Prot. 346/2013R

Rabweh 8 August 2013

Dear Muslim Fellow-Citizens!

I send you cordial good wishes for Eid ul Fitr. We rejoice with you as we reflect on this festival's sublime, spiritual values, especially that of surrender to God's will.

We are suffering with you and with all our Muslim brothers and sisters, especially those of the Arab world, in the face of those tragic situations that have made all our hearts bleed, since any Arab blood shed is blood of sons and daughters of the same family.

We are praying for peace and security and especially for unity of the Arab and Muslim world.

We believe that this unity is the foundation for peace and prosperity in the Arab and Muslim world, and the purity of authentic Islam, alongside which we have lived for 1434 [Islamic] years. Together we have built a common Arab Muslim-Christian humane, open society.

Dear brethren,

We believe that division of the Muslim Arab world is the real danger for Muslim and Christian Arabs and for Islam and Christianity. That is the real danger for our living together, civilisation, tradition, future, mission and role in our Arab East and throughout the world.

We congratulate you with all our heart. We pray for the fulfilment of a shared Muslim-Christian Arab vision, for a better future for our rising generations, and to meet the aspirations, shouts and slogans of the real Arab revolution that spring from a desire to seek to ensure a worthy, better life for the sons and daughters of this East that is so dear to us all.

Our best wishes for a happy feast, our affection and sincere good wishes for peace to return to the land of peace!

+ Gregorios III

Patriarch of Antioch and All the East
Of Alexandria and of Jerusalem