BBC Radio 4 2016-07-07

As the long fasts of Ramadan end with Eid, I almost hesitate to use the word celebrate this year. It’s been a terrible few days in the aftermath of the recent terrorist attacks in which so many have died. Violence in the café at Dhaka, Istanbul airport and the busy shopping streets of Baghdad has killed hundreds. And then the most recent attacks in Medina, Islam’s second holiest city, have left many Muslims wondering whether anything remains sacred for the jihadists? In around 10 weeks’ time, pilgrims will be travelling to Mecca for the annual hajj pilgrimage – no doubt the Saudis will step up security but the question many will be asking is, ` Where next, will the Ka`ba in Mecca itself be a target?’

In the era of hashtags encapsulating a peoples mourning or solidarity, there are prayer hashtags for all these places, but one of the most poignant comments I read after the tragedy in Baghdad was `People came to buy clothes to celebrate Eid, now they’re buying coffins.’ There is a sense of helplessness, a numbness almost because we have got used to hearing about the spread of sporadic and brutal violence in Muslim countries. But the attack on Medina, the burial place of the Prophet, the place where Islam emerged from a small community of believers, has been seen as an attack on the very soul of Islam.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq led to many thousands of deaths. Iraq and its neighbouring regions have been subject to the ravages of al-Qaeda and Isis. But the region often referred to as humanity's cradle of civilisation, has been home to successive civilisations since the sixth millennium BC. This is its proud history despite its current divided and war torn status.

Yesterday we heard many things in the long awaited Chilcot report but in all the heart rending accounts from the relatives of those who had lost loved ones, the sense of injustice remained. Injustice at the loss of both British and Iraqi lives. Whatever the intentions, the war had destroyed Iraq rather than restore hope.

But Eid is about hope and it seems to me that Muslims should come together in solidarity to celebrate rather than merely mourn these iconic cities of Baghdad, Istanbul and Medina. Simply being with one another in defiance and solidarity as family and friends and across cultures, shows resilience not indifference to suffering. These cities gave birth to some of our greatest civilisations and however much of a cancer terrorism has now become in the Islamic world, it must not be allowed to diminish their history or their grandeur.

First broadcast 7 July 2016