Festival marking the end of Ramadan in 2021 , , A message from the Federal President
Bundespräsident Steinmeier
Source: © Bundesregierung / Steffen Kugler
I send you my warmest greetings and best wishes for the festival marking the end of Ramadan 2021. A blessed Eid-al-Fitr to you!
Eid-al-Fitr is a welcoming festival, a feast for all – for Muslim families and for their friends. It is painful that this celebration together at the end of Ramadan is now curtailed for the second year in a row by the restrictions that the pandemic has imposed on us. Eid-al-Fitr is not only the great promise that lies at the end of a long period of sacrifice and renunciation; it is also a shared community event. It is a festival that one wishes to celebrate not in a small circle, but rather with the whole family and many fellow believers.
I want to thank you very much for enduring the disappointment of going without large gatherings during this long pandemic. It is with a heavy heart that I must once again ask for discipline and for your understanding that this year too Eid-al-Fitr can only be celebrated in very small gatherings. I ask you this, however, in the ultimate hope that the faster the vaccination campaign progresses, the sooner all of us can put these hardships behind us and once again come together in community. Adhering to the restrictions today is your invaluable contribution to the community of our whole country, and I thank you most sincerely for this.
In many religious traditions, the contemplative practice of fasting is tied to atonement and reconciliation with God. It is my hope that the shared experience of having suffered through the pandemic will bring the religious communities of our country, as well as the many people who do not identify with any religion, closer together.
I hope that the sacrifice made by Germany’s Muslims in doing without a large celebration today will be rewarded with an even bigger celebration very soon.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier