Ramadan

Salams and Ramadan Mubarak Everyone!

Last night was the Salaam Iftar here in Toronto. More than 300 people showed up to share love, faith, and community spirit in support of Salaam, Canada's Queer Muslim Fellowship (founded by El-Farouk Khaki). Here is their website if you want to check it out http://www.salaamcanada.org/intro.html. El-Tawhid Juma Circle (founded by El-Farouk Khaki, Troy Jackson, and I) organized a woman-led prayer for the event. I brought the rest of the left-over Prog Islam t-shirts and gave them out. I wonder if folks will be visiting the website who came last night! If so, welcome! We hope all of you will make accounts and take advantage of the community blogging feature. You make a blog and we all read it. Blog entries that strike a nerve or inspire are promoted to the front page. Bloggers who get committed are promoted to authors who can post on the front page whenever they like. A new author and content editor is joining the Fashion Mujahid in running this show: Fatima Thompson! For those of you who do not know her, she is the organizer behind the "pray-ins" in which women go and pray in the main section of the mosque which men have taken as their own. Women refusing to pray in the closet or the back room or behind a wall. They don't make a fuss. They just pray in the main hall, all the way in the back. Such a simple thing has been causing a lot of distress among some men. And good. They'll get used to sharing huge spaces with women, little by little. Women will get used to knowing that the space belongs to them, little by little. Its a slow and powerful movement, the trickling stream that carves out whole valleys. Peace and Ramadan Mubarak!.

For most of the world, Ramadan 1431 has begun. For the rest of the world, it will begin in a matter of hours. Whenever you start it, or end it, may Allah accept our fasting, prayers, and good deeds this and every month. Ramadan Mubarak!

O moon-faced Beloved,
the month of Ramadan has arrived
Cover the table
and open the path of praise.

O fickle busybody,
it’s time to change your ways.
Can you see the one who’s selling the halvah
how long will it be the halvah you desire?

Just a glimpse of the halvah-maker
has made you so sweet even honey says,
“I’ll put myself beneath your feet, like soil;
I’ll worship at your shrine.”

Your chick frets within the egg
with all your eating and choking.
Break out of your shell that your wings may grow.
Let yourself fly.

The lips of the Master are parched
from calling the Beloved.
The sound of your call resounds
through the horn of your empty belly.

Let nothing be inside of you.

I wake up some mornings and have to remind myself why I became a Muslim. I took my Shahadah twelve years ago, and back then I was full of faith. Over the years, my faith has diminished. I still believe wholeheartedly in the Quran and the Prohethood of Muhammad, yet any connection I may have felt toward the Muslim community at large is gone. I have attended mosques, put myself in the company of other Muslims and only have disgust as a result. I was hoping this Ramadan it would be different, that I would emerge at the end of the holy month with a clean heart and a renewal of my faith. Alas, only a few days into the month and I am disillusioned. I attended an iftar at my local mosque, needing the fellowship, and experience of Ramadan for my young children. I overlooked the billowing white curtain dividing the men and women in the community room. I overlooked the wooden barrier in the prayer hall that partitioned the small women's section from the men's.

Ramadan Mubarak, everyone! More on Ramadan later, but I think this is enough for now.

By Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi (more accurately Balkhi, but oh well)on Ramadan:

Celebrate! The month of fasting has come.
Pleasant journey to the one
Who is the company of the fasting.

I climbed the roof to see the Moon,
Because I really missed fasting
By heart and soul.

I lost my hat while looking at the Moon.
the Sultan of fasting made me drunk.

O Muslims, I have been drunk
since that day I lost my mind.
What a beautiful fortune fasting has.
What a wonderful glory.

I think I've finally found the phrase that identifies me, at least with regards to the kinda guys I go for. According to part 3 of the Gay Muslims documentary, I would be a "Mohammed queen". (Similar to how a white guy who likes East Asian guys is called a "rice queen" and a non-white guy who likes white guys is called a "snow queen.") I feel like my ideal lover and life partner would be a guy who identifies as Muslim and practices the faith (or, at least, shows some genuine love/affection for it).

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

RAMADAN KAREEM! - Below are 30 Daily Ramadan Prayers (Duas) that will, inshallah, make the fast easier, enlighten the mind, and ennoble the heart.

Ramadan Dua: DAY 1

ALLAH, on this day make my fasts the fasts of those who fast (sincerely), and my standing up in prayer of those who stand up in prayer (obediently), awaken me in it from the sleep of the heedless, and forgive me my sins , O God of the worlds, and forgive me, O one who forgives the sinners.

Ramadan Dua: DAY 2

iFaqeer has suggested putting together a public service Eid greeting that would encourage unity in the community despite the date differences.  I am not sure if he is suggesting an extra eid gathering that everyone could attend. I'm not quite sure what the public service announcement would do. Is it just to say "Eid Mubarak" no matter what? If so, I want to ask you all what do you think of this? Is the split so bad that people do not actually exchange Eid greetings? What is up with all this? Also do you think the Fiqh Council's date will change matters much? What is going on???

Jump through to see his blog on the matter from last year.

This blog entry from an Orthodox Moor mentions his fasting Ramadan in a uniquely MOC way.

From the History and Catechism of the Moorish Orthodox Church of America:

What is Moorish Orthodoxy? What is its "Catechism"?

In effect, there is none. Moorish Orthodoxy is like a mirror in which each seeker beholds a beloved form, each one different.

I wish I could get behind this, I really do.

Writing about Ramadan for the mothers of small children, a sister discusses the difficulties of keeping up fasting and trying to find time for extra acts of worship while caring for a baby. She recounts trying to pray tarawih at the mosque, and the hostile reaction of some of the congregation when her baby cried. She suggests that women such as herself could focus their Ramadan instead on carrying out acts of kindness to others. 

I'm all for kindness. I'd like to see far more of it, especially in our Muslim communities (which often seem pretty kindness-challenged). I would like to be a kinder person myself, so I'm trying to do at least one kind deed per day.

But.