Muslims in Taiwan gathered at the Taipei Grand Mosque yesterday and on Sunday to hold an auction to raise funds to assist Indonesian and Palestinian Muslims. Yesterday, they also celebrated the Eid-al-Adha religious festival.
"The amount of money raised may not be much, but it symbolizes our sincerity in reaching out," said Ting Nai-hsin (
The two-day auction attracted thousands of Muslims and non-Muslims, diplomats from ten countries, and representatives from the foreign ministry and Taipei City Government.
Diplomats from Indonesia and Jordan expressed their gratitude to the organizers of and participants in the event.
Eid-al-Adha, the festival of sacrifice, commemorates Abraham's willingness to obey God by sacrificing his son; it concludes the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.
"This auction was organized to support Palestinian and Indonesian refugees, who are living in bad conditions, suffering because of political and natural causes such as earthquakes," said Bilal N. Hmoud, director of the Jordanian Commercial Office.
"I was indeed heartily surprised when the Taipei Grand Mosque came to me two weeks ago to raise the idea [of hosting this auction]," said Danny H. Kusumapradja, director of immigration and consular affairs at the Indonesian Economic and Trade Office in Taipei.
Organizers said they were focusing on Palestinian and Indonesian Muslims because of the recent earthquake in Indonesia that left tens of thousands of Muslims homeless and because of the plight of the Palestinians in the face of violent confrontations with Israel.
A recent UN report found unemployment in the territories has tripled to 38 percent and GDP has fallen by half.
Although Arab governments promised several months ago to spend US$1 billion to help the Palestinians, little aid has arrived.
Hmoud, who has visited the Palestinian territories several times, said that "recent incidents in the territories created many problems. One of these problems is Israel's blockade on the movement of workers' from the Palestinian territories to the Israeli side. So a majority of the Palestinians who used to go to Israel to earn their living ended up unemployed."
The funds will be channeled through the Indonesian Economic and Trade Office to Taipei and the Jordanian Commercial Office, organizers said.
As there are currently 80,000 guest workers from Indonesia in Taiwan, 99 percent of whom are Muslims, organizers also urged the government to safeguard their labor rights.
According to the Taipei Grand Mosque, there are approximately 290,000 Muslims in Taiwan.
The Mosque, built with donations from the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1958, was designated a municipal historic site in 1999.
The city government designated it as such to save it from demolition when a cement firm which owned the land planned to tear it down to make room for a development project.
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