Ramadan Kareem

Ride with the mob, Alhamdulilllah

Anila Quayyum Agha // Intersections //North Carolina Museum of Art, 2018.

I was deeply moved when I experienced this light and shadows installation by the Pakistani-American artist Anila Quayyum Agha in May of 2018. The plaque read in part: “Intersections consists of a giant lantern that casts intricate patterns throughout the room. This work was inspired by Agha’s visit to the Alhambra in Grenada, a palace built originally in 889 CE during a period when Muslims, Christians and Jews coexisted peacefully in Southern Spain. This inclusion struck Agha, who remembered her childhood in Pakistan where she—as a woman— was excluded from praying at her local mosque. In response, she created Intersections, a palace of meditative wonder open to be experience by all, a work that transforms, any location into a beautiful, and perhaps sacred, space”

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Along with roughly a quarter of the world’s population, I am heading into Ramadan this weekend. We say we’ll be observing Ramadan but that feels a little too passive for me. It is the Islamic holy month where we abstain from all food and all liquids from sunup to sundown. Yes, for a whole month. No food. Especially no water. Also really, no sexual relations. Some people say, no music either. My people are strict.

Ramadan is funny because we know we have to do it every year and we know roughly when it is but weirdly, we only get a notice of mere hours when it officially starts. And you just have to roll with it. Wild, right? The start date can vary from country to country and can even be different mosque to mosque in the same city. But what unites all Muslims is the observance of the new crescent moon in the ninth month of the Islamic calendar.

I have vivid memories as a child of listening to the adults around me hotly debate if the new moon had been seen in Saudi Arabia. People would whisper about it. We would get phone calls about this moon sighting. It was the hottest goss on the block. Who saw it? Which Imam? When did they see it? Are you sure? This was so vitally important because you had the Who’s Who of Saudi Imams all in competition to be first. It was a global competition really but in my West African family, we wanted to get as close to the source as possible so we followed the Saudi Imams. God forbid an Australian Imam was our guiding light. Honestly, it’s so funny when you think about how absolutely pagan it is to have religious men—especially Muslim religious men—scan the skies for a sliver of moon. Shoutout to the pagans. They really have their hands in absolutely everything those pagans. It must feel so diabolically satisfying.

So, anyway back to us. Imams in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were fighting about moon cycles but I was always left to wonder how anyone not in Saudi Arabia even found out about the new moon before the invention of the landline telephone? How did the news reach them? Was the sky in Riyadh the same as the sky in Lagos? Were we looking at the same moon? What if they found out too late? What if they didn’t start Ramadan at the same time as us? Where we even starting at the right time? This used to cause me so much agita and I wouldn’t sleep at night because the implication was that if we didn’t all start at the exact same time around the world, all of our fasting would be for nothing. Absolutely nothing. And if the fasting was for nothing then that would be absolutely devastating.

This year, I checked and in Saudi Arabia, the new moon was tentatively expected to be visible on the evening of February 28 so Ramadan would technically begin today on March 1. The AFP is saying this is how they do the moon stalkings these days and this hilarious picture is healing something deep inside of me.

In Indonesia—the country with the largest population of Muslims and a country I respect more than Saudi Arabia, the angles of lunar visibility are of course different and they were expecting to begin on Sunday March 2. I even hesitate to pull Iran, another canonically important Muslim country into this debate, but just know they do things very differently over there. I was always intrigued by that as a child. Still very much am. Shoutout to Iran for always doing your own thing. It makes everyone very nervous but I respect it.

I wish that instead of fretting that she was disappointing God, baby Aminatou had known that a very complicated mix of considerations including astronomical sightings and how they’re made, weather patterns, global geography, time zones, and various traditions among many different groups of Muslims were at play. Bitch, the time zones of this thing alone! That should have been the tell that the game was rigged.

My mother, she would not be amused by any of this because I joke too much and I have too many opinions and because Islam and Allah, that’s very serious business.

She fasted Ramadan every year that I knew her and she probably started when she was a very, very young girl. When she had to miss days, like the ones you get off for your period or when you’re sick, she would make them up right after. Very good student. Very strict rule follower.

Sometimes she would fast for extra credit.

Like definitely anytime Yasser Arafat did or said anything from oh say, 1969 to 2004 or when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by an angry ultranationalist in 1995 or when she wanted me to pass the boarding school exam in 2000 or when in 2004, a 9.3 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Sumatra triggered a tsunami that swept away 227, 898 people into the Indian Ocean. I look that number up often because I still cannot believe it. My mother, she was horrified by that number so she fasted. She would have fasted even if the Indian Ocean had only swallowed one soul. And I’m kind of relieved she didn’t live to see Barack Obama get inaugurated because she would have fasted for him every single day he was in office. She fasted when there was trouble in the world and in our household which is to say, a lot.

My mother, she really loved us. I know this because she cooked for our entire household even when she was fasting. I would never cook for my ungrateful family if they didn’t fast with me every day. She loved us and her lot in life was that she lived in a household of Bad Muslims. That happens a lot to Good Muslims and then they have to do all that extra credit fasting. Vicious cycle.

As you can imagine, I grew up strict. I still have a strictness about me—I really do like that part of my personality actually— but in a lot of ways, I am the least strict branch in my family tree. And I do struggle to call myself a Muslim. It’s not because I’m ashamed. Far from it. I just think I don’t have the devotion and the faith to even entertain being in the same league. You know what I mean? Words mean things to me and words (famously!) mean things to strict Muslims so I hate the idea of cheapening what this particular word means. I’ve also dabbled a bit in another Abrahamic faith and one day, I’ll tell you all about it but you see why it’s complicated for me, right? I’ll hear myself tell people that “I grew up Muslim” or that “my family is Muslim” and sometimes it feels right but other times it feels incomplete.

I remember asking my mother once about converting to other religions and she thought it was absolutely the most preposterous idea she had ever heard. She wasn’t even offended by it and that lady was offended by a lot of new ideas but this? She simply couldn’t conceive of it. You were born Muslim and you died Muslim. I have flirted with other faiths but I do concede that this is indeed the faith of my people.

And in order to survive, you have to take the best parts of your people with you wherever you go.

I fast to stay close to my mother and to honor her faith but I do it in my own way. Like yesterday at lunch, when Roya informed me that the moon had been seen in Saudi and that Ramadan was already under way and we both laughed. When we made lunch plans, I had already made a decision that my Ramadan would start today because us having this particular lunch was important and I wanted to spend it with my dear friend before she left the country.

Ramadan for me is not about skipping meals or missing sustenance or not being able to have a crisp glass of wine at lunch when I want to. It really is about foregoing sharing meals and memories with people I love. That is painfully hard for me. So I allow myself a few exceptions and I don’t beat myself up about not doing it completely right. Fasting is a sacrifice that reminds me how much my community means to me, how badly I want this world to be a better place and above all, it reminds me of the woman who taught me the importance of both of those things.

But I suspect she would want me to do more. She would want me to also pray and do all those other things that Good Muslims do but then again, I remember that she never forced me to fast. She could be very forceful about other things but fasting wasn’t one of them. Maybe she wanted me to find my faith on my own? Maybe she thought I’d get older and the dots would all connect. I don’t know and I hate that I cannot ask her about this and I cannot ask her why she always ran to a God I don’t believe in when there was trouble. I wonder what she would think of me and how I’ve chosen to only honor two of the five pillars of Islam—fasting and the mandatory charity. I don’t care about the rest of it but maybe she would be blown away I do any of it at all?

Imams in Saudi Arabia have no bearing on my life but the woman who gave me life absolutely does. That feels right to me.

You know what else feels right? 2 Billion people around the planet unified in self discipline and empathy for those less fortunate. I can’t be mad at that. Ever. If you find yourself thinking that we live in hell and nobody is doing anything about it, please remember that 2 Billion Muslims are fasting. For 30 days, they are foregoing food and water from sun up to sun down. And sex and even music for the really strict ones. 30 days no music? I can’t do that but I am fasting. Muslims in extravagantly rich countries are doing it and Muslims in the poorest conditions you can imagine are doing it. People in war zones are fasting. People in prisons are fasting. Muslim athletes are fasting. Bus Drivers, school teachers, the people who deliver your food, the people who clean your homes and offices, the people who cook your food and keep our cities running. Sometimes this is what “doing something” looks like. You don’t have to agree with it but you cannot say that people are doing nothing.

What are you doing? Reading the news and talking about the news?

That’s it?

How’s that working for you?

Reading the news is not a sacrifice. It’s consumption. So again, I ask, what exactly are you doing that is not serving just you and your appetites? You don’t have to tell me. I am doing my work but you have to be able to answer that question for yourself.

2 Billion is a lot of people. 1 in four of every human pretty much. The Muslims, they come in all nationalities and undoubtedly with a lot cultural baggage. I find that oddly very soothing against the backdrop of constant Islamophobia in this country. I do not look like the Muslims some Americans are conditioned to fear but I come from a country that is 86% Muslim and a continent that is at least 40% Muslim. I am not an outlier. I have a Muslim name. It is a transcription of two different Arabic names for women: one which means "safe one, protected," and another which means "devoted, honest, straightforward, trusty, worth of belief.” It is also the name of the mother of the most important character of this religion. My own mother, my ancestor, she believed in all that serious business so she gave me a serious business kind of name you know? I mattered and it meant something to her. It matters and it means something to me.

So when I hear people say that Islam is a religion of fanatics, I remind them that they have their own extremist Imams and Mullahs too. Those are just words for religious leaders and teachers and it really begs the question why to some people, words sound scarier when they’re in Arabic? They’re just simple words that have simple equivalents in other languages. You’d be surprised at how much common ground the extremist Christian, Jewish and Muslim Imams all share. They’re weirdly engaged in the same project. Different languages, different name for the top guy but exact same cast of supporting characters and very similar project overall. It’s kind of what keeps them in business these people. Fear and hatred.

When I hear people say that they are afraid of Muslims or that all Muslims are terrorists—2 Billion terrorists and you’re still alive? Think about it— or that they are ignorant and unwilling to live in the modern world, I remind them they are talking about me too. It is the least I can do. I am a very modern and very worldly woman who is always stunned when she hears supposedly very liberal and supposedly very sophisticated people say these hateful things to me or near me. These people think they can say these things around me even though I have one of the most recognizably Muslim names a woman can have. How foolish to not realize that. It is not a hardship on me to say anything to these people because I was raised by a woman who did not suffer foolish people.

I sat down to write this newsletter immediately after watching a clip of the President of The United States ambush and dress down President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine in the White House. Ukraine is a country with anywhere from half a million to two million Muslims according to various estimates. They’re tricky those estimates in the communist and communist adjacent countries. The majority of the Muslim communities in Ukraine are in the east and in the disputed region of Crimea. In an unseemly shouting match, The President of The United States warned Zelenskyy that he was “gambling with world war three” and he told him to come back “when he is ready for peace.” I watched the clip and sat down to do my work knowing that my mother would have been glued to that TV, fasting for peace.

Ramadan Kareem [may Ramadan be generous] to all people free and oppressed. Ramadan Mubarak [Happy Ramadan] to those of us raised in Muslim homes and are still trying to find our way home.

SHARE WITH THE CLASS: if you are NOT Muslim, can you tell me what messaging you received about Islam growing up? Was it the same as all the other religions or different? Do you know any Muslims? What has surprised you about knowing them? Tell me all about it. COMPLETELY ANONYMOUS as always. Please share where you’re from and especially what your religion or the religion you grew up in is! Thank you for trusting me. I trust you.

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What I’m paying attention to

• This a season when I think a lot about disordered eating: “Islam is a religion that does not want people to jeopardize their lives to engage in forms of worship.”

• I have not agreed “to live with soul-crushing racism.” Some people have. Hint: it is not the people experiencing said racism.

• I love this: “words that are a bit like ‘vegetarian’, but for the increasingly urgent activity of setting limits on what we consume online”

• So many people I love have cancer and I keep reading about why that is, hoping to get answers.

• AI is making a lot of people who don’t think they’re stupid stupider. If you think it’s OK to use up all this electricity and water so you can write your boss an email or make a deck for your project, I am sorry to say you are in fact, stupid.

• Deli Boys is coming! I’ve been waiting for this Jenni Konner Productions show forever and it’s almost here. March 6 on Hulu.

• Have you done your polyvagal exercises recently? One thing about me is I will absolutely read the comments in all the stretching and trauma release videos and get misty-eyed. Being alive during The Horrors is an insane experience. Do your stretches.

• Sweet, handsome Armando sent me this transportive Oscar Peterson x Nelson Riddle jazz album and I feel so at peace when it’s playing.

• Last week, the book Ann and I wrote was in the local paper as was I, wearing one of my absolute favorite items of clothing. They will print absolutely anything in that rag but let me tell you a bit more about the Issey Miyake stole I wore: it was an extravagant gift from my friend Ruth Ann who is a big champion of this newsletter and of me. So when I was asked to show up to raise money for young writers, I didn’t hesitate in choosing my outfit. I wanted Ruth Ann and her generosity to be a part of the evening. Look at how it turned out! My life is so weird (complimentary) but don’t think for one minute that any of it goes to my head. People say you shouldn’t read the comments but along with YouTube, I always read the comments in the local paper and boy, did it deliver. Thank you, kazolar of Connecticut, USA. You are a poet and a philosopher.

Capitalism

• J. Crew x The New Yorker collab is so fun and the tote is very legit. Maybe this will once and for all dissuade me of the notion that serious people don’t do sponcon. Maybe. The very nice people at J. Crew sent me a PR package for this collab that included a black and white cookie from Barney Greengrass. That cookie saved my life at exactly 4:21PM on Thursday. I was flatlining and the cookie saved my life so now I will gladly devote my entire life to the cookie. If anyone in the Barney Greengrass Family fortune aged 35-95 is single, call me. When I say I want to marry into a powerful family, this is what I’m talking about.

• I’m obsessed with these very Muslim-coded Rachel Comey slip-on shoes. If you see me wearing them all summer, please mind your business.

the shoes work with everything

Do you need a new tote or new shoes? Absolutely not. Instead, if there is a mosque in your neighborhood and trust me there almost always certainly is, go to the ATM, take some cash out, put it in an envelope and drop it off so they can feed people when they break fast in the evening. They will be feeding people all month whether they can afford to or not.

Hang in there

Rest in Peace, Roberta Flack.

See you next week.