HUNDREDS of Ahmadi Muslims are to celebrate a major religious festival at Huddersfield's McAlpine Stadium.
About 400 members of the international Ahmadiyya Muslim Association, which has a base in Huddersfield, will mark Eid- ul-Adha next Monday.
At the stadium, men, women and children will join group prayer sessions, followed by a sermon from local Ahmadi leaders.
The guests will also listen to a sermon by the leader of the worldwide Ahmadiyya community, Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad.
The sermon will be transmitted live on Channel 807, MTA on Sky Television and will be heard by about 200m Ahmadis in 120 countries.
Some Huddersfield Ahmadis are also planning to go to London to celebrate at a service led by Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad in western Europe's biggest mosque, Baitul Futuh.
Eid-ul-Adha is known as the Festival of Sacrifice and takes place about 10 weeks after Eid-ul-Fitr.
Both festivals come around the time of the hajj, the mass Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.
Eid-ul-Adha is held to celebrate the fact that Hadhrat Ibrahim, a man from Muslim history, was so obedient to God that he agreed to sacrifice his son, Hadhrat Ismail, after having a series of dreams which indicated that this was what God wanted him to do.
The story goes that moments before the father went through with the sacrifice, God ordered him to stop.
He told him he would be rewarded for his obedience by being the forefather of Mohammed, the founder of Islam.
Many Muslims sacrifice an animal to mark the Eid-ul-Adha festival.
The Ahmadiyya sect was founded in India in 1889.
