Prime Minister Edi Rama hosted again this year the traditional iftar dinner during the holy month of Ramadan, in honor of this period of reflection and solidarity. Representatives of religious communities, diplomats, public figures, and personalities from various fields attended the event, turning the iftar into a symbolic moment of unity and dialogue.
In his remarks, Rama emphasized that “the iftar table is the only table where you are at once both guest and host,” describing it as a space where people of different beliefs and life experiences come together.
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Prime Minister Edi Rama
Dear friends and guests,
Believers who fast and those who do not,
I welcome you all to the traditional iftar table that Linda and I have the pleasure of hosting in honor of the values and renewed traditions of the holy month of Ramadan.
The iftar table is the only table at which one is both the one who hosts and the one who is hosted, both master of the house and invited guests free among acquaintances yet connected with strangers gathered around.
You may be the one who gathers others, or the one who is gathered, but there is something greater that unites us: God, Allah, the universe, or simply, in the words of Kant, “the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”
These two worlds meet at the iftar table.
And it is precisely for this reason that even the most convinced atheist, if seated at such a table, cannot avoid reflecting, even for a moment, on the smallness of the self beneath that vast constellation above.
Around this table, the invisible law that lives within every human being ,the law that tells us the other is not a stranger but a neighbor, a fellow traveler, a fragment of the same brief existence under the same sky, takes possession of certain territories of the mind and soul.
Small or large, it claims them and becomes visible to consciousness for everyone gathered around the iftar table.
Fasting teaches a person patience with oneself and the path toward taming the primitive ancestor that still lives within us, the cave dweller within.
Meanwhile, the moment of sitting down at the Iftar table brings together the end of the body’s hunger with the moral law within the human being, through bread shared among people.
That moment becomes dignity growing as bread is shared among many hands, and it becomes an hour that transcends the different paths of life from which those gathered around the table arrive, like this table tonight.
Different beliefs, different professions, different generations. People who come from different places, who pray in different ways or do not pray at all, yet sit together because unlike all the other tables where people gather for lunch or dinner across Albania simply to eat and drink together, the iftar table carries a special light ,where the light above us merges calmly with the light within each of us.
Under that light above ,Kant’s starry heavens ,human beings build small islands of fraternity planted with friendships and encounters.
Islands inhabited by reunions and gatherings, tables of celebration or consolation, surrounded by the transience of our lives and protected not only by the written laws of human coexistence but also by the moral law that resides in the heart of each one of us.
On a day like this, gathered around the iftar table at the end of another day of Ramadan, it is inevitable that one also thinks about the islands of conflict and hostility that people create when they grant their own side a monopoly on truth and turn the other side into a target ,replacing trust in others with fear of them, turning identity into a weapon and hatred into a form of reason.
In this way, the roads and channels of communication between people become paths of quarrel and lines of poison, while bridges between those of different faiths, ethnicities, cultures, customs, and languages become battlefields.
“O humankind, We created you from a male and a female and made you into peoples and tribes so that you may know one another,” the Qur’an says.
Not so that we fear one another.
Not so that we fight one another.
But so that we may know and come closer to one another.
This is the quiet call that gathers people around the iftar table, where suspicion gives way to understanding. Differences among us become values within us. Distinctions stand out ,“this one fast, that one does not; this one comes from here, that one from there”, yet conflict dissolves.
To host an iftar, as in my case by virtue of the privilege of the office I hold, means to stand at least once in the annual calendar at the center. And this time, as this iftar comes after the publication of “The Table of the Moon,” the book containing reflections from the iftars held so far, published thanks to the encouragement of several believing friends and scholars of Islam, this moment in the middle felt even more meaningful to me, particularly as outside these walls the extremes seem further apart than usual.
This sense of growing distance between extremes reminded me of an episode from medieval history, a fourteenth-century Anglo-French battle during which the crown prince, only fourteen years old, watched his father, the King of France, fighting with his sword drawn and shouted to him, “Father, guard your right! Father, guard your left!”
This growing distance between extremes is not so much related to what happens in the cauldron of Albanian politics, where extremes have at times been far more reckless than they appear today, but rather to what is happening across the entire assembly of our social life, the life of those islands I mentioned earlier, where extremes simply move farther apart.
For example, a postcard that circulated more than a century ago, at a time when Albania was often described as a country of illiterates and obscurantists, caused no scandal and no outrage.
Yet today, in Albania in 2026, when I chose that postcard as the cover of “The Table of the Moon,” it was enough for me to be transformed in certain communication channels and portals into “the devil mocking Islam,” while the iftar gatherings themselves were described as “instruments of the prime minister to undermine religion and trample faith.”
The Holy Qur’an calls upon us, saying:
“O you who believe, perhaps one of you is better than another. Do not insult or defame one another.”
The truth is that this iftar, like all those that have preceded it, is not a political necessity. It is a human one. I find it increasingly meaningful and in harmony with the image of that postcard, as old as it is new, where representatives of all religions look toward the same God, and where the words say that religions, which may separate us, should also unite us on the same path because we are all Albanians.
I also find that postcard fully aligned with the principles praised by Islam itself, and, truthfully, by every other religion.
Iftar is a beautiful exercise in social civility, a practice of kindness and humility, where anger, revenge, and punishment remain outside the door along with extremes, and where the care not to wound the table with careless words comes close to each of us.
“O Dawud, we made you a successor on earth; therefore, judge with complete justice and do not follow passion, for passion will lead you away from the path of Allah,” says the Qur’an.
With this meaningful call to sobriety, once addressed to the king of kings and today resonating even more strongly for the most devout of believers, I wish that the fasting of every believer present be accepted and that their prayers be heard and welcomed.
At the same time, to every other guest present tonight, believer or not, Albanian or not, I extend, also on behalf of Linda, my wish that each of you may receive everything you deserve for yourselves and for your loved ones.
And since this iftar is the first of this fourth mandate, in the office that gives me the privilege to invite you here together with Linda ,and since I hope this mandate will be the last one in which Albania has a prime minister outside the house of a united Europe ,allow me to conclude with a detail that strengthens my optimism for Albania.
For the first time in three decades, Ramadan and Christmas will coincide in the year 2030.
Therefore, as I draw the curtain on my remarks, I wish today to express my deep and heartfelt gratitude to Albanian Muslims for who they are. While wishing them every good they pray for, I hope that they will always remain ,as they have been until today ,the living embodiment of Albania’s great truth: that faith is not a line that divides, but a table that unites, and that Islam, just like Christianity, calls Europe to the head of that table.
Thank you very much.
