Muslims prepare for at-home Eid celebration

Sydney’s Muslim community urged to celebrate Eid al-Adha within their own households amid fears the sacred holiday could become a superspreader event.

The Lakemba mosque in southwest Sydney. Picture: Hollie Adams

Sydney’s Muslim community has been urged to celebrate Eid al-Adha within their own households, as health authorities flagged the sacred holiday had the potential to become a superspreader event.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian acknowledged that thousands of Sydneysiders, including many in the hard-hit southwest suburbs who would normally be partaking in “special celebrations” with family and friends this week, would be struggling, but warned against any illegal gatherings.

“We need families to stay in their family home and not move from household to household,” she said, on Monday. “Unfortu­nately, too many people are getting sick from that.”

Australian Federation of Islamic Councils founder Keysar Trad said he and other faith and community leaders had spent weeks co-ordinating ways for ­religious traditions to go ahead remotely as much as possible.

“We’ve been advertising people to observe the lockdown faithfully and keep the celebration private in the nuclear family until the lockdown is over,” he said.

“What our organisation is doing is offering the Eid sermon through Facebook and telling people to leave the prayer and put on an instruction video from one of our imans showing how to perform the prayer.

“Definitely Eid is a time that brings family and friends together after prayers. There are a lot of visits among people and the exchange of good wishes – now it’s going to happen without face-to-face meetings because we want to make sure we help stop the spread of the virus.”

Penrith-based imam Soner Coruhlu said even though the community, especially those in the Fairfield, Liverpool and Canterbury-Bankstown areas that remain under hard lockdown, would be unable to meet with family and friends, they could still observe many important aspects of the festivities. “This Eid is also about sharing food with friends and family but particularly the poor and the needy,” he said.

“In Islam, it is not about the slaughter of livestock in and of itself that holds reward, rather the pious act that follows where those that barely have a meal to eat in an entire month have something to nourish them for weeks following Eid al-Adha.”

Moorebank father of four Khaled Elmassri, 47, who returned home from hospital on Saturday after he was admitted, struggling to breathe with Covid-19, urged the community to abide by health orders and stay home.

“Now all the people have to stay home, you have to pray with the sheik (online), after you can message your family, your cousins, but you can’t visit,” he said.

“It is very hard for us.”