Benin City- Chairman of Edo State Council for Islamic Affairs, Alhaji Abdulazeez Igbinidu has congratulated the entire Muslims Ummah on their successful completion of fasting and other acts of worships in the holy month of Ramandan.
Alhaji Igbinidu who made this known in a statement in Benin City on Thursday ahead of the I’d el fitri celebration, prayed that Almighty Allah “accepts all our various acts of ibadah”, just as he thanked Almighty Allah for making it possible for Muslims to witness the end of the month of ramandan.
According to the Islamic leader, the fact that majority of believing men and women stepped up their acts of worship because of the benefits inherent in the month of Ramadan, it is important that we continue with all the good things Muslims engaged themselves with during the holy month by not falling back to their old ways of doing things even with the month of ramandan over. “We should continue to improve on the new standard in worship as established during this month. That is we should continue with night prayers, reading and studying our Holy Qur’an, arms giving, etc.
“We should not forget to pay our zakat ul fitri to the needy in our society because our fasting cannot be complete if we fail to pay zakat fitri when we have the means. Zakat filtri purifies the fasting person of some of the mistakes and short coming he or she may have made during the spiritual exercise. There is no doubt that nobody is above mistake, so zakat filtri purifies us so that our act of worship will be accepted by Allah”.
On the impact of Covid 19 on congregational prayers especially Juma’at services, Alhaji Igbindu enjoined Muslims to continue to obey the rules preventive rules set for Muslims to be able to worship Allah more in good health.
“My brothers and sisters in Islam, I want to remind us that it is important to remember the reason for this festival so that we will not deviate and to also be careful on whatever we do during and after this period. We fasted and carried out other act of worship. It was a period of spiritual cleansing and we should not do anything to invalidate our fasting.
“In the light of this, brothers and sisters, we should be moderate in our actions during this celebration. So we should avoid the temptation to engage in elaborate celebration in order to be able to meet other financial responsibilities.
We should also avoid celebrating with alcohol and other items and actions that are forbidden in Islam”
