Friday, September 29, 2006

Ramadan in Reading

Mabrook everyone on this amazing blog! Ramadan Kareem to you all from Reading. If you're wondering where is this place then it's a small town in England.. it's also the last stop on the train before you reach London!

Having spent pretty much all of my Ramadans during my adult life in the UK, I am always noting my different experiences. My fasting is generally the same, and I try to always go above the lack of food and water and try to purify myself, but what I find interesting is how my fasting affects those non-Muslims around me.

Every year is different in those around me. I enjoy telling people that we cannot eat, drink and smoke during the daylight hours and then they ask why. I always reply saying it's to give us a sense of equality with those less fortunate than us and to get us patience. This year I got asked if I had to pray to the East! I had to explain the we pray towards Mecca which happens to be East of the UK, but for the Indonesians that would be West!

Anyway I wish you all well and goodness in this special month. I wish all your wishes to come true, and your sins to be erased. I wish you happiness in these happy days sharing the time with those you love.

Ramadan Kareem.

PS: Good work S.Shaira and D.Rebel and all the other contributors to make this a great success!

4 comments:

* said...

Salaams Buj.
Nice to see you here. it was lovely reading your post, and learning about your experiences in Reading.
Its a fuuny thing, but a lot of non muslims incl hindus who keep a lot of fasts (their fasts tend to forgo one or two specific foods)wonder how we can manage to live without food/drink for the whole day.
Ironically how we forget the starving millions, who can barely scrape together a few bits to keep themselves alive.
Compared to their life long ordeal a few hours,of a day for a month,in a year is meaningless.

Anonymous said...

As salamu aleykum!

@Buj, Jazak Allah Kheir for your post, and may Allah accept your fasting insha'Allah!

@Hannah, for you and to all of us to not be impatient with fasting, and want to stop thinking about food, is to use the time effectively, and not just waiting for iftar,(like I do when it's exactly two hours left to iftar, hihi)

I have actually noticed that when I'm not fasting during the 11 remainingmonths, we eat quite often. That takes a lot of time of the day.

But when I'm fasting, I don't have to make breakfast, lunch or a meal a couple of hours before dinner, and thererfore I have a lot of hours in credit.

I use the time in doing things that benefit me, like cleaning my room, the kitchen etc, reading things I don't usually read, blogging. These thing occupies my mind so I don't think about food, yet have a quality time and don't waste it on the sofa sitting, counting hours left to iftar. That's hard.

My point here is that we see sides of ourselves that we haven't seen before, while we're fasting during this holy month. We shall use it effectively, and we'll have baraka in it insha'Allah.

By the way, Qaylola, is good to do while fasting, that helps us to get more energy to continue with the fasting, and have energy to more thing after iftaar.

Shaykhspeara Sha'ira said...

Welcome on board Buj, we hope to hear more from you.

Hannah, Qayloola is the equivalent of what the spanish people would call siesta. An afternoon nap.

BuJ said...

@kaya: Thanks for having me here. It's such a wonderful idea to have this blog. I like the way you always take two steps back and enjoy the big picture.

@hannah: Salaams sista! I actually live so close to the Royal Bercs :)

@walking sister with flip flops: Thanks very much and inshalla allah yetqabbal siyamek.

@Shaykhspeara: Tack mycket :) Look forward to writing more.