ISAWAAS Director Prof. Le Phuoc Minh speaks at the event (Photo: VNA) Hanoi (VNA) – The Institute of South Asian,West Asian and African Studies (ISAWAAS) under the Vietnam Academy of SocialSciences (VASS) hosted a Happy Iftar Day in Hanoi on April 3, bringing together representatives of Muslim countries’ embassies in Vietnam.
The event aimed to promote mutual understanding between Vietnam and Muslimcountries.
Iftar is the fast-breaking evening meal of Muslims in Ramadan month – theholiest time for Muslims, which falls on the 9th month of the Islamic lunarcalendar, or between March and June each year. During this month, Muslimsobserve two main meals each day, including Suhoor and Iftar.
This is the third consecutive year ISAWAAS has organised the Iftar event, helping to popularise humanitarian values of Muslims, strengthen culturalexchange and raise public awareness of Islamic culture, Iftar, and Halalpractices.
According to ISAWAAS Director Prof. Le Phuoc Minh, in the context of extensiveinternational economic integration and development, it is necessary to foster culturalexchanges between countries to promote understanding and friendliness, towardspositive outcomes in multilateral cooperation.
The Islamic culture, with its distinctive features,especially Iftar or Ramadan, is not only about the beauty of love, compassion,sharing, forgiveness, and no distinction between the rich and the poor, but alsoreflects the strong determination of Muslims, he stressed.
Minh underlined the need for Vietnamese people to understandmore about the Islamic culture in general, and Iftar and Ramadan practices inparticular, thus enhancing relations with Muslim countries and opening up apromising Halal market.
Moroccan Ambassador to Vietnam Jamale Chouaibi highly valued the initiative toorganise the Iftar Day, saying that this demonstrates Vietnam's adherence to theprinciples of tolerance, peaceful coexistence, and mutual respect amongreligious communities as well as the Southeast Asian country’s determination tostrengthen and preserve social cohesion./.
