CAIRO,
January 2, 2006 (IslamOnline.net) – Romanian Muslim youths have vied
for a charge-free hajj through a series of competitions sponsored by
charities testing their Islamic and general knowledge.
"We
organized religious and cultural competitions for youths, offering the
winners charge-free trips to Saudi Arabia to perform hajj,"
Kareem Anjin, the representative of the International Tiba Charity in
Constanta, southeastern Romania, told IslamOnline.net Monday, January
2.
He
said six male and female competitors have passed the
question-and-answer samples and are preparing now to embark on the
spiritual journey.
The
charity, he added, has further organized Qur’an memorization
contests for the elderly.
"A
60-year-old woman has won and will join the six youths," Anjin
said.
The
charity has further paid some hajj costs for needy Muslims.
The
number of Romanian pilgrims has doubled this year to 350 people
compared to last year’s 180.
The
first batch of pilgrims will leave the capital Bucharest for Makkah
later in the day.
Hajj,
which climaxes this year on January 9 when the pilgrims descend the
Mount `Arafat, consists of several ceremonies, which are meant to
symbolize the essential concepts of the Islamic faith, and to
commemorate the trials of Prophet Abraham and his family.
Every
able-bodied adult Muslim who can financially afford the trip must
perform hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam, once in their
lifetime.
Hajj
Awareness
Anjin
said his charity also organizes lectures to raise the awareness of the
would-be pilgrims on how to perform proper hajj.
"We
plainly explain to them hajj rites and how to perform them properly
through a number of preachers and the distribution of some
brochures," he added.
The
Tiba Charity is one of the leading hajj organizer in Romania.
It
successfully co-organized the International Conference on Islam in
Europe in October 2005, which was held in Romania and brought together
representatives of Muslim minorities in up to 40 European countries.
The
charity has translated dozens of Islamic books into Romanian and
issued the first glossy magazine on Islam in Romanian, Islam Today.
The magazine comes in 36 colored pages.
There
are some 70,000 Muslims in Romanian, mostly hailing from Turkey and
Albania. They make up two percent of the country’s 22 million
population.
