GAZA CITY: Many Christians in the Gaza Strip participate in the customs and rituals of Ramadan, Sanaa Tarazi, secretary of the Supreme Presidential Committee for Churches Affairs, told Arab News. She stressed that Christians in Gaza are “an integral part of the Palestinian people.”
According to church statistics, there are 390 Christian families, with an estimated 1,313 members, living in Gaza among roughly 2 million Muslims.
“No one can distinguish a Muslim from a Christian, for we are all close neighbors, having a bond of love and affection between us,” Tarazi said.
Tarazi grew up in her family’s home in the heart of old Gaza. Ramadan, she said, is a month of “beautiful childhood memories” when she and her friends from the neighborhood would play with lanterns and fireworks in the streets, transforming night into day.
She has passed that love on to her two children, who are currently studying abroad, decorating the house with lanterns and other ornaments every Ramadan.
“Our eating and drinking habits change greatly during Ramadan,” she said, “Many days, we will (forego) lunch and eat at the Maghrib (evening) prayer call.” She added that she is careful to delay cooking her family’s food so that the smell will not disturb her Muslim neighbors when they are fasting.
As is the prevailing custom among Gazans, Tarazi said she traditionally cooks Mulukhiya on the first day of Ramadan, in anticipation of a good and blessed year.
She and her neighbors exchange Ramadan food and sweets. Tarazi said she makes Qatayef at home to distribute to her Muslim and Christian neighbors throughout Ramadan.
Tarazi’s husband, Majed — leader of the Arab Orthodox Scouts in Gaza, shares her love for the Muslim holy month. He told Arab News that Ramadan nights out with friends are a “special experience” and that this year, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, he is missing a number of the usual Ramadan rituals with his many Muslim friends.
The scouts are often deployed on Gaza’s streets during Ramadan to distribute water and dates to those returning home late after work before iftar, he explained. The scouts also normally host an iftar at the Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza, but it has been canceled this month, for the second year in a row. “We host that iftar at the church to express tolerance and show the depth of the relations with Muslims that bind us in Gaza,” he said.
He pointed to the historic minaret of the Kateb Wilaya mosque, which dates back to the early 14th century CE and overlooks the church. “This is our relationship: Loving neighbors, partners in the homeland, sharing a common destiny,” he said.
“Just as our Muslim brothers congratulate us on our religious occasions, and they share our joys and sorrows, we exchange love and respect with them, and we appreciate the holiness of their rituals and religious occasions,” he added.
In Gaza, Christians share in the spirit of Ramadan
https://arab.news/2vyy2
In Gaza, Christians share in the spirit of Ramadan
- According to church statistics, there are 390 Christian families living in Gaza among roughly 2 million Muslims
- As is the prevailing custom among Gazans, Tarazi said she traditionally cooks Mulukhiya on the first day of Ramadan
These shy, scaly anteaters are the most trafficked mammals in the world
CAPE TOWN, South Africa: They are hunted for their unique scales, and the demand makes them the most trafficked mammal in the world.
Wildlife conservationists are again raising the plight of pangolins, the shy, scaly anteaters found in parts of Africa and Asia, on World Pangolin Day on Saturday.
Pangolins or pangolin products outstrip any other mammal when it comes to wildlife smuggling, with more than half a million pangolins seized in anti-trafficking operations between 2016 and 2024, according to a report last year by CITES, the global authority on the trading of endangered plant and animal species.
The World Wildlife Fund estimates that over a million pangolins were taken from the wild over the last decade, including those that were never intercepted.
Pangolins meat is a delicacy in places, but the driving force behind the illegal trade is their scales, which are made of keratin, the protein also found in human hair and fingernails. The scales are in high demand in China and other parts of Asia due to the unproven belief that they cure a range of ailments when made into traditional medicine.
There are eight pangolin species, four in Africa and four in Asia. All of them face a high, very high or extremely high risk of extinction.
While they’re sometimes known as scaly anteaters, pangolins are not related in any way to anteaters or armadillos.
They are unique in that they are the only mammals covered completely in keratin scales, which overlap and have sharp edges. They are the perfect defense mechanism, allowing a pangolin to roll up into an armored ball that even lions struggle to get to grip with, leaving the nocturnal ant and termite eaters with few natural predators.
But they have no real defense against human hunters. And in conservation terms, they don’t resonate in the way that elephants, rhinos or tigers do despite their fascinating intricacies — like their sticky insect-nabbing tongues being almost as long as their bodies.
While some reports indicate a downward trend in pangolin trafficking since the COVID-19 pandemic, they are still being poached at an alarming rate across parts of Africa, according to conservationists.
Nigeria is one of the global hot spots. There, Dr. Mark Ofua, a wildlife veterinarian and the West Africa representative for the Wild Africa conservation group, has rescued pangolins for more than a decade, which started with him scouring bushmeat markets for animals he could buy and save. He runs an animal rescue center and a pangolin orphanage in Lagos.
His mission is to raise awareness of pangolins in Nigeria through a wildlife show for kids and a tactic of convincing entertainers, musicians and other celebrities with millions of social media followers to be involved in conservation campaigns — or just be seen with a pangolin.
Nigeria is home to three of the four African pangolin species, but they are not well known among the country’s 240 million people.
Ofua’s drive for pangolin publicity stems from an encounter with a group of well-dressed young men while he was once transporting pangolins he had rescued in a cage. The men pointed at them and asked him what they were, Ofua said.
“Oh, those are baby dragons,” he joked. But it got him thinking.
“There is a dark side to that admission,” Ofua said. “If people do not even know what a pangolin looks like, how do you protect them?”
