Finland govt holds Iftar party for Muslims

By: Zubr Al-Hadid

HELSINKI, Finland: Finland's Ministry of Labor held an Iftar party marking the holy month of Ramadan. A number of prominent figures within the Muslim community besides ambassadors from Arab and Muslim countries accredited to this country were invited.

Addressing on the occasion, the minister Ms Tariya Vilatov said the purpose of holding such a reception is to known about the various customs and traditions of Muslims.

“It is right to know the other from his own territory and not from ours, or else we as Finnish people tend to make the same mistake as the majority of others make, that of we evaluate others from our own point of view,” she added.

This tradition of holding such an Iftar party was started by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs here, and now the Ministry of Labor has also started the same tradition that has been going every Ramadan for the last three years.

The minister said that her ministry is charged with the responsibility of integrating the various ethnic communities of the Finnish society, and this demands that one should possess adequate knowledge of the foreign communities. She added that most of the Muslims who are resident in Finland are of foreign extraction, and therefore the holding of such a party accomplishes one of the objectives of the ministry.

There are around 20,000 Muslims living in Finland, most of them immigrants from various Middle Eastern countries, plus a small number of indigenous Finlandians, and some ethnic Tatars who had immigrated to this country since the last 200 years. Muslims make up just one percent of the total population of Finland.

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