(RNS) — Ramadan, which begins Friday night (Feb. 28) for most people, is the holiest month in the Islamic calendar, a time of fasting, prayer and reflection observed by nearly 2 billion Muslims worldwide. From before sunrise to sunset, we abstain from food, drink and intimacy — not as a test of endurance, but as an exercise in spiritual renewal, discipline and empathy. It is a month that teaches patience in hardship, generosity in abundance and trust in something greater than ourselves.
Muslims around the world will spend these 30 days drawing closer to God, seeking forgiveness and purifying their hearts through prayer, charity and acts of kindness. But Ramadan is also about community and humanity. It reminds us that we do not exist in isolation, that our struggles are interconnected and that faith is meant to be lived not just in devotion, but in service to others.
Ramadan begins this year as Muslims are living in a world seemingly on fire. In Gaza families are still mourning their dead, hunger is being used as a weapon of war and entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble. The fragile ceasefire in the war, now in its second phase, is already being violated by Israel, which refuses to relinquish control of the Philadelphia Corridor — a critical border region along Gaza’s southern edge.
Ramadan arrives with cries of hope in the midst of this destruction, and yet past Ramadans have always seemed to see escalations in Israeli aggression. In the few years before war broke out in 2023, the month saw attacks on Palestinian worshippers in Al-Aqsa Mosque and increased violence across the occupied West Bank. Airstrikes on Gaza have intensified during past Ramadans, as have mass arrests and restrictions on Palestinian movement.
This is not a pattern of coincidence. It is a deliberate attempt to break the spirit of a people, to take a time meant for peace and turn it into a season of grief. And yet, every year, Palestinians endure. They fast through bombings and stand in prayer through raids. They continue to hope, even when the world tells them not to.
This year, as Israel continues to act with impunity and with President Donald Trump signaling a return to the most extreme policies of U.S. support for Israeli expansion, the situation feels more dire than ever. But while Trump openly speaks of ethnic cleansing while posting strange AI videos that seem to posit him as a God of Gaza with a golden statue, Palestinians remember that God controls Trump and everything else at the end of the day.
Muslim men use water to perform the ritual ablution before the “Maghreb” (sunset) prayers at the end of the fasting day during the holy month of Ramadan, along the side of the road of the Jazeera State highway in the village of al-Nuba, about 30 miles south of Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, Friday, April 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Marwan Ali)
In Sudan, too, the devastation of war continues, but with little global attention. The conflict has displaced millions, pushing families into famine, cutting off access to aid and forcing an entire generation into survival mode. Unlike Gaza, Sudan never seemed to have its moment of mass solidarity. It was forgotten before it was ever fully recognized. As a result, Sudanese Muslims enter Ramadan in a state of suffering that few outside their own communities even acknowledge.
Muslims in the Western world also begin this month in the shadow of rising hate. Islamophobia is once again on the rise, fueled by far-right politicians, inflammatory media rhetoric and the criminalization of Muslim activism — especially for those who speak out in support of Palestine. Many students, workers and public figures who have called for a ceasefire in Gaza have faced backlash, with some losing their jobs or being blacklisted for simply advocating for human rights.
In Europe, governments have continued a decadeslong push to police Muslim identity, passing laws restricting religious clothing, surveilling mosques and limiting expressions of Islamic faith in public spaces in the name of security, but in a pattern that suggests an attempt to silence and erase people.
Ramadan is not meant to burden us with grief, however, but to show us what to do with it.
The act of fasting is not simply about hunger. It is about solidarity. When a person intentionally refrains from food and drink, they join the reality of those who fast because they have no other option. Every growl of the stomach becomes a reminder that in Gaza, in Sudan, in refugee camps across the world, there are families who will go to bed with the same hunger — not knowing when, or if, it will be relieved.
The long nights of prayer that define Ramadan are not simply a religious ritual. They are an act of surrender in a world that often feels too broken to fix. They are a reminder that even as injustice runs rampant, as war and oppression seem endless, there is a higher power that sees what is hidden, knows every pain and will bring justice in ways beyond human comprehension.
Charity is not simply encouraged in Ramadan; it is required. Giving to those in need is not an act of generosity, but a responsibility. Wealth is never truly our own but a trust given to us by God, meant to be used in the service of others. This is why, in Ramadan, millions of Muslims across the world will donate to humanitarian efforts, sponsor meals for the poor and provide aid to those affected by war and displacement.
And the Quran, the book we hold to be the word of God, is not meant to be read for its recitation alone. It is meant to be lived. It calls on believers to stand for justice, to defend the oppressed, to reject tyranny in every form. In a world where those in power distort truth to justify war and occupation, the Quran reminds us that truth is not something that can be erased by propaganda or silenced by violence. It endures.
Like last year, this Ramadan will not be a particularly easy one. But it will be a meaningful one. This month we are called to witness the suffering of our brothers and sisters and to respond not with despair, but with faith. Not with helplessness, but with action. Not with silence, but with steadfast conviction that no oppression lasts forever.
Ramadan teaches that with hardship comes ease and that the trials of today are not the end of the story. Just as we replenish ourselves at the end of the day when our bodies have been depleted, we know that when the end comes for all we will break our fast together in a feast that exists away from this world.
May this month purify our hearts, strengthen our communities and bring justice to those who need it most. May our fasts remind us of the hungry, our prayers of the oppressed, our charity of the destitute and our recitation of the Quran of the eternal call to truth. And may we emerge from this month renewed — not just in faith, but in our commitment to a world that reflects the justice, mercy and compassion that Ramadan was meant to instill in us all.