabi.

With an increase of 100 per cent in demand, Abu Dhabi is rapidly gaining popularity among Mena travellers as a hub of culture, sport and leisure, with the average stay value posting at a healthy $ 1,320. However, travellers are willing to spend more on European destinations like London, which posts a significantly higher average stay value of $ 3,300.

Meanwhile, other top Eid destinations like Kuala Lumpur, Paris and Istanbul saw their average hotel values decline as a result of lower hotel prices and currency fluctuations.

Dubai continues to have the same year-on-year popularity with a consistent average stay value of $ 2,050.

Wael El Behi, general manager of Ramada Downtown Dubai, said: “Dubai is by far the best destination in the region and one of the best in the world. It is the favourite destination for the GCC and ME markets due to its proximity to the region’s key capitals, regular and frequent flights from and to the world, innovative infrastructure, abundant array of events and safety and security measures.”

Amer Al Halabi, regional manager of Mena for HotelsCombined, said: “Dubai’s emphasis on family-focused events and its 48-hour shopping sales throughout Eid attract a lot of interest among Mena travellers, especially those from Saudi Arabia. It’s also interesting to note that even though London is a more expensive destination to travel to, Mena travellers continue to flock there in ever larger numbers.”

HotelsCombined notes that hotel prices vary from one booking site to another and recommends that travellers who book online use a meta-search engine to compare prices and find their ideal hotel stay for the best price. – TradeArabia News Service

via London most popular destination for Eid.

October 31, 2013
Turkey Celebrating Eid Al-Adha

Mosques were filled with people who performed their Eid al-Adha prayers, and celebrated their holiday.

Turkey began to celebrate four-day Eid al-Adha holiday, or Feast of Sacrifice.

Besides Turkey; Macedonia and Albania began to celebrate Eid al-Adha today, while other Islamic countries will begin to celebrate on October 26, and Pakistan, India and Bangladesh on October 27 due to different calculating methods in Islamic calendar, or Hijri calendar.

Early in the morning, mosques were filled with people who performed their Eid al-Adha prayers, and celebrated their holiday.

President Abdullah Gul is celebrating the holiday in Ankara, while Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul.

Gul performed his prayer in Sungulu Mosque in capital, and celebrated the holiday with the people in the mosque.

Premier Erdogan, who performed his prayer in Mimar Sinan Mosque in Istanbul, expressed hope that the terrorism in Turkey and the violence in Syria would end soon and peace would prevail in the region.

Eid al-Adha or Feast of the Sacrifice is an important religious holiday celebrated by Muslims worldwide to honor the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of obedience to God, before God intervened to provide him with a sheep to sacrifice instead.

The basis for the Eid al-Adha comes from the 196th verse of sura 2 (Al-Baqara) of the Quran.

Eid al-Adha celebrations start after the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia by Muslims worldwide, descent from Mount Arafat.

The meat from the sacrificed animal is divided into three parts. The family retains one third of the share; another third is given to relatives, friends and neighbors; and the other third is given to the poor and needy. The regular charitable practices of the Muslim community are demonstrated during Eid al-Adha by concerted efforts to see that no impoverished person is left without an opportunity to partake in the sacrificial meal during these days.

Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 lunar months in a year of 354 or 355 days. Being a purely lunar calendar, it is not synchronized with the seasons. With an annual drift of 10 or 11 days, the seasonal relation repeats about every 33 Islamic years.

AA

October 27, 2012
Dense fog disrupts life in Marmara region

Densely foggy conditions hindered air, sea and land traffic in Turkey’s northwestern Marmara region on Monday. The adverse conditions actually started Sunday, when vacationers were trying to return home after a nine-day Eid al-Adha holiday.

Particularly in İstanbul, the situation led authorities to restrict air and marine traffic. Some airplanes were unable land at Sabiha Gökçen Airport on the Asian side of the city and were instead advised to land at İstanbul Atatürk Airport on the European shore. These extra landings, combined with the many passengers returning from vacation and the hajj, caused an unexpected intensity at Atatürk, where some travelers had to wait for several hours to retrieve their luggage.

The Bosporus was closed to vessels in transit starting at 1:30 on Monday morning. The authorities later cancelled all ferry trips as well, due to the lack of visibility. The ferries did not begin sailing until around noon. The Dardanelles found itself in a similar situation. Vessels were denied entry into the strait where, according to officials, the range of visibility dropped to less than a few meters.

Land traffic was also obstructed by the fog, particularly on İstanbul’s Asian side near the northwestern province of Düzce. Vehicles trying to enter and leave İstanbul were stuck in heavy traffic due to the dense fog.

The fog had a lesser impact on Ankara but the capital’s residents still had a troublesome Monday, facing difficulties getting to work on time in the morning. Heavy rains are forecast to follow the recent fog. In the week ahead, the officials predict rain particularly in İstanbul and İzmir but, other than the eastern provinces, rainy weather will affect the entire country. The fog in İstanbul should disappear by Tuesday morning, thanks to the southwesterly winds expected to blow through the metropolitan area until this weekend. Citizens residing in the western coastal provinces, as well as in İstanbul, are cautioned to take measures against possible damage due to the strong winds. Temperatures are expected to drop by four or five Celsius degrees throughout Turkey.

November 24, 2010
Armenian vice-mayor holds namaz on Kurban Bairam

November 18, 2010 | 13:51

Raffi Hermon Araks, Vice-Mayor of the islands adjacent to Istanbul, has temporarily assumed the office of mayor and organized Kurban Bairam for local residents.

Hurriyet reports that the official, who is of Armenian descent, as well as his people took part in namaz and then distributed the sacrificed meat among the needy families. He congratulated the local residents, assuring them that he is ready to perform a namaz with “our Muslim brothers and offer a prayer at the synagogues of Jewish brothers.”

via Armenian vice-mayor holds namaz on Kurban Bairam | Armenia News – NEWS.am.

November 19, 2010
Eid al Adha animal slaughter sparks debate in Muslim world

Animal rights activists are speaking out against the treatment of millions of animals that will be killed and eaten during the Eid al Adha holiday, as suppliers and butchers are accused of ignoring religious edicts on humane slaughter.

On Friday, an Australian animal rights group reiterated its call for the Australian government to stop the sale of livestock to the Middle East after activists documented sheep in Kuwait and Bahrain allegedly being subjected to brutal treatment.

Australia is one of the largest exporters of livestock to the region, with trade totaling $297 million in 2009, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. The group has already succeeded in banning livestock export to Egypt.

“In the same way that Christmas has become the peak time of animal suffering in the West with vast numbers of factory farmed animals slaughtered for Christmas celebrations, the Festival of Sacrifice is the worst time of animal suffering throughout the Middle East,” the Animals Australia campaign homepage read.

A recent report in the Egyptian newspaper the Daily News featured butchers who admitted to ignoring Islamic hilal methods of slaughter in order to meet the high demand for meat.

“Islam has put regulations for the slaughtering process ensuring that the animal is well treated before, during and after slaughtering and those who defy these rules are punished,” Sheik Saber Taalab, former member of the Islamic Research Center in Cairo, told the paper.

Eid al Adha commemorates the old testament story of Abraham, who was willing to sacrifice his son, Isaac, for God. According to the story, Isaac was saved when God saw Abraham’s faith and gave him a ram to sacrifice in place of his son.

Muslims around the world honor Abraham by slaughtering livestock, mostly sheep, and distributing the meat to the poor or cooking it and sharing the meal with family and friends.

Traditionally, many families choose to slaughter the animal themselves rather than buy meat from a butcher, and the smell and sight of blood fill the streets of many towns and cities. While these scenes make dramatic visuals for animal rights groups, defenders of the practice maintain that if done properly, traditional slaughter is a relatively humane way to kill an animal.

In some places, the debate over Eid al Adha is controversial for different reasons.

The sight of sheep’s blood running through the streets of Istanbul is a vivid reminder of Turkey’s ongoing struggle to balance its secular and Muslim identities and allay the underlying class tensions.

“The age-old tradition … has become controversial in Turkey as conservative immigrants from rural Anatolia have migrated to Istanbul and other large cities, where it is neither easy nor welcome to slaughter an animal in the street,” wrote Mustafa Akyol for the Hurriyet Daily News. “Doing so creates ‘disturbing scenes’ according to some urban Turks, and Turkish media outlets that have been complaining about encountering animals, and their bloody remains, in unexpected parts of the city.”

–Meris Lutz in Beirut

Photo: Activists from Animals Australia took photos of animals they say are being improperly transported and killed in Bahrain for the Eid al Adha holiday. Credit: Animals Australia

via MIDDLE EAST: Eid al Adha animal slaughter sparks debate in Muslim world | Babylon & Beyond | Los Angeles Times.

November 18, 2010
Eid-ul-Adha Family Traditions

With the approach of Eid-ul-Adha this year, it felt like a good time to reflect on some of the family traditions that we had begun as a family and some of the ones that my husband and I had brought with us from our own childhoods.

Eid-ul-Adha is one of two Eids that Muslims celebrate around the world. The first is Eid-ul-Fitr which celebrates the fact that we have fasted for a month during the Muslim month of Ramadan. The second celebrates the Prophet Ibrahim’s (Abraham’s) willingness to sacrifice his beloved son for the Lord who was even more beloved to him and God’s mercy in sparing that son.

As a child in London, the two Eids set the parameters of what celebration meant for us: new clothes, lots of special foods, getting away with misbehaviour because the grown-ups were not allowed to tell us off, going visiting and a visit to the corner shop to spend our Eid money on as many sweets as we could get our hands on. For my husband who grew up in Lahore, Pakistan, Eid meant pretty much the same, just on a far larger scale.

Many years later however, we seem to have lost some of the simplicity around the celebration. Eid seems to have become far more about expensive gifts, special events and parties and perhaps compensating for other things. Growing up as children in a religious Muslim family, my parents discouraged participation in Christmas festivities and we always felt like we were missing out on the fun. As an adult and a religious person, I can see why my parents did not want us to join in the Christmas fun. There is a saying of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) that:

“Whoever imitates a people is one of them.” (Narrated by Abu Dawood).

As a parent, I wanted to raise my children in my faith, but without banning everything left, right and centre. This being the case, my golden rule is that if I discourage something, I have to replace it with something better. So instead of Christmas in our home, we go the extra mile for Eid. I make cards to distribute and banners and bunting for the house. We put up lights and balloons. We send sweets and a card to each of our children’s classes. I spend the year stashing away gifts for everyone and prizes and goodies for loot bags for our rowdy annual Eid party.

Until this year that is. I realised that there is such a thing as over-compensating. Eid is no longer fun when it becomes too much work and the expense becomes a burden. Islam encourages simplicity and thoughtfulness and so this year I have decided to focus not on spending lots of money to make Eid enjoyable, but to spend my time to recreate some of our childhood traditions and to enjoy some of the traditions we have created with our children.

As the Islamic calendar is lunar, a holiday starts the evening before, so our Eid will start in the evening and run to the next evening. I will spend the evening trying to recreate my mother-in-law’s famous rice pudding which she cooks for hours for my husband. I will call everyone I know to wish them “Eid Mubarak” (blessed Eid). I will pop over to my Mum’s so that I, my daughter and my sisters can decorate our hands with henna. After we have put the kids to bed, my husband and I will go for a stroll so that he can buy me bangles to match my new clothes (it is traditional in Lahore for men to buy their wives gifts on Eid night and particularly colourful bangles). I will get up early the next day and make cupcakes for the children’s breakfast and vermicelli in milk (a dish called sevaiya) for my husband. While my husband and two little boys go for their Eid prayers in the morning, my daughter and I will glam up. We will have lunch at my Mum’s which is everyone’s favourite part of the day and then go to visit family and friends while the children watch cartoons with an indulgent aunty watching over them. I will leave the kids with their aunty and spend the afternoon with my husband cooking for the whole extended clan who are invited for the evening meal. Finally, I’ll sit down to my evening meal and relax while everyone else clears everything away.

That is the plan anyway. The kids have asked how many gifts they are getting and on being told one each, they have been looking a bit dubious. I am hoping that we make the day so much fun that they don’t mind too much about the number of “things” they receive. I also hope to remind them why we celebrate – the emphasis on the willingness to make great sacrifices and the love and mercy between each of us and Al-Wadud (the Most Loving – one of the attributes Muslims perceive God through). A day of celebration is wonderful when we have family, good food, our best clothes and gifts, but it is even more of a pleasure when we imbue our celebrations with a sense of something not just fun but deeply spiritual.

via Eid-ul-Adha Family Traditions | InCultureParent.

November 17, 2010