What is Ramadan?
The 9th month in the Islamic calendar is called Ramadan. All practicing Muslims around the world, estimated to be around 2 Billion people (about 25% of the world’s population) stop eating and drinking (everything including water) from dawn (a little more than an hour before sunrise) till dusk (sunset). Muslims will try and get up from 30 minutes to an hour before dawn to have a quick meal before starting their fast.
The goal of fasting is to increase patience, discipline, modesty, empathy & spirituality. A Muslim is encouraged to have a clear heart with no grudges or anger towards another.
Ramadan encourages prayers, fasting, charity and self-accountability, in order to increase awareness and empathy towards the less privileged, to humble yourself.
The Islamic calendar is 10–11 days shorter than the regular calendar. This is because it’s a lunar calendar (instead of a regular solar calendar), based on moon cycles. The Jewish, and Chinese calendars are also lunar based. That’s why the Ramadan migrates through the seasons (about 10 days earlier every year). Example:
- Ramadan 2024: March 12th — April 10th
- Ramadan 2025: Feb 28th — March 30th
- Ramadan 2026: Feb 18th — March 19th
- Ramadan 2027: Feb 7th — March 9th
Ramadan during the summer is harder, the fasts are longer. This year most of the fasts will be about 15 hours (in California).
Prayers
Practicing Muslims normally pray 5 times per day throughout the year not just Ramadan, including at dawn and dusk. During Ramadan, more time is spent on those 5 daily prayers, and more congressional prayer is performed for the morning and evening prayers at the Mosque. Muslims are usually at the Mosque (church) for congressional prayers every night for several hours and most mornings before Sunrise during the entire month. The last ten nights of the month are even more special and rewarding, so Muslims will go into overdrive to participate in optional nightly worship.
Muslims believe the rewards for good deeds and worship are multiplied many times over during Ramadan, more than 700 times their normal value. Many Muslims take advantage of this month to pray more and do more good things. These rewards may not be realized in life, and will actually be more valuable in the afterlife, that’s when they’ll truly be “vested”, think of a “lifetime eternal pension” for retirement.
It’s kind of like increasing your retirement benefits, and Ramadan is like an opportunity to make a purchase to enhance your benefits.
This year in the California bay area, the fast will start from about 5:30am and end at about 7:40pm. This means no eating or drinking, not even water. The timings can vary dramatically depending on where you are in the world.
Energy
For a lot of Muslims, the difficulty isn’t always the hunger, it’s the lack of sleep and, for working adults, the lack of caffeine during the day, giving up coffee or tea while you work is one of the challenges, and since Muslims can’t even drink water, as the day progresses, the dehydration also drains energy and alertness.
One of the most rewarding acts of worship for a Muslim is congressional prayer at the Mosque, specifically the morning (after dawn, before sunrise), and the evening (1.5 hours after sunset) prayers. The evening congressional prayer specifically during Ramadan can run really late into the night, sometimes all the way up to midnight and beyond. There’s also an optional late night prayer, usually done before dawn, that people wake up early to participate in. Since Muslims believe the rewards are multiplied up to or even over 700 times, Muslims try to take advantage of these opportunities. Typically, only getting between 3 and 5 hours of sleep per night during the work week.
The real difficulty becomes managing your level of alertness, figuring out how to manage your energy. Sometimes that means taking a mid-day or late afternoon nap to re-energize (instead of lunch break). The weekends are even more delightful for working adults so they can sleep in after the morning prayer, make their day a little shorter, allowing them to have more energy.
The Celebration
At the end of the month of fasting, there is a huge celebration. It is the first of two in the Islamic calendar. These celebrations are called Eid (rhymes with read). The fasting Eid is called Eid’ul’Fitr (pronounced “eed al fither”), it is the “festival of breaking of the fast”.
Peace
Muslims typically greet each other by saying “Peace be upon you” in Arabic (As’Salaamu’Alayikum), so I leave you with that greeting.
Peace be upon you,
Tariq Ali.
