(RNS) — A friend of mine who is not Muslim asked me recently how this Ramadan went for me and for Muslims in general. I was immediately reminded of a social media post that took Instagram and TikTok by storm in early April, in which a Palestinian imam gave a profoundly short Ramadan sermon, referring to the dead in Gaza and its effect on the worldwide Muslim community, or the ummah:
“If 30,000 martyrs, 70,000 injured and 2 million homeless Palestinians couldn’t wake up the ummah, what impact will my words make?” asked Sheikh Mahmoud Al-Hasanat. “What more do I say and to whom? Straighten your rows, let’s pray.”
My answer to my friend was not so different: How do you incorporate all the worry, heartbreak, yearning, fervent prayer and the keeping up of Ramadan vibes for the sake of our kids into a nicely packaged answer to that question? You really can’t. So I answered, “Yeah, it’s been hard and eye-opening, and I’m grateful for that.”
What I do know is that the nonstop cycle of violence in Gaza has lived in the background and foreground of our Ramadan focuses as Muslims: fasting, engaging in deep worship, elevating God-consciousness, increasing acts of charity and focusing on the cleansing of our “nafs” (ego or soul).
Trying to help our children, especially young adults or those on the cusp of adulthood, has made this one of the most challenging Ramadans in terms of parenting.
There was also much rumbling at the start of Ramadan about some high-profile people converting to Islam. After months of supporting Palestinian life and resistance in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and the subsequent ruthless retribution that unfolded in Gaza, controversial activist Shaun King and his wife, Rai King, took the shahada in Texas, becoming Muslim the first day of Ramadan. Soon after, rapper, DJ and record producer Lil Jon also converted to Islam at King Fahad Mosque in Los Angeles.
Shaun King immediately launched a “Hope During Times of Genocide Tour” along with Khaled Beydoun, a professor at Arizona State University and an anti-Islamophobia activist. (The rap artist Macklemore was briefly associated with the tour but pulled out.) King was later disinvited as a keynote speaker from a CAIR-Minnesota Ramadan fundraising event, due to community concerns.
But the celebrity conversions never distracted Muslim hearts and minds from the plight of Palestinians suffering in Gaza as Israel continued its campaign to flush out Hamas. Large parts of the world community joined American Muslims in calling Israel’s actions genocide.
Palestinian Muslims struggled to observe Ramadan, as starvation due to Israel’s blocking of aid trucks attempting to cross into Gaza outstripped any fasting in northern Gaza, while in the southern city of Rafah, more than 2 million Palestinians amassed there to escape Israeli bombing campaigns lived in fear of the Israel Defense Forces’ promised invasion.
As the midway point of Ramadan passed, the United Nations Security Council, with the United States abstaining, passed a resolution calling for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza with the release of all hostages. A week later, seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen were killed by an IDF drone strike, prompting worldwide outrage and a rare admission of mistake from the Israeli military.
As the last 10 days of the fasting month commenced and the brutal military campaign and destruction of the Al-Shifa medical complex came to an end, the latest frustration with President Joe Biden’s stance in Gaza and his administration’s sale of F-15s to Israel prompted the cancellation of the annual White House iftar when droves of invitees declined their invitations.
Last week, while my husband and youngest son spent the first part of his spring break doing some college visits, I stayed home with our eldest son, who is profoundly autistic. Our daughter, in her third year of university, came home to break fast with me one evening, which turned into one of those rare evenings of intimate conversation with one’s kids that reveals the weight of everything they are carrying.
“This has been a hard Ramadan,” she told me. As I was about to gently remind her that she has said this about all her Ramadans while in college, she explained further. “Everything we’ve seen the past six months has blown up our perception of how the world works,” she said. “You can’t avoid the news on social media, we have to keep up with our classes and keep planning for the future, but how?”
I probed further. Absolutely it has been incredibly difficult for Muslims, and arguably for anyone who feels for the suffering happening around the world, to keep moving forward and keep up with whatever work, school, home, community and family responsibilities we may have. And this pales in comparison to those who actually are suffering devastating loss in Gaza and other parts of the world.
But it was more than that, she explained, acknowledging that she was speaking from a place of privilege given that she was living a relatively safe life in America. “One part of it is, how do we go on with our daily lives while you can see the suffering of others so closely? The other part is, what future do we plan for?”
The next thing said saddened my mother’s heart: “Why does it seem like so many Muslims I know want to get married younger? We look at what’s happening in the world, we look at climate change, and we worry if there will be a world left for us when we grow older,” she said. “That doesn’t mean that we don’t still want to have goals and strive for things, that we don’t want to fight for a better, more just world, but that we want to do so sooner than later. Time feels short.”
As we observe our Eid al-Fitr holiday with muted celebrations, I am thinking about the more than 13,000 kids who have been killed in Gaza, and hundreds more held hostage, as well as the millions who are suffering in Sudan, Congo, Myanmar, China, India, Ukraine and so many other places domestically and globally. And I’m looking at my own children and hoping my Ramadan prayers for all of them are answered.
