A Rosh Hoshana Eid

Last week marked the end of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. I was particularly pleased that its end coincided with Rosh Hoshana. As a bonus, Eid, the festival following Ramadan, coincided with Gandhi’s birthday. It all seemed fitting, somehow, emphasizing our participation in an American tradition that's larger than the sum of our own traditions.

Growing up in Southern California at a time when I was often the only Muslim around, I often felt alone in the circle of my family traditions. I knew very few Muslims. Ramadan was unknown to my peers and teachers.

As a child, my Muslim identity usually didn't come up, except when I couldn't eat pork -- the bacon bits on spinach salad, the pepperoni pizza at a birthday party, the wontons a Chinese-American mother brought for my seventh-grade social studies class. Otherwise, I did what other girls my age did -- attended school, practiced my violin, lost to my friends at miniature golf. But when I reached high school and began fasting during Ramadan (it's for healthy adults, not children), I found myself reluctantly explaining my religion.

"No food or water until sunset? For thirty days?" my friends would exclaim. "But that's dangerous! And," sometimes they would add, in true teenager spirit, "does that mean you can't come to the beach with us?"

I explained that, well, it was true that fasting was -- forgive the pun -- no picnic, but that it was not meant to be dangerous. Fasting encourages compassion toward people who have nothing to eat or drink. It teaches us discipline and reminds us to give extra charity.

Moreover, disregarding food issues encourages us to think of higher matters. Okay, sometimes a desperate desire to nap (for lack of energy and brain sugar) eclipses my contemplation of higher matters. But even that reminds me that some people in the world experience that debilitating hunger-exhaustion every minute of their lives.

Though Ramadan made sense to me even in high school, I nevertheless dreaded being an outcast, in common with adolescents worldwide. I ran a mile once in P.E. class -- while fasting -- because I was too embarrassed to tell my teacher that I couldn't drink water. I could picture the scenario all too clearly: my teacher's bafflement at learning of this outlandish practice (Islam didn't yet make American headlines), his growing suspicion that his fifteen-year-old student was just trying to weasel out of running in the heat (she wasn't too good at it), and his impatience at wasting his time with her long, hurried explanation.

This vision cowed me; it seemed easier to run around the track four times without water.

I marvel how things have changed in mere decades, though; these days, the President of the United States offers Ramadan greetings. My local mosque invites the surrounding community, both Muslim and non-Muslim, to break the fast together during Ramadan, free of charge. My English teacher from seventh grade sends Ramadan e-cards to me.

But most specially, sometimes non-Muslim civic and religious leaders fast in solidarity with Muslims. It reminds me that in the seventh century, Prophet Muhammad urged his followers to fast on Yom Kippur, in solidarity with the Jews. We all have traditions, but to me this interconnectedness is evidence that America's encompassing pluralistic tradition can encircle them all. And it gives me hope for the future.

©2008 Sumbul Ali-Karamali