British Muslims to stage ‘Live 8’ concert for Darfur
August 20, 2007 (LONDON) — British Muslims will hold their own version of the Live 8 concerts to highlight the humanitarian crisis in Sudan’s restive Darfur region, organisers announced Monday.
The concert on October 21 will be held at London’s Wembley Stadium and is aimed at raising awareness of the situation among Britain’s 1.5 million Muslims amid claims of inaction and focus on other areas such as Iraq, they added.
“We are going for our own equivalent of Live 8. We are going for a concert at the end of (the Muslim holy month of) Ramadan to celebrate (the festival of) Eid,” said Jehangir Malik, fundraising manager for charity Islamic Relief.
“It will be people trying to raise funds and raise the profile. We should hopefully see a sell-out and it will be a milestone.”
Performers will include singers like the Iranian-born Sami Yusuf.
Live 8 in July 2005 involved a series of worldwide concerts ahead of the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, to highlight the problem of global poverty and call for the world’s richest nations to increase aid.
A Muslim delegation, backed by Britain’s Foreign Office, recently travelled to Darfur to talk to victims of the violence and refugees as well as tribal leaders and government officials.
The party said that with the exception of Malaysia, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, Muslim countries had been slow to react to the Darfur crisis compared with some Western nations, including the United States and Britain.
The editor of the Muslim magazine Q News, Fareena Alam, told a London news conference: “It is very shameful that we (Muslims) can get very, very hot and bothered about other issues.
“There is a lot of information about Darfur. There is no doubt this is Muslim-on-Muslim violence. In Iraq the enemy is externalised.
“This is a thorny issue for us and it is clear that we have to do more. It is a challenge for us because people are highly motivated and get highly charged in other areas, and we need to do considerably more.”
The United Nations has estimated that at least 200,000 people have been killed and more than two million displaced by the combined effect of war and famine since civil conflict erupted in Darfur four-and-a-half years ago.
(AFP)