The Other Side of Ramadan

Today is the first day of Ramadan, and prob­a­bly a rare occa­sion where most — if not all — Mus­lim coun­tries mirac­u­lously agreed that it would be on the 1^st of August (cor­rect me if I am wrong), so let’s hope it ends on the same date as well. At least for the first time ever, I would not have to hear sar­cas­tic com­ments from a West­erner fresh off the boat regard­ing the whole moon cal­cu­la­tion thing.

[cap­tion id=“attachment_2643” align=“aligncenter” width=“400” caption=“An Indian Mus­lim ven­dor sep­a­rates the seeds of a pome­gran­ate at a road­side stall in prepa­ra­tion for Mus­lims break­ing their fast at sun­down in Mum­bai, India on August 19, 2010. (SAJ­JAD HUSSAIN/​AFP/​Getty Images)”][/​caption]

There are plenty of won­der­ful blog posts on Ramadan, includ­ing this one from last year by Mich and an updated ver­sion for this year here. Prac­ti­cally any news out­let is now talk­ing about Ramadan, in any way or another, and mar­ket­ing it as a product.

This is my concern.

Every­where you will read some­thing along the lines of “Ramadan is a time of reflec­tion” and “it is a time of prayers, feel­ing for the poor, med­i­ta­tion, and shar­ing” among other things. Then in the next line you would find ill-​crafted text that goes “Join us at our lux­u­ri­ous and exclu­sive Ramadan tent with open buf­fet for only AED 400 per per­son”. Then a lit­tle aster­isk leads you to the fine print which men­tions that your AED 400 does not include your shisha and the 15% tax. 

Right.

In case you are inter­ested, this is an image of what feed­ing the poor is like, just in case the exclu­sive tent does not have char­ity envelopes for you to donate in:

[cap­tion id=“attachment_2641” align=“aligncenter” width=“400” caption=“A child sits with a plate of food that was dis­trib­uted as part of the holy month of Ramadan, at a refugee camp in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sat­ur­day, Aug. 14, 2010. (AP Photo/​Mustafa Quraishi)”][/​caption]

Here’s a list of things I do not like about how Ramadan is being prac­tised these days (gen­er­ally as well as locally):

- Mar­ket­ing prod­ucts you hardly ever needed with plas­ters boast­ing a Ramadan dis­count or some­thing along the lines of “in the spirit of Ramadan”.

- The end­less bar­rage of TV soaps and shows, most of which are point­less and have noth­ing to do with the “Ramadan spirit” or “time of reflec­tion and med­i­ta­tion”. Unless you’re a mos­quito that can’t avoid any­thing glow­ing, that’s hardly meditation.

- Speak­ing of glow­ing, what’s with the jew­ellery indus­try craft­ing gold and dia­mond neck­laces specif­i­cally for Ramadan? Is it a sta­tus sym­bol that I wear a ridicu­lously priced (and usu­ally ter­ri­bly designed) piece of jew­ellery that shows my reli­gious support?

- Peo­ple storm­ing mar­kets and gro­cery stores as though they have heard that there is no more oil in the world to trans­port any­thing fur­ther and what you have is all what you would eat till you die from star­va­tion. Peo­ple should be eat­ing less dur­ing Ramadan — you’re shav­ing off more than half of the day fast­ing — yet some­how glut­tony has become syn­ony­mous with Ramadan.

- Ill-​tempered peo­ple. Okay I under­stand you have not had your cof­fee and you have not had your cig­a­rette. That’s the point of fast­ing: test­ing your tem­per and tol­er­ance. Fast­ing is not an excuse for you to be bad tem­pered. It is a motive for you to con­trol your­self. I can under­stand some ran­dom bursts here and there — we are human, after all — but to still be a crazed lunatic as Ramadan comes to a close means you have missed the point.

- Speak­ing of lunatics: peo­ple dri­ving. I do not need to elaborate.

- What pisses me off the most: Non-​fasting peo­ple should not eat and/​or drink in front or close to those who fast “to pro­tect their feel­ings”. I appre­ci­ate your con­cern but Mus­lims should toughen up and stop vic­tim­is­ing them­selves with fast­ing excuses. Again, it’s test­ing your temp­ta­tion. If you’re not fast­ing, you should be able to eat and drink as you please. If you don’t want to out of respect, that’s your choice, but hav­ing a law that can put you in jail because of eat­ing and drink­ing in pub­lic is uncalled for. In malls, you see food out­lets closed with very few open and bar­ri­caded to hide those who are eat­ing. Seri­ously? My friends in Lebanon and Syria thank­fully report otherwise.

I can go on and on but that would bore you. So if you have any other gripes at how peo­ple prac­tise Ramadan, please men­tion it in the comments.