Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama delivered at the iftar in Peshkopi:
Dear brothers and sisters of the Islam creed!
Dear attendees!
I am honoured to be today with you, here in Peshkopi, to break the fast and to meditate on the tempering virtues of deprivation from excess, which, like excessive words, is the true poverty.
I delivered a speech at the iftar in Elbasan last night, and if you allow me, I’d like to continue from where I left. From Hafiz Ali Korça, to whom I return as to a gravity centre every time I want to speak frankly to my Muslim fellow citizens, I will continue with Ali Kraja, another distinguished Muslim thinker in the 20th century Albania.
I was suggested this author by a good connoisseur of Islam, pointing out an essential aspect of the obligation and the sense of responsibility of anyone who has embraced the Prophet’s message.
In one of his pamphlets, “Do we need religion, does it hinder national unity?”, Hafiz Ali Kraja argues with conviction that the mission of a religion that does not aim at conveying to believers a pronounced sensibility to social duties and responsibilities, is destined to fail. “It would be an error”, – Kraja says, “to think of the nation as a gathering of special individuals who don’t have the sense of responsibility and duty towards each other, and towards society.”
The unity of a community sharing the same language, blood and tradition, cemented not by violence or deception, but by everyone’s adherence to a common social contract, to the constitution, to laws, rules and self-restraint, is, for Islam itself, in its organic evolution, the condition of equal treatment and the guarantee of a permanent citizen’s right.
The knowledge that the two great hafiz, Kraja and Korca, have of the institution of political democracy, with all its obligations in every country and at any time, should be read in this light.
There can’t be individual emirs who can teach without the slightest sense of responsibility for what they preach, and a silent and obedient Muslim mass. Everyone is equal among equals, especially when we talk about a people that has been as much intertwined and part of each other as the Albanians.
It’s not in vain that the two hafiz clearly declare in the 20s that “in the Quran’s language, not only the citizens of a country, but the people of the whole world are brothers, democrats, not aristocrats.”
Can it be said today that this definition is still rooted in the corpus of citizen believers, of the religious citizen, of the fellow citizen believer?
The friend I mentioned earlier, with whom I was exchanging these thoughts and raising these questions on the phone – for I’m not always on Facebook, so don’t think that I deal also with serious things – forced me to go to a deeper level taking as example the groundless polemic of a controversy that was created shortly before between the respect of Eid’s celebration and the general elections that take place on the same day. We can say that more than due to the success of human efforts, these elections are taking place due to the divine intervention.
“Eid is a permanent call to action, through the fruits of sacrifice and of the holy war for justice. According to the purest Qur’an spirit, the doctrine of Islam always declares the principle act in every place, at any time and under any circumstances, without any distinction, for the realization of the best, the most righteous, for the establishment of the order of justice and a unbiased human society.”
My friend sent me also the Arabic phrase which, unfortunately, I can neither read nor even pronounce without blushing in front of the imam.
What are choices but one of the ways to achieve good intentions?
The Maslaha Shar’iyya, the jurisprudence of the common good in Islam calls for social and civic engagement, especially through the exercise of the vote, whenever and wherever it is required to avoid damaging society and ensuring the common interest of each nation.
The enlightened in religion should not be afraid at all when they declare that no trust or forecast in faith is deemed fulfilled, even less the fulfilling and perfect fruit of a celebration such as the Eid, if we don’t take into account and execute faithfully the major order of the Prophet who says:
“Each of you has been given you a roadmap to follow. Compete with one another always in fulfilling the right acts. We will all return to God. Thus it will be clarified to us where we different in thought from the one other”.
Brothers and sisters, the sacred month of Ramadan is a time of trial and, in the noblest sense of the word, is a confrontation with the self, with consciousness, which makes you fully believers but also fully citizen, a civilized spirit in two parables.
May your Ramadan be easy, white, sacred and prosperous!
