By Prarthana Mitra
For many Muslims, the daily roza starts but doesnt always end with a meal. But help and hope arrived for Syrian immigrants this Ramadan, as world-renowned Sikh charity Khalsa Aid bestowed holiday cheer on 5000 Muslim migrants, through their Ramzan Kitchen.
The UK-based Sikh NGO took it upon themselves to provide iftar meals to thousands of refugees in Lebanon and Iraq displaced due to the ongoing civil war.
Messiahs of Mosul
The international non-profit organisation collaborated with a local Lebanese charity, Sawa for Development and Aid, to deliver their daily morsel to thousands of people battling hunger and starvation, while also observing the Islamic holy month.
While the refugees in the camps spent the period of intense prayer with dawn-to-dusk fasting, numerous Sikh volunteers prepared them nutritious meals to consume, as is customary after breaking the daily fast.
The non-profit is also known for their work with refugee children who are displaced from their countries and are often born into abject poverty. This year, their efforts to spread festive cheer among the migrant children from Iraq’s Mosul bore fruit. Gifts of new clothes, shoes and “eidis“ arrived at the Mosul Refugee Camp ahead of the festival, to the children’s delight.
Khalsa Aid founder, Ravinder Singh, put out a statement on Facebook saying, These children were forced to leave their homes when war broke out in Mosul in 2014. The city has been left devastated. These clothes will be the only gifts many of these children will receive this Eid while suffering difficult conditions of a refugee camp.”
The NGO provides relief and carries out humanitarian work across distress points around the globe, including Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Zambia, Malawi, Haiti, Guatemala, Punjab, United Kingdom and Bangladesh.
In September 2017, a volunteer group from Khalsa Aid rushed to rescue the persecuted minorities at the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, helping them escape genocide, reported The Indian Express.
They received severe backlash from Islamophobic groups for reaching out to the Rohingya Muslim immigrants. Undeterred, their latest heartwarming gesture in one of the world’s most harrowing conflict zones reflects their steadfast solidarity with refugees all over the world.
Prarthana Mitra is a staff writer at Qrius