Eid-ul-Fitr will be ob­served to­mor­row.

The As­ja Hi­laal (Moon Sight­ing) Com­mit­tee con­firmed that the new moon was sight­ed this evening.

In a state­ment, the Com­mit­tee stat­ed, "As such tonight marks the start of the new Is­lam­ic month of Shawwaal with to­mor­row, Mon­day, 2nd May be­ing the first day of the new month - the day of Eid-ul-Fitr (In sha Al­lah)."

Mean­while, COVID-19 pro­to­cols will still be prac­tised by some Mus­lims dur­ing their cel­e­bra­tions to­mor­row. Imam Im­ti­az Ali of the AS­JA Re­al Street Masjid and AS­JA Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber said his mem­bers are still not tak­ing any chances with COVID-19.

He ex­plained that they will con­tin­ue with their Pick-up If­tar (the food to break­fast) and Din­ner pack­age which was start­ed when the pan­dem­ic struck. "Even though the gov­ern­ment has re­laxed some of the re­stric­tions many of our mem­bers feel un­com­fort­able to re­lax com­plete­ly. In our Masjid, we are still fol­low­ing all the COVID rules. You have to walk with your per­son­al prayer mats, of course, your masks and there is still so­cial dis­tanc­ing, so we are still tak­ing those pre­cau­tions. So the pick-up If­tar is part of those pre­cau­tions. We don't have full din­ing that we use to have be­fore COVID so we con­tin­ue in that re­gard. With the Eid cel­e­bra­tions, there will be many more per­sons in the masjid so we are mak­ing ex­tra space avail­able in our hall. We are en­sur­ing that the PA sys­tem works well so they can hear the ser­mon and they will get a chance to meet per­sons again."

He ex­plained that Eid would on­ly be cel­e­brat­ed to­day if the new moon cres­cent was sight­ed. Say­ing that for Mus­lims Eid is a time for hap­pi­ness, he said, "Es­pe­cial­ly, in this COVID sea­son where we have be­come more cog­nizant of val­ue of fam­i­ly. Every­thing now is fam­i­ly gath­er­ings and fam­i­ly meet­ing each oth­er with the re­stric­tions in place." Not­ing that COVID is still rag­ing in many parts of the world, he said al­though T&T's death rate has dropped, the in­fec­tion rate is still rea­son­ably high. "So my Eid mes­sage this year is to still be care­ful, still take all the pre­cau­tions," he added.

CLICK FOR MORE NEWS