There is more sorrow now. Neighbours and relatives used to visit each other, the markets and streets were crowded with people into the late hours of the night, families used to prepare delicious food for iftar, and after that people used to fill the mosques for taraweeh prayers. However, the customs and traditions associated with this blessed month have almost disappeared now due to the ongoing conflict in Syria. Seven years of conflict means that almost every family has lost a loved one.
My wife and I had to leave my hometown in the month of Ramadan two years ago. Tahir and his family now live near the Syrian-Turkish border and there is some stability there. He spends most of his day working and helping others.
The longing to return home has not diminished, he hopes to go back one day. Mehboob is from north Pakistan, for him Ramadan is a month of joy and happiness. Ramadan Mubarak greetings can be heard in the streets, homes, offices, everywhere!
For him this is a month that brings people together. Every year he and others from his community make cauldrons of food which get sent to the mosques to feed the poor and needy. He remembers Ramadan in when an earthquake struck Pakistan. During Ramadan the urge to help and support others increases in a unique way. Iftar get-togethers are never considered complete without some local delicacies.
Having iftar together strengthen relationships. Said is the head of the Union of the Blind People in his hometown of Grozny. He is 56 now and lost his eyesight at the age of 19 due to a genetic disease. He tells us of his memories of Ramadan. Still, people fasted and celebrated Eid here. Said remembers his parents buying him new clothes for Eid and that his mother stayed up all night making food preparations.
On the morning of Eid my brothers and I would go out and collect sweets from relatives and neighbours. I am sure that children do it the same way today. For Said, Ramadan is an opportunity to better himself. I also try my best to support people in need. He enjoys the change in cuisine that accompanies this month and eating local foods.
For iftar he usually has local plant and mixed with milk and saly. Some prefer it with a little bit of pepper. It has a relaxing and healing effect when you eat it after fasting for the whole day.
Again depending on your means you could have some dates and a refreshing hot cup of a plant called kinkeliba or some porridge. Bodour informs us that there are few opportunities to earn a living and support families. Thousands of graduates are without jobs and those who are working do not always receive their salaries. Due to the deteriorating humanitarian and economic situations in Gaza, several factories and markets have suspended their activities and laid off workers.
Only four hours of electricity is available to our homes on a daily basis and this is not enough for a densely populated area like Gaza. However, despite all of that, Ramadan is a month that brings joy to people. It is a month when people all over the world look for us and help alleviate our suffering. Bodour increases her voluntary activities and aims to reduce some of the hardships that people are facing.
This month makes me feel closer to Allah. Biwi Hawa is widowed with two children. She works a labourer and is the only earner in her family. Ramadan is usually a hard month for her and her family as they are very poor. Having sufficient food for her family in the month of Ramadan and throughout the rest of the year is like a dream for her.
Ramadan is treated like a festival in Bangladesh, the whole community gets involved. That also has to do with the moon — as well as disagreements about science, history, and tradition, plus a bit of geopolitical rivalry.
The beginning of each new month in the Islamic calendar starts on the new moon. Which means the month of Ramadan starts on the new moon.
Simple enough, right? If it's been a while since your high school astronomy class, here's a reminder of what the phases of the moon look like:. Back in Mohammed's day, in sixth-century Arabia, astronomical calculations weren't as precise as they are today, so people went by what they could see with the naked eye.
Since the new moon isn't actually super visible in the night sky as you can see above , Muslims traditionally waited to start fasting until the small sliver of crescent moon became visible. There's even a saying attributed to the Prophet Mohammed about waiting to start the fast until you see the crescent. Some people think this is why the star and crescent is the symbol of Islam, but the crescent was used as a symbol long before Islam.
This method was a bit messy, though, since things like clouds or just the difficulty of spotting the moon in some locations often led to different groups starting their fast on separate days, even within the same country. Each community, village, or even mosque within the village might send its own guy out to look for the crescent, with rival groups arguing over whether the other guy really saw it.
Today, however, we have precise scientific calculations that tell us exactly when the new moon begins, and we don't need to wait until someone spots a tiny crescent in the sky. In fact, according to the Oxford Dictionary of Islam , "The need to determine the precise appearance of the hilal [crescent moon] was one of the inducements for Muslim scholars to study astronomy. So, problem solved! Except that some Muslim scholars believe we should still wait until the slight crescent moon is visible in the night sky because that's what Mohammed said to do and that's the way we've always done it.
Others argue that Islam has a strong tradition of reason, knowledge, and science, and that if Mohammed were around today, he'd choose the more precise scientific calculations over sending the guy at the mosque with the best eyesight outside to squint at the night sky. To make things even more fun, some argue that the whole world should just follow the official moon-sighting decrees of Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and the location of its holiest sites. But not everyone thinks that's such a swell idea — especially rival countries like Pakistan and Iran, which balk at the idea of treating Saudi Arabia as the ultimate authority on anything having to do with Islam.
All this means that each year, Muslims around the world get to experience the delightful lunacy of "moon-sighting fighting. For the most part, no. Both Sunni and Shia Muslims fast during Ramadan. But there are some minor differences — for instance, Sunnis break their daily fast at sunset , when the sun is no longer visible on the horizon but there's still light in the sky , whereas Shia wait until the redness of the setting sun has completely vanished and the sky is totally dark.
Shia also celebrate an additional holiday within the month of Ramadan that Sunnis do not. For three days — the 19th, 20th, and 21st days of Ramadan — Shia commemorate the martyrdom of Ali ibn Abi Talib, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed who was both the revered fourth caliph of Sunni Islam and the first "legitimate" imam leader of Shia Islam.
Ali was assassinated in the fierce civil wars that erupted following the death of Mohammed over who should lead the Muslim community in his stead. On the 19th day of the month of Ramadan, while Ali was worshipping at a mosque in Kufa, Iraq, an assassin from a group of rebels who opposed his leadership fatally struck him with a poisoned sword.
Ali died two days later. Ali is a hugely important figure in Shia Islam. His tomb in nearby Najaf, Iraq, is the third-holiest site in Shia Islam, and millions of Shia make a pilgrimage there every year. Although Sunnis revere Ali as one of the four "rightly guided" caliphs who ruled after Mohammed's death, they do not commemorate his death or make a pilgrimage to his tomb.
In some Muslim countries, it is a crime to eat and drink in public during the day in the month of Ramadan, even if you're not Muslim. Of course, this is not the case in the United States, where we enjoy freedom of and freedom from religion. And most American Muslims, myself included, don't expect the non-Muslims around us to radically change their behavior to accommodate our religious fast during Ramadan. Environment Planet Possible India bets its energy future on solar—in ways both small and big.
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