Friday, September 14, 2007

People know its Ramadan in Sweden

We started our first day of fasting yesterday here in cold, beautiful Sweden. I woke up at 4 am to eat the pre-dawn meal and by 4.30 am the gates to foodland were closed and the time for fajr prayer had set in.

The days are long, without doubt, until 7.30 pm when Maghrib prayer falls in and the doors to foodland open once again.

Sweden knows its Ramadan, like never before. In the subway (metro) I saw ads from local phone companies giving Ramadan discounts to the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Germany and other "Muslim hot spots". Our local grocery store ICA, has started selling Lassi!! I nearly walked into a wall when I saw the ad outside the store.

Aftonbladet, one of Sweden's largest newspapers has a Ramadan Blog! Well...we were first! lol You can follow 26-year old Lama during Ramadan...all in Swedish though.

The same phone company, Tele2 that offers discounts on calls now also offers Quran downloads to cellphones!

Sweden is in general a tolerant place to be, as a Muslim, but this new Ramadan Acknowledgement is of course more to do with the fact that Swedish companies have realised that Muslims, who are 400 000 out of 9 million people here, are a huge money making market!

One can say whatever one wants about that, but I for one love to be able to walk in my home country and see signs of Ramadan around me.

14 comments:

Unknown said...

Ramadan Kareem - Ramzan Mubarak :)

Hey Shasha (credit to Lirun for this namesake), so you break fast (iftar) at 7:30 PM every evening? Compared to Sweden, here in Dubai, it's around 6:30 PM.

I admire these people that fast here in the Emirates. But, most of all, I admire those (not so well-off) that work in the heat and fast for the love of it and not out of some religious obligation. That's an achievement, I tell you :)

God Bless them all :)

MomTo5 said...

as salam aleikum
ramadan kareem!
i want to send you a photo of an iftar in an palestinian refugee camp in syria,but i dont know how....
/Johanna

Shaykhspeara Sha'ira said...

Hey there Awos!! :) Thank you and welcome back :)

When is your sehri time in the UAE? I know what you mean...construction workers who fast in the heat...It truly is unbelievable.

Momto5 welcome! Wa aleikum salam :)
Is it by any chance Mokhayyam falasteen? :) I lived there for 4 months.

Please send the photos or any other article or thoughts or recipees to:

ramadankareemblog@gmail.com

Musafir said...

somehow i managed to see the song in youtube in bits and pieces. can someone please tell me how to play the song in one go without it having to buffer after every few seconds.

here in chennai, one local tv channel broadcasts a michael jackson sound-a-like singing salallahu ala muhammed........

i must admit, the first time we heard this kalima being recited in such a westernised sweet voice we were taken aback. but we loved it. it was a welcome relief from hearing it in the guttural, gruff voices of various imams and maulvees that we have so far been hearing it from.

will try to record it and post it on this blog.

and a big bow to SS and all others in sweden who seem to be fasting for an hour more than the rest of the world.

Shaykhspeara Sha'ira said...

:) thanks Musafir!

If you don't wanna see the song in bits, press play, then press pause, and let the red bar fill up. When the bar is totally red, then you press play and should not need to buffer anymore.

I would love to hear the song you are talking about. Please try and record it!

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