An Eid in the Park event to be held next week will aim to bring Oldhamers together regardless of race or religion.

The event will be held at Berries Field Park on either Friday, April 21 or Saturday, April 22, depending on the moon sighting.

With Islam following the Islamic calendar, which is based on the moon’s phases and consists of a year of 354 or 355 days, Eid does not take place on the same date in the Gregorian calendar each year.

Hamid Ali lives nearby to Berries Field Park, having grown up in the area.

Hamid has helped to organise the event. He said: “We want to bring the whole community together and celebrate it together, irrelevant of your faith or your background, as one community.

“Come celebrate as one community, have a fun day with your family and friends. If someone has any questions, of a different faith, wanting to understand a bit more, they can also do that.

“It’s more about just bringing family together, the community together, and acting as one community irrelevant of race and religion, just enjoying each other’s company.

“Eid is supposed to be prayed outside, rather than in a mosque, so we’re trying to revive that tradition.”

‘Quite famous’ name tipped to attend

Hamid said the event will include a bouncy castle, inflatable football, as well as food stalls and gift shops.

The Jama'ah, or Eid prayer congregation, is set to start at 9.30am, with people expected to come from around 9am.

The prayer will finish at around 10am, and stalls and children’s areas will be opened up at this time.

The event is set to go on until 3pm.

The organiser tipped that a secret ‘quite famous’ big name would potentially be in attendance, with the hopes that more celebrities will want to attend in future years – though said he could not reveal any more at this stage.

He added: “This is the first one, this is a long-term vision, we’re going to host two in a year for both the Eids, we want everyone to feel welcome, everyone to come together, and everyone to enjoy.”

The largest issue facing the event? The weather, according to Hamid: “Our biggest obstacle is the weather, if it’s heavy rain and heavy wind then we would have to cancel because we initially looked at rain covers and a marquee, but it sort of defeats the object then.

“In the long-term we will look at some sort of rain cover, but we do also have a limited budget.”

Bringing the community together

Hamid spoke about the issue of segregation in Oldham, adding: “Since Covid and everything that’s come, our aim is to integrate people of all backgrounds as one community, and that’s what our main focus is.

“Integration, rather than segregation. We tend to have a lot of segregation.

"I grew up around here as a kid, so we’ve always had squabbles but we’ve always had that sense of one community, a sense that everyone can squabble or have arguments, but you’re back on the football pitch the next day, doing exactly the same thing again.

“It was never like these days where you hear about knife crime and the seriousness which is quite shocking.”