Ramadan and Not Even Water

Muslims believe that the Quran is a book of guidance which was revealed in the ninth month of the Islamic calendar known as Ramadan. We commemorate the month by attempting to practice, each in our own way, the teachings of it.

Ramadan for me, like for many Muslims around the world, is a time to cut personal distractions and vices to focus on my relationship with God. A chance to take pause and consciously change my behaviour, routine, and habits to focus on spirituality. A time for family and community–and perhaps most importantly a time for reflection, improvement, and self-awareness. 

This, of course, looks different for different people because there are no cookie cutter Muslims. For people I've known, this meant some give up smoking, many spend evenings in congregational prayer, others take breaks from social media–whatever they feel brings them closer to God and eliminates the clutter we accumulate as we move through life (think: KonMari for the soul). Inevitably, this means our lifestyles are even more different than usual come Ramadan.

Growing up, I often felt that I had to present my Muslim-ness in a way that was palatable to the White gaze or Western understanding. Friends I've spoken to echo this sentiment. Zara says, "it feels like you have to explain Islam in a way that would fit [the Western] criteria of right and wrong... [and if it] didn’t, I felt anxious that we would be seen as “barbarian” or that it would evoke all the negative stereotypes". For as long as I have practiced Ramadan, I knew fasting was never cool to my peers. I've had people ask me if I'm forced to fast, why I don't just eat while at school–my parents would never know, why would God want me to starve, and don’t people die from fasting? Yeah, apparently only if it's not part of a weight-loss fad (intermittent fasting, I'm looking at you). As always, anything the West doesn't practice is foreign and strange at best and barbaric and backwards at worst, until they finally catch up.

We can excuse kids for asking questions even when they don’t come from a place of genuine curiosity. But it seems like the micro-aggressions and the othering doesn’t magically disappear into adulthood. Having to constantly justify a part of your identity is exhausting. "I’ve felt this in situations like interviews where the anxiety is very real because how you answer determines whether you get the job or accepted into a program." Zara says as we share our experiences. For Amira, the struggle seems to have intensified in the corporate world; "if I get to go home earlier because I start early and take no lunch they think it's favouritism. A guy once got promo points because he said he's cultured because he 'dealt with my fasting’." (We’re still trying to figure out how that culture works). Comments like these become almost normal into adulthood because we are so well trained at ignoring or laughing them off from childhood.

More often than not, it has been ingrained in young Muslims that we have to be gracious and accomodating of questions, to show that we are tolerant and welcoming and warm (read: not the terrorists that Islamophobic media, television and politics would have you believe especially post 9/11). We are pressured to be model minorities to soften the blows of otherness. So, as a child of first generation immigrants I accommodated plenty of the stale, perfectly Google-able, "not even water?!" questions year in, year out. Except when I moved to Qatar, a Muslim majority country, where I still found myself educating White people. I wondered why I didn't have to ask Americans about uniquely American holidays like Thanksgiving and Halloween, or the traditions of Christmas or New Year.

I don't remember being given the space to demand answers as a six-year-old immigrant in a new culture despite the pressures to assimilate. I don't think my parents were ever given that opportunity. So, why does the labour of education always fall on me, wherever I am in the world? The truth is, it doesn't. And I'd like young Muslims to realise sooner what I didn't–you do not have to tolerate micro-aggressions disguised as curiosity. We are not obligated to educate if we don't have the desire or capacity to do so. Education and knowledge is not owed, it is sought and earned. 

I have quietly broken my fast on moving trains, in the middle of classes, parked on the side of the street without anyone knowing. Religion is a deeply personal matter between me and God and how I practice my faith does not need justification, nor does it need to be presented in a way that makes it palatable to those who do not practice it. And least of all, 1440 years of scholarship and history simply does not need to take opinion from a Western perspective.

For me, Ramadan as a Muslim living in the West has been a quiet act of decolonisation, a rejection of capitalism and consumerism, a rebellion against the notion that Western lifestyles are the be all and end all.