Last week something very rare happened, which affects both Christians and Muslims, and helps us to identify how much our two faiths have in common, at a time when many people are drawing on Christian themes and motifs to try and drive a wedge between us. Unusually, and occurring roughly once in 35 years, the start of Ramadan and Lent coincided.
An interesting story appeared in the online news site of Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), Ireland’s national public service broadcaster, picking up the words of Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dermot Farrell. At a mass on Ash Wednesday at University College Dublin, he noted not only that Ramadan and Lent had begun on the same day, but that the intentions of both holy seasons were the same – ‘ prayer, fasting, giving and forgiving’.
The broadcaster found a similar sentiment at the Islamic Centre of Ireland in Blanchardstown. Leading the prayers, Sheikh Dr Umar Al Qadri described the beginning of Lent and Ramadan on the same day as “a very beautiful coincidence”. “Our Christian brothers and sisters have the season of fasting, prayer, reflection, and so do we as Muslims have it”, he said, as he pointed to our common ancestor, shared also with Judaism, the patriarch Abraham. “We must emphasise more the commonalities between these different faith traditions, between our communities, and that will help to combat, for example, division, combat bigotry, hate that we find sometimes”, he said.
Archbishop Dermot Farrell used this coincidence to issue a statement calling on Catholics to make a special effort to express their spiritual closeness to Muslims, and stated categorically that it was “completely wrong and contrary to any church teaching” that any other religion should be attacked for being a different faith or an Islamic faith.
Humza Yousaf, a Muslim and former first minister of Scotland, has posted a short video on Facebook to drive this message home.