Eid Feast in 2023 occured on 21 - 22 of April
At certain part of the year you could notice your social media dashboard is blooming with “Eid Mubarak” wishes. Of course, that depends how closely you work with Muslim countries or colleagues. For making international and intercultural teams successful, it is necessary to know and understand other cultures. So, if “Eid Mubarak” tells you nothing or a little, why not to have a quick look below? 😊
Eid Mubarak – meaning
“Eid Mubarak” means nothing else than wishing someone “Blessed Holiday” and it refers to the feast celebrated by world of Islam just now – Eid al-Fitr (in Turkey – Ramazan Bayrami). General meaning is “holiday of a fasting end”. Simply saying, this is the grand ending of 29/30 days-long Ramadan, when people are gathering in joyful celebrations. What important – this is one of the greatest holidays for Muslims, celebrated all over the world – if you want to compare its significance to other religions – I would say that will be like Easter in Europe or Divali in India
When?
A few lines above I wrote that holiday is celebrated right now. Which is partially true, with one remark… Year-to-year Muslim countries are arguing about the date of Eid-al Fitr, which is not so obvious, because is determined by the sighting of the crescent moon, which marks the beginning of the new lunar month of Shawwal.
In some countries, like Saudi Arabia, a group of trained observers, known as the Hilal Committee, are engaged to confirm the sighting of the new moon.
This is the Lunar calendar observation, so even if there are few hours difference it may cause that holiday moves to another day in Gregorian calendar. In practice, some countries will argue that they already observed moonrise, some will say this is not possible, some another will impose their international sympathies by sticking to one opinion or to another. No hard feelings, but interesting aspect of international relations 🙂
What`s the effect? For example, this year (2023) countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and UAE celebrated on Friday. Morocco, Oman and Pakistan on Saturday, meanwhile Iraq, Lebanon and Libya took both days and left the final decision to their local communities.
Saying “Eid Mubarak” to your Muslim colleagues will be really great no matter the day, but keeping in mind, that this important holiday can vary from country to country and maybe it requires different work organization to your team, will be great show of respect to you peers.
