The Muslim culture will be celebrated at Footscray’s SalamFest this Saturday.
The event will celebrate Eid al-Adha, which SalamFest founder Ayesha Bux said is one of the biggest celebrations Muslims have.
“It marks the end of Hajj, the pilgrimage,” she said.
“For Muslims, it means lots of food, lots of celebration, coming together as families. So, we thought we’ll celebrate it In the same way with lots of food, lots of art, lots of culture.”
People of all cultures are welcome to attend the event, and Ayesha hopes that everyone will be able to enjoy themselves and take something meaningful away from their experience.
“So if there’s a non-Muslim I would love them to think, wow,” she said.
“Where we might not have time to have a deep, intimate conversation so when they experience the quality and calibre of the music, they’re in awe of what we’ve shown them.”
Ayehsa founded this event as a way of celebrating Muslims.
“It weighed really heavily on me that in the second year [of the festival] we had a young person come to us and say, ‘I don’t tell my friends and colleagues I’m Muslim’, and I still think of it.
“And that helped shape a lot of SalamFest as well… our community should not feel that, you know, shy from expressing our culture and our tradition and sharing it with people.”
SalamFest is on June 29 at 139 Nicholson Street, Footscray, from 3-8pm.
Details: salamfest.com/
Max Westwood
