Tuesday, 4 March 2025

Ramadan and Lent

Iwan WALTERS (Greenvale) (13:08): Ramadan Mubarak. Since last Friday night Muslims in my community and all around the world have been observing the holiest month of Ramadan, a sacral journey of compassion, community, spiritual reflection and self-discipline. It is a profound privilege to join with so many groups across my community and in so many different forums for iftar dinners and to celebrate this journey of faith. Thank you to all who have generously invited and hosted me. Thank you too to each of the mosque communities in Greenvale as well as our Muslim schools and charitable organisations like Hasene Australia and Islamic Community Milli Gorus, who live their faith through charity, good works, community service and altruism while building a community founded on harmony and mutual respect. To all Muslims in Greenvale and across our world, I wish you a peaceful and fulfilling holy month. Ramadan Mubarak.

This is a profoundly important time for people of faith across Greenvale, with Ramadan again aligning in 2025 with the Christian Lenten period. For tens of thousands in Greenvale’s Eastern Christian, Catholic and Orthodox communities, Great Lent began yesterday with Clean Monday, while the Western Christian liturgical year will see thousands more, including me, observing Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent tomorrow. Regardless of doctrine or theology, Christians across Greenvale are united in fasting and contemplation during this special time of peace, renewal and spiritual sustenance, and I wish them all well in their Lenten observance. It is a profound honour to represent a community in which faith is so deeply important to so many, and this alignment of Lent and Ramadan underscores that significance and the values of charity, compassion, peace and love, which are common to us all.