Each year on Eid al-Fitr, the end of the Ramadan month of fasting, 8,000 to 10,000 Muslims stream into the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Md., in shifts for special Eid services, followed by food, singing, dancing and henna decorating to celebrate one of Islam’s most festive holidays.
The religious services are on for this year. But not the rest.
“No celebrations, no festivities,” said Rashid Makhdoom, who is on the center’s board of directors. The holiday falls this year around Sept. 11 — for the first time since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Eid is calculated on a lunar calendar and occurs slightly earlier each year. This week, depending on when in August one started fasting, it is either on the 9th, 10th, or 11th.
“Particularly, people are taking care not to do any celebrations on the day of 9/11, because it is a day of tragedy and we have to be sensitive,” Makh doom said. “That’s the mood of the Muslims, generally very subdued.”
Many mosque services this year will commemorate the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks — victims who include, they point out, Muslims.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department is investigating a handful of apparently anti-Muslim incidents in four states, including the stabbing of a Muslim cabdriver in New York City. FBI agents and civil rights division investigators also are looking into vandalism and other incidents at mosques or mosque construction sites in Arlington, Texas; Murfreesboro, Tenn.; Madera, Calif.; and Waterport, N.Y.
The Washington Post, The Associated Press
