Friday 21 August 2009

a month to look forward to

well ramadan has started tonight. the islamic calendar works differently for days as it does for months. it's a lunar calendar, so 10 days shorter than the solar one. also, the new day doesn't start at midnight, it starts at sunset.

ramadan is not only a month where we don't eat or drink during daylight hours, but it's also a time for extra spiritual reflection and prayer. so the beginning of ramadan is marked by extra prayers at night, and i went to the mosque to join in with these. and nothing can compare with the sense of absolute peace and contentment that comes with this experience.

so when i was at a dinner earlier in the evening, and i told someone (not a muslim) that ramadan had started, i had to laugh at his respnse of "oh no!". i'm like "what do you mean by oh no?" and he replied "ramadan frightens me, having to spend the day without eating". so i told him how muslims look forward to ramadan, and it's because the month means so much more than just not eating.

this post i wrote last year pretty much covers what ramadan means to me. and like last year, i'll be posting less frequently, depending on what my energy-levels are like late in the evening. in the meantime, ramadan mubarak to all my muslim friends out there.

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