My Dates With Ramadan

It is strange how we are encouraged to use social media be that Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Twitter, Pinterest etc etc by being repeatedly told that our life will be enriched by using these services. I do not have the hours in the day to use all of these programs nor am I convinced of the real value they add to one’s life. It might be digital heresy and flying in the face of stock values everywhere, but Facebook, seems to me to be a cornucopia of shared pictures, brief random thoughts, and digital bumper stickers wrapped up in a re-definition of friendship that trades a frequent quick how are you for spending time with a person. It is one of those things people feel a sense of loss about but do not mention for fear that they may be thought of as needy or not a paid up member of the twenty first century.

On the other hand, LinkedIn when one dodges the plethora of look at me twelve bullet points, and one size fits all threads does have intelligent conversations where people do talk with each other rather than at each other. I have met people thousands of miles away and had more meaningful discourse with them than people I’ve worked beside for fourteen years who keep an invisible wall erected against all but their own tribe. LinkedIn has provided a forum where similarities can be acknowledged, and differences understood, clarified, agreed or disagreed upon but always in a respectful manner.

Technology in the guise of LinkedIn has enabled me to connect with people whom I knew in my heart existed but whom I have never met in person or via prior media consumption or participation. To honor my new Arab friends, I decided to participate in the fasting part of Ramadan. No one asked me to do this, and I doubt anyone was bothered that I volunteered to do this month long endeavor, but something inside me said do it. As we near the end of the month long celebration, this is what I have learned about the Muslim faith and about myself. Ironically one of my conclusions from this act of friendship may extinguish some or all of these fledgling friendships. I hope it will not, but I accept that it might.

I am not a Muslim. At best this is a simplified explanation of what Ramadan is coupled with my personal Ramadan journey. Going into this I knew only what the mainstream media has told me. Nothing. All I knew was that it was a month of celebration with a fast attached to it. Even my conception of fast was wrong. I equate fasting with no food, but the ability to drink as much water as one desires. The longest I have ever done a no food strictly water fast is two weeks, so I was curious to find out what a month of just water would feel like and secure in the knowledge that my tight in all the wrong places clothes would approve of whatever fasting I chose to undertake. Thus, my first lesson was in finding out what I had just volunteered to do for a month.

Ramadan is the holiest month of the year for Muslims who fast for thirty days and nights. Ramadan is both an acknowledgement of Allah revealing his final testament to mankind via his last messenger the prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and a call to Muslims to review and reflect on that testament which is written in its entirety in the Islamic faith’s holiest text the Qur’an. Each day during Ramadan, in addition to doing their regular, prayers a Muslim must recite different chapters of the Qur’an until by the end of the thirty days they have completed the entire Qur’an. This is called the Tarawih prayer and has a deep significance to Muslims as if the prayer is performed with the remembrance of Allah his or her past sins will be forgiven.

The sheer speed of my spontaneity in deciding to participate in a Ramadan fast precluded my having a copy of the Qur’an. I do have my dad’s unread copy safely ensconced in my bookcase, in another country, but prior to Ramadan I always gave the hearsay that the Qur’an cannot be translated enough credence to stop me from reading it. This viewpoint had been reinforced by watching bilingual speakers of myriad languages switch to their native language after explaining that they can speak faster and that there is no accurate English translation for what they are trying to say. This coupled with the same claim being made in the case of translations for the I Ching enabled me to uphold tradition and not open the family copy of the Qur’an.

During Ramadan, my prayers remained the same and on my original schedule, which is the, first thing in the morning on my knees and the last thing at night on my knees and prayers with my boys before their bedtime. Out of curiosity and a desire to more fully understand Ramadan I will read the Qur’an in the future. It is not that I have an urge to become a Muslim but rather in doing my research to find out about Ramadan I found a wide discrepancy in how Ramadan and sections of the Qur’an are interpreted. Apparently it is wrong for Muslims to argue or disagree on these matters, so differences of opinion are conducted in a very respectful manner. This discovery suddenly made the obvious clear to me. I must find the best translation of the Qur'an, and then read the book. It does not matter if some of the book is not a 100 % accurate translation as everyone interprets the book from a different perspective. The fact that people speak different languages, the fact that people have different experiences and yet can be joined by the same faith speaks to the desire of a faith to be interpreted, talked about, and personalized. It is what gives a faith life and makes a text human.

The spirituality of Ramadan and the actual physicality of fasting are entwined as one but for my tummy food was at least at the start of the fast an important issue. On my first day exhausted from working fourteen-hour days of heavy physical labor remodeling my house in 90-degree heat, I slept through my first Suhoor and missed my eating and drinking opportunity until 9pm that night. Suhoor is the first of your two meals of the day. It must be eaten before sunrise and before morning prayers, which are called Fajr. Some websites stated that the time between Suhoor and Fajr must be the time it takes for one to recite 50 verses from the Qur’an. Some respectfully disagreed with that assertion. I was slightly miffed that my timer had not worked and committed to a new timer for the following evening.

Ramadan fasting is much harder than a complete commitment to living only on water. This fasting is akin to running a marathon and seeing the finish line ahead of you. Food and more importantly drink is always so near and yet so far away. Due to the nature of Ramadan my breakfast times (Suhoor) and my dinner times (lftar) were always changing as they are directly tied into the rising and setting of the sun. If we were to agree on an average time then my breakfast is at 3am, and my dinner is at 9:05pm. I am not allowed to eat or drink anything in between those times. My first lftar I ate like a plump squirrel on the last day before hibernation. I ate for two no that is a lie; I easily ate for three and risked gastronomic implosion on my first evening of Ramadan. My mind flitted from why did I volunteer to do this to how can I do things better? Before I went to sleep on day one, I knew what I had to do. Day two started with a strum that is my iPhone woke me up, and after prayers I was in a dimly lit kitchen as I did not want to reset my body clock and not be able to go back to sleep. The first thing I did was drink a glass of water as I knew that hydration would be essential to have a happy productive day. Next I had a big bowl of bran cereal with two Brazil nuts, four almonds and a handful of pine nuts on top. My thinking was junk food was not going to cut it. I needed to eat nutrient dense foods, preferably high water content, and high fiber that would stabilize my blood sugar for the entire day. It was essential to get it right as I was still working long hours doing heavy physical labor in over ninety-degree heat.

On day two, I marveled at the wisdom of our ancestors. I was only doing the fasting part of Ramadan, but already I could see how modern research and studies bore out the ancient traditions that Muslims and me in my small way were embarking upon. My fast was not about eating two meals a day at specific times of the day. The sheer nature of the fast dictated that the fast is about time management, making smart choices and feeling the effects of my choices be they good or bad. I only have a finite amount of time to eat and drink, and I must stagger my drinks so as to avoid nausea. The most I could manage was three glasses of water and more often than not I could only manage to drink two glasses of water, hence my need to eat high water content food such as salads in deference to the empty calories of cakes and buns. Ramadan raises your self-awareness in regards to the power of each choice and the domino effect each decision has in other areas of your life. If one is late to eat one has less time to eat or in the instance of my first Suhoor no time to eat at all. If one eats the wrong foods, then one will feel energy ebb away leaving one alive in name only. Drink the wrong beverages and your throat will remind you of your decision two hours before you can drink anything else. If one does not get enough sleep before getting up at 3am then watch how your mental faculties will decline. No one will probably notice, but you, but after all is that, not the definition of self- awareness? I have been able to function at the standard that I have wanted to do throughout Ramadan but in games that require me to think five or six moves ahead like chess or drafts I have noticed a measurable decline. I also felt my eyesight did not seem as keen as usual, but that could also be a result of working so many long hard hours under the blazing sun.

By pushing myself in new directions, I was reminded of just how resilient the human race is in dealing with change. We are each capable of more than we ask of ourselves in our daily lives. Ramadan reminds one of that personal power and gives one a greater appreciation of other people and the immense potential that each of us possess. As a parent, it gives one renewed energy to evaluate how one can best help each of your children shine in his or her own special way. Thankfully and just as it was designed to do one’s awareness extends beyond self and loved ones. You feel the warmth of the human spirit when you realize that people all over the world young and old are on a journey similar to the one that you are on, and yet you are humbled by the knowledge that the food and drink that one has eaten prior to prayer is not available to many people in the world at any time of the day. It is not that the concepts of Ramadan teach you anything new rather it demands that you return to basics, take away all the baggage you have acquired and re-evaluate everything. It is the same principle espoused by Socrates when he said ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’. This coupled with the month long length of Ramadan ensures that you are in sync with modern science that states that doing something for a month is the key to adopting and retaining new habits as a part of your DNA.

Plato would also have been a fan of Ramadan, as he believed that all learning is remembering and that by denying oneself sensuous pleasures that one's ability to reason increases. Agree or disagree with Plato’s theory, one thing we can all agree on is that this unspent energy will shift to other areas in ones life. As I write this life circumstances dictate that I am entering my third month of increased reasoning potential, and I have to say at this juncture I’d much rather be a little more unreasonable.

As with anything the more one puts into something the more one gets out of it and it is clear even from my doing Ramadan lite that the Muslim faith while demanding gives one so much in return. Is it better than other faiths? Well that would be down to the individual. A faith that demands not only personal adherence but also a communal commitment over a sustained period of time is going to garner more passion than a religion such as the Church of England if you will that in the main relies on “ I hope you liked the sermon, see you next week and remember we have bible study on Thursday evening”.

So is everything rosy in the Muslim faith? No, as with any other faith interpretation can distort the true meaning. It is a tradition for the evening meal lftar to break ones fast with dates and milk just as the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) had done many years ago. I thought it might be nice to visit the local mosque and share in this tradition. The problem is the mosque closest to me made a huge point of decrying Jewish people and insisting that no dates could be eaten that were from Israel. I do not play favorites with my children, and I do not play favorites with religions or people. To cast a race aside because of the acts of individuals from any nation is insanity. In my own instance that would mean hating Normans, for killing my Anglo Saxon ancestors, hating Vikings for raping and pillaging my people, Romans for conquering and enslaving my people, the Germans for gassing my grandad, stealing the youth of my mum and dad and shooting my uncle in the legs, the Japanese for pulling out the toe nails of my doctor with pliers and making lampshades with the skin of his compatriots. Hating only cedes power to haters and does not serve individuals or nations well, so I choose to honor the living and the dead by seeking to understand and by making love the foundation of my choices. I know full well that some self serving people burden the next generation with learned hatred; I know full well that spoken or unspoken to some Muslims I will always be an infidel, but I believe to live a life worthy of breath I must live beyond that myopic view and look to the greater good. Thus, I will always have Jewish friends, and I will always have Muslim friends, and I will feel blessed to have both. So mote it always be.

My journey has taken me much further than the end of my spoon, and as I approach Eid-ul-Fitr which marks the end of Ramadan and the beginning of the new Islamic month of Shawwai I am grateful for another way of understanding myself, the world and my new friends thousands of miles away. I will silently congratulate my friends on a successful fast and feel closer to them knowing that as they join with their friends and family to have a day of tears, joy, forgiveness, love, presents and tasty foods much like Christmas is for me that both our sameness and our healthy differences joined by respect in deference to mistrust and fear can ensure that no matter what we face in the future we can overcome and prosper as neighbors and partners. That is the way it is supposed to be. That is why Rumi wrote:

“God’s joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box

from cell to cell. As rainwater, down into flowerbed.

As roses, up from ground.

Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish,

now a cliff covered with vines,

now a horse being saddled.

It hides within these,

till one day it cracks them open.

Photograph courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net and showcases the talent of Winnond