Beneath the silver sliver of moon that signals the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, residents of the medieval Bab al-Khalq quarter broke their first day of fasting Wednesday with the traditional iftar feast and then poured out of their houses into the narrow streets to celebrate late into the night.
Boys set off firecrackers while men sat in cafes and drew contentedly on water pipes. Young women, locked arm in arm, strolled past the cafes, pretending not to notice the admiring glances of the young men. Their mothers fussed over market stalls piled high with dates, nuts, sweet pastries oozing with honey and other Ramadan delicacies.
Ramadan is the most important event on the Muslim religious calendar. It marks the divine revelation of the Koran to the Prophet Muhammad almost 1,400 years ago. Devout Muslims abstain from food and drink during daylight hours in acts of sacrifice and purification.
`It is our custom’
“But after prayers and fasting and reading the Koran, comes eating and belly dancing. That part is not very Islamic, but it is our custom in Egypt,” said Walid Fahmy, 30, a sales representative for Siemens in Egypt.
Fahmy and his wife, Fatima, live in an upscale district of Giza, near the Pyramids, but at least once during Ramadan they like to visit the old neighborhoods like Bab al-Khalq, where the streets are still strung with the traditional lanterns and gaudily colored tenting for the holiday season.
On this night, the couple came to Bab al-Khalq to buy a fanous, the ornate brass-and-glass lanterns that are the Ramadan equivalent of Christmas trees.
After some friendly haggling, they purchased one from Ahmad Hussein, 16, who was doing a brisk business from the stall where his father has been making the Ramadan lanterns for the past 53 years. Alas, this will be the family’s final year in the business, Hussein said, because they cannot compete with cheaper versions from China.
Ramadan takes many forms across the breadth of the Islamic world. While Egyptians and Moroccans balance daytime fasting and prayer with nighttime feasting and conviviality, Ramadan is serious business in Saudi Arabia, and non-Muslims are hard-pressed to find a meal during daylight hours.
In Iraq, where the threat of war with the U.S. casts a shadow over all, this Ramadan season is one of the bleakest in recent years. The festivities that used to characterize the fasting month are all but forgotten.
Iraqis now scrape by on monthly rations of rice, beans, lentils and flour, provided by the government under a United Nations oil-for-food program. Few have money to buy Ramadan treats.
“We were living in luxury. We were spoiled for choice of food and delicacies in Ramadan,” said Zahra Abdallah, 47, a mother of five in Baghdad’s poor al-Fadl district.
“Now all this has become a fantasy. We live with the memory of those days.”
Twelve years of sanctions have thrown Iraq’s people into penury and reduced its once oil-wealthy economy to a shambles. Most Iraqis blame the U.S., but Washington says President Saddam Hussein is responsible.
“Every year under sanctions makes our life more miserable. This Ramadan is more difficult than all the others. We keep on hoping for better times, but it always gets worse,” said widow Nida’a Shamran, a mother of seven, at her al-Fadl home.
Shamran makes ends meet by cooking, washing clothes and rugs. Even before her husband died four years ago, she sold her two washing machines, rugs, heaters, furniture and electrical appliances to get money for food and medicine. Now she lives in two spartan rooms.
Greater foreboding
The threat of war against Iraq and the memory of recent terror attacks around the globe has heightened the sense of foreboding this year.
In India, where the Muslim minority numbers about 140 million, many mosques will hold special prayers during Ramadan to remember hundreds killed in religious violence earlier this year.
“We remember daily our brothers and sisters who lost their lives during the riots, but Ramadan would be a special occasion to remember them in a special way,” said Shabbir Ahmed Siddiqui, the prayer leader of the biggest mosque in Gujarat state’s commercial capital, Ahmedabad.
In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation and the scene of a devastating bomb attack last month that killed more than 190 people, and in neighboring Malaysia, the U.S. government is running ads on television that show American Muslims living contented lives and praising their co-existence with non-Muslims.
But critics say the campaign, funded by the State Department, fails to address the root causes of anti-U.S. sentiment among Muslims, namely Washington’s support for Israel, the injustices suffered by Palestinians and the plight of ordinary Iraqis.
“The United States is spending millions of dollars to change public opinion in the Muslim world, which is against U.S. views,” said Ghani Shamsuddin, head of Malaysia’s Ulama (Islamic scholars) Association. “But I don’t think it will work.”
Nevertheless, President Bush sent his “best wishes for a blessed time” to Muslims around the world.
Calling Islam “a peace-loving faith,” Bush said he celebrated the diversity that the millions of American Muslims bring to the U.S. and praised Muslim nations that support the U.S. war against terror.
