Is it sunset yet?

The holy month of Ramadan is just about ending. We are actually in the last ten days, which are the most holy, and call on Muslims to pray more and be more vigilant in remembering God (or Allah as is said in Arabic) than we have been in the rest of the month. So what is Ramadan? Well, its kind of like Yom Kippur, Lent, and your birthday all mixed together. Lots of Muslims look forward to Ramadan all year. They prepare. They count days. Its like waiting to turn 5 or 21. You just anticipate it with giddiness. And when it gets here how do you celebrate? Well, there sure as heck is no cake.

During the month of Ramadan, Muslims don’t eat or drink anything from sunrise to sunset. We also can’t smoke, have sex, or do any other “fun” things out there. But don’t worry… once the sun goes down all bets are off. This year the typical day of fasting in Ramadan is roughly from 5 am to 7 pm. God was especially judicious when He came up with Ramadan because it is on the lunar calendar. This means that Ramadan is at a different time of year each year. So people all over the world will at some point in their life have the joy of fasting in the middle of summer in the sweltering heat with 16 hours of daylight. (Well except for those living along the equator, but they are already lucky with living in the tropics and all) I am not really sure how Ramadan works out for folks living in Iceland who have like months of night. Hmm. So like Jews may fast for Yom Kippur and Christians may fast during Lent, we fast during Ramadan.

The whole point of the month is to remind Muslims of God’s presence in their lives and to ask Him for forgiveness. This brings us back to the last ten nights. These are said to be the most holy nights in the whole Muslim calendar. The 27th of Ramadan in particular is rumored to be the night when the Holy Qu’ran was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. As a result, Muslims often spend the night awake, praying all night to ask for various different things such as health, forgiveness, and blessings from God. When I was 8 I stayed up for a bit and asked for a Furby; Allah, in all His mercy spared me from ever getting one.

I am often asked by my friends who are of the non-fasting variety if I get hungry. Well, duh. Of course I get hungry. That is kind of the point. Aside from fasting being a way to remember God, it is also a way to remember all the blessings you have. Like the Internet, so you can look up the exact time of sunset on http://www.time.gov/, or cable television including the weather channel so you know when sunrise and sunset are the next day. It is also 4 weeks (roughly) to decide what vices you want to keep and what vices you would rather lose. This year I am focusing on giving up school work as my vice. (I am a 3L in law school after all)

Of course, knowing if Ramadan has started or ended is a whole other debacle for my next post....