{"id":74134,"date":"2016-09-14T10:29:36","date_gmt":"2016-09-14T10:29:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=19c02e341e8846326b3c451a0ef8fdd9"},"modified":"2016-09-14T10:29:36","modified_gmt":"2016-09-14T10:29:36","slug":"speech-lessons-from-eid-al-adha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=74134","title":{"rendered":"Speech: Lessons from Eid al-Adha"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Let me start by thanking Hassan Rasool for that beautiful reading.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been marking this festival every year for as long as I can remember.<\/p>\n

And hearing that reading just then really took me back to when I was a boy, sat on the floor of a mosque in Bristol.<\/p>\n

As a child I always got really excited about Eid.<\/p>\n

With so many imams and other faith leaders here today I\u2019d like to say it was because I was a holy young man.<\/p>\n

That I was deeply moved by the religious meaning, the lessons we can learn\u2026<\/p>\n

To be honest, I was really just looking forward to getting lots of money from all the adults in the family!<\/p>\n

I remember when I was little, one December I complained to my brother.<\/p>\n

I said: \u201cIt\u2019s so unfair, all my friends are getting Christmas presents but we don\u2019t get any.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he said: \u201cDon\u2019t be daft, Saj\u2026 They only have one Christmas each year, but you get TWO Eids!\u201d<\/p>\n

Things are bit different with my kids.<\/p>\n

We celebrate the big Muslim festivals; I was back home in Bristol over the weekend marking Eid with my mum.<\/p>\n

But we also mark all the Christian ones too.<\/p>\n

Which is great.<\/p>\n

Except I\u2019m now on the hook for THREE sets of presents AND a whole pile of Easter eggs!<\/p>\n

I suppose it\u2019s a model of modern Britain.<\/p>\n

And it has echoes in my professional life.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m here today celebrating Eid.<\/p>\n

Yesterday I spoke at the Chief Rabbi\u2019s Conference<\/a>, looking ahead to the high holy days of Judaism.<\/p>\n

And as the Cabinet Minister responsible for community cohesion, I meet with figures from all the major faith groups, as does Lord Bourne, who\u2019s here with us today.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a story I heard not long after taking on this job.<\/p>\n

I shared it with the Rabbis yesterday and I think it bears repeating this afternoon.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s about meeting between Nigeria\u2019s first president, Nnamdi Azikiwe, and the first premier of the Northern Nigeria region, Ahmadu Bello.<\/p>\n

They were trying to find ways to defuse the religious tensions that divided the country they both loved.<\/p>\n

Azikiwe, who was a Christian, ended the meeting by saying \u201cLet us now forget our differences.\u201d<\/p>\n

To which Bello, who was a Muslim, replied, \u201cNo \u2013 let us now understand our differences.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are more than 63 million people living in these islands and no two of us are the same.<\/p>\n

We believe in different things, we vote for different parties, we worship in different ways.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s one of the things that makes Britain great.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t brush our differences under the carpet and try to impose a one-size-fits-all secularism.<\/p>\n

We bring together different people and different ideas and from that we create wonderful things.<\/p>\n

But those positives can only come about if we understand each other, if we respect and embrace our differences.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why dialogue between people of different faiths is so important.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I\u2019m pleased to see so many religious groups represented here today.<\/p>\n

And why I was so proud to be in the audience a few years ago when David Cameron hosted the first-ever public reading of the Qur\u2019an to be held at 10 Downing Street.<\/p>\n

Bringing our often misunderstood faith into the heart of the British establishment sent a powerful message about the Prime Minister\u2019s commitment to Britain\u2019s Muslim community.<\/p>\n

And let me reassure you all that that is going to continue under Theresa May.<\/p>\n

As the Prime Minister said in her Eid message<\/a>, she wants to make Britain a country that works for everyone.<\/p>\n

And of course that includes Muslims.<\/p>\n

It was our previous female Prime Minister, Lady Thatcher, who said that \u201cNo faith is a faith only for Sundays\u201d.<\/p>\n

She was talking about her Methodist upbringing.<\/p>\n

But her message rings true for all of us.<\/p>\n

Because, at Eid al-Adha, if there\u2019s one thing we can take from the story of Ibrahim and the sacrifice it\u2019s that true faith is about more than what you believe.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s about what you are prepared to do.<\/p>\n

How you live your life, the values that guide you day to day.<\/p>\n

The Islam I was raised to believe in is all about compassion, respect and, above all, understanding.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m delighted to share it with so many of you.<\/p>\n

Thank you, and Eid Mubarak.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sajid Javid celebrates the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha with figures from Britain’s faith communities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74134"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}