Ramadan begins
June 17, 2015 8:35 AM   Subscribe

From waking up in the early hours for a quick bite and sip of water, to the waiting – date in hand – for the seconds to tick by until the call to prayer at sunset, why do Muslims fast and what is Ramadan? -- and why Muslims in Alaska will fast 9 hours more than Muslims in Cape Town (and what 1 scholar is doing about it).
posted by Sir Rinse (51 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
The Atlantic has a photoset for Ramadan dated from 2013 but still beautiful and worth clicking.
posted by Fizz at 8:50 AM on June 17, 2015 [3 favorites]


It's an issue. We have a couple of observant Muslims in the office and they've been talking a lot about this recently, as Ramadan this year falls over the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

It's a mostly about a concern for one of our lab worker's safety. We've talked with her if she'd prefer to be out of the lab for the month, and I suspect she'll take us up on that. She seemed rather relieved at not having to be on her feet all day in a lab, facing a month of 15/16-hour fasts.
posted by bonehead at 8:54 AM on June 17, 2015 [3 favorites]


In Tromsø, above the arctic circle, they follow Mecca's hours.
posted by leahwrenn at 9:01 AM on June 17, 2015 [9 favorites]


Ramadan: the period during which responsible Muslims apologize for being grouchy.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:35 AM on June 17, 2015 [2 favorites]


In Tromsø, above the arctic circle, they follow Mecca's hours.

There's been several different models in use in northern Scandinavia; you can go with the hours for the southern-most point in the country you're in, you can go with the hours for your country's capital, you can go with local hours but limit the fast to no more than 2/3rds of the day, you can go with the hours for the nearest Muslim country, etc.

There was a conference in Sweden last week, where European imams and experts checked out the conditions in Northern Sweden and discussed a unified approach, but it's not clear from the summary (in Swedish) if they solved the issue (beyond some advice what to do when the sun never sets, like in Kiruna where the next sunset is in mid-July). The latest update on the site says they're still working on it and asks people to be patient.
posted by effbot at 10:02 AM on June 17, 2015 [4 favorites]


Tromsø et al previously.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:18 AM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]


It is also a time when Muslims try to reconnect with the Qur’an, which they believe is the word of God.

This is a weird and off-putting sentence. Would the Guardian say this about any other religion?
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:48 AM on June 17, 2015 [3 favorites]


One of the suggestions for dealing with fast times here in Fairbanks (in my case, for Yom Kippur, rather than Ramadan) was to use the nearest big city on the same line of longitude (but at a more reasonable latitude)...which cracks me up, since basically after you leave Alaska, it's Pacific Ocean until you hit Antarctica. (You pass near Anchorage, actually, where at least the sun goes down sometimes, and then Hawaii is about 10 degrees longitude away).
posted by leahwrenn at 10:50 AM on June 17, 2015


What's off-putting about it? Muslims believe the Quran is the word of God. It's a better construction than, say, "which is their Bible" or "which is the word of God."

Anyway! I didn't realize Ramadan moved throughout the entire year -- I just assumed it was like some other religious holidays that shift around the calendar (Easter and Mardi Gras), but more or less stay put in one season.
posted by notyou at 11:02 AM on June 17, 2015 [4 favorites]


Astronaut Sheikh Muszaphar on the International Space Station faced this in spades, with a day of ninety minutes!
posted by alasdair at 11:03 AM on June 17, 2015 [6 favorites]


Mod note: Comment (and reply) removed; please skip the asides about the preposterousness of other people's beliefs.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:24 AM on June 17, 2015 [7 favorites]


Anyway! I didn't realize Ramadan moved throughout the entire year -- I just assumed it was like some other religious holidays that shift around the calendar (Easter and Mardi Gras), but more or less stay put in one season.

There's actually an interesting bit of history here. In pre-Islamic times the Arab calendar was based on lunar months but fixed to the solar year through the use of an intercalary month. However, Muhamed forbid the intercalation as unholy, meaning that the months now cycle around solar year. The month of Ramadan (which had some elements of fasting even before Islam) only shifts because of Muhamed's decree. He likely did not know about the extreme length of days toward the poles, or the problems that it would have for his followers attempting to fast in those places. Naturally, Muslims have to innovate when faced with such circumstances.
posted by Thing at 11:34 AM on June 17, 2015 [12 favorites]


One of the suggestions for dealing with fast times here in Fairbanks (in my case, for Yom Kippur, rather than Ramadan)

At least in the Yom Kippur case:
  • the fast is near an equinox, so the time of day isn't too out of whack;
  • whatever fasting times this method comes up with, the fast is still about 24 hours.
Although I've heard it suggested (jokingly) that perhaps Yom Kippur is - near the autumnal equinox, when days are getting shorter the fastest - to keep the fast as short as possible..
posted by madcaptenor at 11:36 AM on June 17, 2015 [3 favorites]


What's off-putting about it?

Most religions believe their scriptures are divinely inspired. I kind of doubt that The Guardian would describe, say, a Catholic group with "according to the Bible, which they believe is the word of God."

I agree that "it's their Bible" would be worse, but it still brought me up short.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:40 AM on June 17, 2015 [2 favorites]


"The Qur'an, Islam's holy book" would work, I think.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 11:42 AM on June 17, 2015 [10 favorites]


The intercalary/lunar/solar wiki hole I dived into after attending an Iftar dinner one year was one of my favorite days to lose to Wikipedia.
posted by DigDoug at 11:53 AM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]


I wouldn't expect to see that sentence in a straight news piece, no.

But in this context, as a part of an explainer, it's just a bit of 101 level clarification. And since Ramadan is a celebration of the Quran's revelation to Mohammed, it seems okay to remind readers of its particular significance.
posted by notyou at 11:58 AM on June 17, 2015 [3 favorites]


But do all faiths believe that their holy book is the actual word of God? For Muslims it goes, God told Gabriel, Gabriel told Muhammad (saws), and then Muhammad told the people and at some point they wrote it down. So it is a fundamental tenet of the faith that the Quran contains the actual word of God, and is not for example a collection of the teachings of some holy person. I don't think it is quite as direct in many other faiths.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:37 PM on June 17, 2015 [3 favorites]


What compounds the difficulty of getting everyone to agree on what to do is that you will have some hardcore people who will be perfectly willing to fast for 23:40 per day. I remember going to Pakistan as a kid and there would be people who would spit into spittoons while fasting because they didn't want to swallow their own saliva. Even in my own life, the big differences in my routine between fasting and non-fasting is the time of day I will go to the gym and that I will not stay at work quite so late.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:12 PM on June 17, 2015 [2 favorites]


Certainly Christians do not view the Gospels in the same way, and ascribe (albeit differing by denomination) a level of human influence in their creation. I recall, however roughly, being taught that the gospellers did not write the very word of god but rather the mind of god. It has made smoothing out the awkward bits a little easier for Christianity than it might otherwise have been, were they beholden to every dot and tittle.
posted by Thing at 1:16 PM on June 17, 2015


One of the Android app developers in the hub where I work is originally from Egypt, he brought 5 trays of traditional rice and meat made by the local Somali community for all to share today. Is there some pre-Ramadan significance for this?
posted by infini at 1:48 PM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]


notyou: "Anyway! I didn't realize Ramadan moved throughout the entire year -- I just assumed it was like some other religious holidays that shift around the calendar (Easter and Mardi Gras), but more or less stay put in one season."

The Muslim calendar is fully lunar, which means the months gradually process around the solar year. The Jewish calendar and Christian movable-feast calendar are luni-solar, which means the months are lunar but the calendar "corrects" to stay more or less in sync with the solar calendar (through means of a leap month, in Judaism's case).

There are theological and historically-contingent reasons that Judaism and therefore Christianity use a luni-solar calendar and Islam uses a fully lunar one, but it's possible one of the forces involved is that Judaism was primarily a pastoral, herding-and-farming culture during the development of its culture to whom the solar year's cycle was crucial, while Islam had a much more trade-driven economy during its development, where accurate and simple calculation of dates (it's easy to spot a new moon) was far more important than it was for early Jews and the solar year mattered less.

(My masters degree focused on liturgy so I know a LOT not just about the validity of Quiverfull baptism rituals BUT ALSO about calendar systems of the monotheistic world and I can bang on at length about setting the dates for weird festivals.)

I always think, if I was Muslim, I would be FULL OF VERY UN-ISLAMIC RAGE every year that I got a long-sunlight Ramadan. The literally-cosmic injustice would drive me batty.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:50 PM on June 17, 2015 [12 favorites]


well, as it is, my biggest #firstworldmuslimproblem as an adult, esp in summer fasting, is regulating my coffee intake so I don't get caffeine withdrawal on top of everything else. so here I am, grimly drinking coffee at sahur, even if I'm going straight to bed for a nap after my dawn prayers.

One of the Android app developers in the hub where I work is originally from Egypt, he brought 5 trays of traditional rice and meat made by the local Somali community for all to share today. Is there some pre-Ramadan significance for this?

every Muslim culture has their own practices, but it's likely, if we're all starting on the same date (there's usually a 1 day difference between places depending on how much they hold to the custom of sighting the new moon vs pure calculation) + most Muslim communities consider evenings/sunset as the start of the day (so you're counting the 1st ramadan to begin on what a western calendar-trained mind would think as ramadan eve - hence why the terawih prayers would begin on the eve), then he's just started in celebrating the month with you all. :) but I wait to be corrected, of course.
posted by cendawanita at 2:27 PM on June 17, 2015 [10 favorites]


This is so weirdly primitive.
posted by reiichiroh at 2:28 PM on June 17, 2015 [2 favorites]


This is so weirdly primitive.

Fasting? Lunar months? religion? Talking about things on the internet? "This" covers a lot of ground.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:35 PM on June 17, 2015 [7 favorites]




probably my coffee addiction. (sorry for that!)
posted by cendawanita at 2:37 PM on June 17, 2015 [5 favorites]


I always think, if I was Muslim, I would be FULL OF VERY UN-ISLAMIC RAGE every year that I got a long-sunlight Ramadan. The literally-cosmic injustice would drive me batty.

If you take a longer view then you realize that things will even out in a couple of years when you get a short-sunlight Ramadan. December Ramadan is pretty much just skipping lunch in Toronto.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:41 PM on June 17, 2015 [11 favorites]


cendawanita, I'm guessing your take on it is correct.
posted by infini at 2:43 PM on June 17, 2015


This is so weirdly primitive.

Like blood and flesh in wine and wafer?

Like snipping bits of skin off?

Like choosing which animal to eat?

Like sending paper boats down the sea?

or, like how they really get primitive over here where I live, marrying a couple in public on the seashore on the day the sun won't set and then rowing them over to a bonfire to be lit to ensure the next year is fertile?

Woo hoo! the land meets water meets air meets fire.
posted by infini at 2:45 PM on June 17, 2015 [6 favorites]


Mod note: This is so weirdly primitive.

As a comment, that's terse enough to be pretty ambiguous, but I want to be clear since one obvious reading is as a general dismissal of like religious belief or custom writ large here that that's not really a good contribution to the thread. If you have something substantial and thoughtful to say about the actual content of the link, go for it, but not so much this sort of thing.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:56 PM on June 17, 2015 [10 favorites]


The Muslim calendar is fully lunar, which means the months gradually process around the solar year.

I like this sentence a lot (and really your whole explanation; thanks!), because I can see the moon working its way around the calendar and especially because it caused me to stop midway through reading "process" and go back, start that word over and pronounce* it as the Canadians do ("procession"), instead of my usual American "prawcess." There's nothing special about relying on context for meaning and maybe there's nothing really special about relying on context for pronunciation, either, and I guess I'll google and see if there's some discussion of this.

-------------------
*Not literally aloud; in my head.
posted by notyou at 3:20 PM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]


I didn't mean "primitive" -- sorry. Wasn't snarking on Islam itself. I meant superstitious kind of primitive. Yes, like all those other examples, infini pointed out.

My comment wasn't a "Haha! Look at those savages!" in a Canadian Residential school kind of way.
posted by reiichiroh at 3:36 PM on June 17, 2015 [2 favorites]


Tragically now gone from netflix, but Fordson is a great documentary on a Dearborn, MI football team made of predominately Muslims who have to accommodate intense practice periods during Ramadan when the calendars align.
posted by creade at 3:40 PM on June 17, 2015


well, as it is, my biggest #firstworldmuslimproblem as an adult, esp in summer fasting, is regulating my coffee intake so I don't get caffeine withdrawal on top of everything else. so here I am, grimly drinking coffee at sahur, even if I'm going straight to bed for a nap after my dawn prayers.


I feel you-- I taper off my coffee intake (2 cups > 1 cup > tea >nothing) before Yom Kippur every year so I don't have a splitting migraine the day of. Of course, if I do it wrong, it means that I get a few migraines before, but at least I have food/pain medications to stave them off.
posted by damayanti at 3:50 PM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]


Muslims with type 2 diabetes who choose to fast during Ramadan may benefit from individualized education programs, according to findings presented this month at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) in Boston.
posted by Sir Rinse at 4:15 PM on June 17, 2015


Yeah, not seeing anything particularly superstitious about a religious discipline. I mean, I guess if you though it would bring you luck or chase away ghosts or something.

I have a Catholic friend who really likes beer. I mean really, he like beer. Not as in "getting drunk on a regular basis," but a couple of well-chosen bottles a night. Every year for Lent, he gives up beer. Part of it is religious discipline, but I am pretty sure part of it is making sure that it's him choosing the beer, and using the absence to remind himself of other things in his life and to appreciate what he has when he has it.

Reading the various links, it sounds like Ramadan could be like that for some people (not about alcohol, I would assume, but other things in their life).
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:33 PM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]


The first "wake-up for middle-of-the-night-breakfast" Ramadan drummers are walking my street right now. I guess I'll stay up a few more minutes. This is not my favorite part of Ramadan.
posted by daveliepmann at 5:01 PM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]


any portmanteau in a storm: "If you take a longer view then you realize that things will even out in a couple of years when you get a short-sunlight Ramadan. "

Oh, I'd feel smug and self-satisfied during those years, and totally enraged during the others. (I'm irrational, but I have a lot of self-knowledge about that fact.)

cendawanita: " most Muslim communities consider evenings/sunset as the start of the day (so you're counting the 1st ramadan to begin on what a western calendar-trained mind would think as ramadan eve"

Also true of Judaism (which is why Sabbath starts Friday evening at sunset) and traditional Christianity (which is why Saturday evening Mass "counts" as a Sunday Mass for Catholics) ... another place where you can see common roots among the three religions. Although definitely easy to forget when you're used to midnight-to-midnight or dawn-to-dawn conceptions like most modern Westerners!

The thought of fasting from caffeine for Ramadan has just made a cold shudder run through me. (I am such a wuss.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:18 PM on June 17, 2015 [2 favorites]


Ramzan Mubarak!

Pakistan is a moon sighting country, which means that we don't know until the night before whether the fasting (or the holidays, when it's time for those) will be tomorrow or day after. This makes the 29th of Ramzan particularly suspenseful: Do I have to fast one more day? Or is tomorrow a feast day? The suspense is further intensified by the fact that most (all?) Muslims will tell you that fasting is forbidden on the feast day. For now, people have just been relieved that the first fast here is on Friday, not Thursday. And most are taking heart from the fact that it is unlikely for there to be two consecutive 30-day lunar months.

This has been an installment of an insider's random Ramzan observations.
posted by bardophile at 6:35 PM on June 17, 2015 [8 favorites]


Also true of Judaism (which is why Sabbath starts Friday evening at sunset) and traditional Christianity (which is why Saturday evening Mass "counts" as a Sunday Mass for Catholics)

Interesting! Now that's something worth learning about today.

Fasting In A Multiracial Country − Ramadan In The Eye Of Non-Muslims (a Malaysian take -- the pictures of our ridiculous Ramadan food bazaars just makes me curious about how it's like elsewhere...)

Ramadan Etiquette Guide: How to be a Non-Muslim During the Holy Month

-- on that note, can I just go on the record to also confirm that it really really REALLY is fine for fasting Muslims to see other people eating and to just see food, in general? I mean, it's probably rude to go on about it excessively, but that's up to the person on what they consider excessive (one friend won't want to talk about foodie stuff at all; others would join in even at the lunch table for a chat) <-- this is brought to you by the inevitable tumblr reblogs that warn ppl that they're offending Muslims by posting about food (one especially annoying reblog was even started by someone who's neither a Muslim or knew anything about Islamic customs). I'll admit my annoyance is spurred more by the fact that back home here, it's the exact sort of sentiment that's encouraged by the more fundamentalist/reactionary sorts just so they can guilt other people abut it.
posted by cendawanita at 8:44 PM on June 17, 2015 [2 favorites]




For those who think fasting is "superstitious" I'd encourage you to actually try to fast for a day. It's great opportunity to see what's really going on inside you.

Also, I don't know about other families, but in mine, we were taught that the Ramadan fast was specifically meant to bring you closer to and give you empathy for those who suffer deprivation, and to make you mindful of your privilege in being well-fed the rest of the year. There's really nothing superstitious about the fast, and it is indeed totally possible to participate in it in a meaningful way without even bringing God into it.

Anyway, the first Ramadan I fasted for was in December, which gave me wildly unreasonable expectations for the rest of my life because I was all "this is easy! I can totes do this!" and then Ramadan continued to shift earlier and suddenly I'm like practically passing out by sunset. I just can't do it any more without turning into a shambling, dehydrated wreck with a migraine. I'll give to a food bank or something this month instead.
posted by yasaman at 9:09 PM on June 17, 2015 [8 favorites]


Is it wrong that I would love to see a compilation of horrible tumblr misconceptions and misplaced sensitivity about Ramadan?
posted by sherief at 2:32 AM on June 19, 2015


well, here's one?

(might as well stay off tumblr right until after you break your fast)
posted by cendawanita at 3:42 AM on June 19, 2015


Through the "Fast with a Muslim Friend" program, non-Muslim Canadians are invited to sign up to try fasting and then share iftar, the evening meal that ends the day of going without food or drink. It builds on what Safwan Choudhry called the “tremendous success” of Meet a Muslim Family, which saw more than 800 people across Canada spend the day in a Muslim household earlier this year.
posted by Sir Rinse at 6:19 AM on June 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


My friend and favorite cabbie is Muslim, and he tries to limit his time driving during Ramadan because fasting makes him hangry. Most of his fares are pretty understanding, though. (We have a pretty large Middle Eastern community here, so that helps a lot.)

He and his family had me over for Eid last year. Holy. Cats. There is no feast quite like a feast thrown by folks who have been fasting for a month during their normal waking hours. It was amazing and warm and filled with so much laughter and so many delicious things. Bellydancing with Eddie's 90 year-old Teeta was seriously the highlight of my entire year. Old bird can still shake it!

(My husband is Syrian, but not Muslim, so Eid was quite a treat for me.)
posted by MissySedai at 6:37 AM on June 19, 2015


Oh man, now I want to plan a proper iftar menu for dinner!
I absolutely love trying out the feast foods of different faiths and cultures. And I don't have an aged Muslim grandmother to tell me I'm doing it all wrong...

Any suggestions?
posted by pointless_incessant_barking at 2:29 PM on June 19, 2015


Any suggestions?

I've given some more thought, and yes, aside from having some dates and plain water to break the fast (to follow the Prophet's example), what you eat at iftar especially the kind with family where It's Kind Of A Big Deal kind of communal meal, should be what your culture considers special dishes or your own favourite dishes. Somewhere in those links or in the comments (or elsewhere) described it like having Thanksgiving for every day of the month, and that's really the only rule (thus leading to many to lament how the whole point of the fast gets missed big time by the way most people treat their iftar. *sheepish shrug*). So uh, you can totally substitute your own grandmother to tell you what you're doing wrong.

Aside from that, the only thing that gets impressed upon is fast-breaking behaviour rather than what to eat, eg always break your fast as soon as the azan/adhan (call to prayer) is called, because you don't gain additional rewards if you purposefully put yourself through misery and delay your iftar. The dates, as mentioned above. Eat a little, then do your maghrib prayers before resuming your meal. That's it, honestly.
posted by cendawanita at 11:02 AM on June 20, 2015


From what I heard on BBC, Ramadan in Reykjavík is in a class by itself. But the Iman at the mosque there who they interviewed was originally from Egypt and he felt that the longer fast in a cold climate was easier to endure than 16 hours in Cairo in the heat.
posted by y2karl at 12:07 PM on June 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


From what I heard on BBC, Ramadan in Reykjavík is in a class by itself.

Well, at least the sun sets there every day. In places like Tromsø and Kiruna, the next sunset is in mid-July.
posted by effbot at 2:02 AM on June 25, 2015


« Older Running a marathon while solving equations   |   Make Way for Brosé Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments