The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ramadan

[cbayer]

http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/haroonmoghul/7206/the_politically_incorrect_guide_to_ramadan/

July 22, 2013 6:58pm
Post by HAROON MOGHUL

No sex! No food! No cigarettes! Not even a sip of water! No cursing! No backbiting! From well before sunrise to after sundown! For 29 or 30 days! Only Muslims would get hypomanic with such news, and I know, because we have been—for 1,400 years. Not to mention the special prayers, or taraweeh, the staying up into the late hours, when, Muslims believe, we can be closest to God. Only the true lover stays up well into the darkness of night.

The ninth month of Islam’s lunar calendar, Ramadan skips backwards roughly eleven days every Gregorian year, a profound instance of fairness—for, unmoored from the seasons, no one part of the world has to endure an especially rough Ramadan regularly. (Imagine if Ramadan came in the Stockholm summer every summer.) But it’s in the Muslim world that you best get that special starvation feel of the holy month.

The world reorients itself, so that people overeat, overpray, and oversleep. But all the same, a practice as fulfilling and renewing as Ramadan inspires its own subculture (if that’s what you call the habits and norms of well over a billion people), so I’ve adapted a specialized Ramadan dictionary first featured on my incipient Tumblr blog, which can help you understand how Muslims experience this sacred time of year. ‘Tis the season…

Anticipatory Iftar Induction Syndrome (AIIS): Muslims can’t form lines, except for daily prayers, and can’t get anywhere on time, except for sundown, when it’s a kind of punctual free-for-all. But then there’s that one guy who, despite being just as capable of hearing the adhan (call to prayer) as you or I still breaks his fast (iftar literally means ‘breakfast’) early. Doesn’t he have that cheesy adhan alarm clock that they used to sell at ISNA, which for those who don’t know is, along with Star Trek conventions, the world’s largest gathering of virgins? (ISNA is really the Islamic Society of North America.)

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