The Truth About Ramadan

I made a list of the facts we Muslims do not like to own up to about Ramadan. Not to spite anyone but to help us to realize the issues we need to fix this year!

1. Muslims are extra nice during Ramadan. But, why can’t we be like this ALL YEAR? Strange guys break their necks to offer salaams to me, women make sure to kiss me four times instead of three, and all of the doors I approach magically open. Why can’t we all be this courteous to each other all the time?
2. Muslims are extra pious during Ramadan. Well, if you haven’t attended masjid any other time this year, you are not fooling Allah swt when you show up for tarawih. We all understand that fasting Ramadan clears all previous sins and that you are trying to tip the scales with good deeds, but, where would you be had you not lived to see Ramadan? Muslims should be pious all the time.
3. Muslims become extremists during Ramadan. HOLD UP!! I mean extreme as in we over do it with the sunnah and mustahab acts of worship. All too often I’ll see hijabis become niqabis, only to take it off on ‘Eid. People waking up in the middle of the night to pray, people dumping buckets of water over their heads during wudu. Not to mention, in addition to the fasting, I have even seen people go as far as not even talking to non-Muslims because of a fear of them bringing up an un-Islamic topic. As Muslims, we should observe as much of the sunnah and the supererogatory acts of worship as we can bear. We don’t need to buckle down on them ALL during Ramadan because 1. Our intentions should be to worship Allah swt and not to gain Ramadan blessings and 2. If we pile on all of this extra stuff in addition to fasting and our normal lives, we’ll eventually crash.
4. Muslims don’t know when Ramadan begins OR ends. Seriously, just because you’re Yemeni, you don’t follow the sighting in Yemen if you live in Canada, you follow Canada. In my experience, most people just go with KSA but why??? We need to learn to sight the moon, people.
5. Muslims are overly judgmental of each other during Ramadan. Don’t act like you don’t know what I mean! We begin to wonder when we don’t see someone at tarawih or when we see a Muslim drinking water, or smoking cigarettes. Wallahi, we have to learn that gossip and being nosey are counter productive characteristics. We put on this holier than thou act during Ramadan, like we never mess up on a day, and we have to stop it because before Ramadan hits, we were doing worse things than drinking water when we should be fasting.
6. Muslims become inactive and greedy during Ramadan. We nap the day away to avoid hunger pangs and then when the sun sets, we are breaking the fast with milk and dates and then filling up our plates with all kinds of yummy stuff. Then we pray and go back to bed! What is this tom-foolery?? We have to remember that sleeping through Ramadan, is just like not fasting at all. Part of the challenge of it, is to be AWAKE and ACTIVE for the entire day, so you will have a chance to actually EXPERIENCE the fast.
7. Muslims “fake-the-funk” during Ramadan. That is to say, instead of genuinely ending our conflicts with other Muslims, we “put up” with that person and sweep the issue under the mat for thirty days. If Amira didn’t like Salihah before Ramadan, she’ll begin offering her rides to Masjid, and inviting her to iftars during Ramadan. Then after ‘Eid, she stops! Why can’t we use Ramadan as a time to correct past wrongs and sincerely repent for them? Your relationship with people, reflects your relationship with God.

These are my top 8! I love Ramadan but these are the recurrent ailments we Muslims face each year. We make these temporary solutions to permanent problems. If we started to implement these changes in every other month of the year, the ummah would actually be one step closer to unification. We should not be Ramadan Muslims, we should be practicing our deen in the best of ways each day.

I hope you guys didn’t get offended lol!

~ Essence Jones (Sahar Yunus)

Read more about Sahar here