“Ramadan is not just predicated upon eating or not eating or drinking or not drinking. It’s a state of mind. And it’s an attempt to achieve God consciousness that carries on throughout the day.” — Wajahat Ali
Ramadan, Islam’s holiest month, is a time spent in community — fasting while the sun is up, praying periodically at mosques, and breaking fast together at sundown. This week, we’re revisiting a 2009 show where we heard from 16 Muslim listeners across ages and geographies about what this time means to them. I’ve always loved this episode for its many expressions of Ramadan’s significance. But this year, I wondered how our current circumstances have changed some of those listener’s observations.
Sahar Ullah says, despite the pandemic, this year’s Ramadan has felt more peaceful than in years past. When we first heard from her, she was applying to Ph.D. programs to study Arabic and Islamic literature. Eleven years later, she’s finishing up a postdoctoral lectureship at Columbia University in New York City and teaching a first-year humanities class remotely from her apartment. Several cornerstones of Ramadan have also shifted online for her. Instead of going to a mosque to serve iftar, the meal that breaks fast every evening during Ramadan, her family gathers virtually on Zoom for “ziftar.” And every midnight, she joins a video call with a small group of friends who read the Qur’an together.
Sahar Ullah’s family gathers for iftar over Zoom. Sahar’s sister, Sana Ullah, took this photo at their family’s home in Florida.
“One of my friends has a cat, and every time he sits down and reads, you’ll see a furry tail wave [on] the screen,” she says. “[The midnight Qur’an reading] has been really nice. It feels very grounding, and it gives me a sense of stability.”
Nadia Sheikh Bandukda, a labor and employment lawyer based in Burlington County, New Jersey, cooks food from cultures around the world throughout Ramadan — a tradition she learned from her father and is sharing with her three children. Nadia reflected on the shift from community to family she’s felt during Ramadan this year: “I don’t have access to … standing next to someone with a completely different culture to my left and a completely different age to my right, and feeling that oneness,” she says. “[But] what I enjoy about observing Ramadan during a pandemic [is] the ability to stand next to my son to my left and my husband one inch away and my mother-in-law sitting on the chair behind me kneeling down, and really feeling this groundedness with my own immediate family. That centeredness is still there. It’s just not community. It’s more family-centric.”
Speaking with both Sahar and Nadia, I thought about the ways we’re able to adapt the familiar, even amid a sea change. Perhaps we can understand inventing new ways to hold on to old traditions as a practice of gratitude. It allows us to see the richness of what may have seemed ordinary before. Or, as Nadia reflects, “I’m almost glad we got to experience pre-pandemic Ramadan and post-pandemic because there are pieces of both that I’d like to implement next year.”
Yours,
Kristin Lin
Editor, The On Being Project