LAC LA BICHE - Family, neighbours and community — that continues to be the local message shared during the holy month of Ramadan, says Imam Muhammad at the Lac La Biche El-Kareem Mosque.
Ramadan — the holiest event on the Muslim calendar — is a month-long observance where Muslims around the world cleanse their bodies and minds with a daily fast lasting from sunrise to sunset. The month follows a lunar cycle and moves ahead by several days each year. Ramadan is also highlighted with charitable donations and kindness to others. The Lac La Biche region has one of the largest, per-capita populations of Muslims in Canada, and Imam Muhammad said this year's Ramadan was celebrated with local Muslim and non-Muslim community members.
A community celebration was held on Saturday afternoon at the Lakeland Agriplex to celebrate Eid El-Fatr, the end of Ramadan. This year's celebration, as well as the special daily prayer services throughout the month saw more people taking part, says the Imam.
"This was really great. We were seeing most of our community again coming after COVID ... all of that fear, that concern had kept many away," he said on Saturday, explaining that it was a blessing to see so many families attending prayer services and taking part in charity work through the month. The spring break holiday for many students across the region also helped to bring more young people to the Mosque, he said.
"It was nice to see, nice to see the whole family getting to participate. It was great to have such a large number of young people coming this year," said the Imam, who has been at the Lac La Biche Mosque for the past five years.
Throughout the Ramadan month, the daily services focused on community, in the spiritual sense and the physical sense.
"My main focus of the sermons was about relationship with community members... with families, between father and mothers and spouses and children — and that moved on to friends and neighbours," the Imam told Lakeland This Week. "The the focus is the community as a whole, to be a united community and to care for one another."
The Imam already sees the close connections that link different cultures and religions in the region.
"There are Muslims and non-Muslim, different ethnicities and backgrounds and languages in the community. It's such a unique and different community already," the Imam said. "It's like one family. It's a small town and people know one another. If I walk to the post office or the bank or the tire shop, people know me and I know them. It really does feel like family here."
Those good feelings and connections were highlighted at Saturday's Eid celebration where the theme was simply to smile.
"The theme for our Eid celebration was to be happy. To go out and laugh and enjoy your life," he said.
Approximately 15 per cent of the municipal population of Lac La Biche County is Muslim. The province of Alberta is said to have a Muslim population of about 200,000. Lac La Biche has the second-oldest mosque in Canada.
