Not long removed from a Florida pastor’s thwarted plan to burn the Qur’an, a local Muslim official took a moment to weigh in on Islam’s holy book.
“This book should be read, not burned,” Shaykh Deen Zak Sheikh said at city hall yesterday.
A special display focusing on the Hajj — the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia — was unveiled at city hall yesterday, with local practitioners of the faith reading passages from the Qur’an. The display describes the pilgrimage and the Muslim faith as a whole.
“Please visit the display at your leisure,” Sheikh said. “But try to think of this as something major and not something simple.”
The display is part of the City’s Celebrating Our Faiths program. It was developed jointly with the Edmonton Interfaith Centre for Education and Action and the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities to create greater awareness and understanding.
“The more we understand each other, the more we get along, the more we build a stronger city,” Mayor Stephen Mandel said at the event.
