Albanians celebrate Kurban Bayram

Rama promises construction on Tirana Grand Mosque to start in November.
TIRANA, Oct. 4 – Albania marked last Saturday the Muslim holiday of Kurban Bayram, as Eid Al-Adha is known locally.
The country’s leading Muslim clerics convened Saturday morning to pray in the Nation’s Fallen Boulevard, joined by thousands of practitioners.
Tirana Muslims do not yet have a big mosque where they could normally hold their prayers on big days like the two Bayram celebrations each year. Despite promises and pledged by all governments in post-communist Albania, the Tirana Grand Mosque has yet to be build, pending come complications with land ownership related the construction permit.
The government and Prime Minister Edi Rama has pledged again during his visit to the Muslim Community Organization’s headquarters that work will start next month.
As is tradition, all senior officials and politicians regardless of their personal faith visited religious leaders on that day send their best wishes.
Albanians mostly celebrate Bayram with a big family meal and by helping those in need.
Fifty nine percent of Albanians are Muslim, according to the latest census. The country has smaller Orthodox and Catholic communities as well.
Two weeks ago the country was visited by Pope Francis who also held a mass a few hundred meters from where the Muslims held their annual Bayram prayer.
Albania, where religion was banned from the former communist regime in 1967 until 1990, is seem internationally as a good example of religious harmony.