Ramadan begins today, and it will be completely unlike all the previous years through the centuries:
Around the world, Muslims will not be able to observe the holiday as they normally do — with 30 nights of communal prayer and post-sunset feasting. Instead, they’ll spend the long days of fasting mostly in their own homes.Such is life now in which we find ourselves locked up in our homes, unable to get together with friends and family. Everything is shut down!
The virus has emptied Islam’s holiest sites at the most sacred time of year. The Ka’bah, the gold-embroidered shrine in Mecca’s Grand Mosque, is closed to worshippers along with the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina and Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque.
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| Caption at the source: A nearly deserted Ka’bah in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on 7 April. |
The pandemic does not stop this Islamophobic President from offering juicy anti-Muslim red meat to his base. "our politicians seem to treat different faiths very differently ... They go after Christian churches but they don't tend to go after mosques."
The deafening sound that you hear is that of 63 million people cheering him!
As I wrote in this post seven years ago, in 2013, Ramadan "is an intentional pause to our everyday lives. A forced interruption that then makes us think, for at least a few minutes every day, about what we want to do with the little time we have on this planet." Unfortunately for the rest of us, this President and his toadies have a clear and starkly different idea of what they want to accomplish with the little time that they too have on this pale blue dot that we call home :(
The following is a slightly edited post from July 10, 2013:
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I suppose it can look contradictory for this atheist to post about religion but without critiquing it. But, I have never been one of those militant atheists making a fanatical religion out of atheism. As long as the religious do not impose their practices on me, I seek nothing but peaceful coexistence with them. And enjoy food and laughter and conversations with the faithful.
Furthermore, I am not that different from most atheists in that we reach the conclusion not with ignorance about religions, particularly the religion with which we were raised. Even through my agnostic teenage years, I was curious about the Hindu faith and its philosophy. Which is also why I am so familiar with dukrijnkarane. And then curiosity made me find out at least a tiny bit about a few other religions.
This being Ramadan time, I have been thinking more about Islam. It is a tragedy that the hysterical suspicions about followers of that religion prevents us from even appreciating the arts and literature that grew out of that faith. Thus, Rumi and his mystical works are among the many that get sidelined. Of course, according to Islamists, Rumi and other sufis were not "real" Muslims. All the more the reason the world will be better off without those crazy Islamists who make it difficult for all of us!
The way I--an atheist--interpret the Ramadan is this: it is an intentional pause to our everyday lives. A forced interruption that then makes us think, for at least a few minutes every day, about what we want to do with the little time we have on this planet. Especially with Ramadan coinciding with the hot summer days in the northern hemisphere, it is a wonderful time to stop doing whatever it is that we do day in and day out and ponder some serious questions instead.
As we do, I bet we will immediately realize that Rumi was profound when he distilled the wisdom to this:
Inside the Great Mystery that is,May our politicians gain this wisdom from Rumi!
we don't really own anything.
What is this competition we feel then,
before we go, one at a time, through the same gate?
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