A Non-Muslim’s Reflection on Ramadan, Racism & COVID-19
My earliest memory of Ramadan was of my childhood friend Sara (rhymes with Zara), who, on account of this curious holiday I had never heard of, was permitted to leave school early for a few days, but not permitted to accept my offer of a Fruit Roll-Up.
Ramadan occurs each year throughout the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. It is most commonly observed through fasting, or abstaining from food or drink (including water) from sunup to sundown, for the entire month. Observers often also abstain from negative or impure thoughts, smoking, alcohol, and sexual activity, and instead devote themselves to prayer. Ramadan is a sacred month for Muslims around the world, who comprise 24.1% of the global population.
I had a relatively superficial understanding of this religious tradition until my early twenties, when I spent a year working and living in Tunisia. When people ask me, “Why Tunisia?”, I’d joke that as a Taiwanese person, I have an inherent love for underrated fledgling democracies. The truth was, I felt a deep sense of disillusionment about the country and communities I belonged to at that time: the murder the previous year of Trayvon Martin and my awakening to the degree of racial injustice in the U.S.; the exhaustion I felt as a female drummer clawing for work in a male-dominated and often sexist industry in New York City; and a momentary but devastating fallout with my father, all had me wanting to hit the reset button and start afresh somewhere else.
“I felt a deep sense of disillusionment about the country and communities I belonged to at that time. Moving to a majority Muslim, Arabic- and French- speaking country on the tail end of a major political upheaval sounded like as good an option as any.”
Moving to a majority Muslim, Arabic- and French- speaking country on the tail end of a major political upheaval sounded like as good an option as any. I wasn’t looking for an Eat, Pray, Love experience. I wanted to be uncomfortable, even at odds, with my surroundings. The decision now strikes me as one that only a person with privilege, namely an American like myself, can make. It’s also ironic, since America has since become more intolerable than it ever was before I left.
While I did live through moments of discomfort and alienation, I was allowed to witness some of the most intimate rituals of Tunisian community life. I savored hearing the call to prayer, or adhan, beckoning to the faithful five times a day. In the U.S., singing is rarely heard projected through public spaces in the same routine, organic way. I would often gaze out the window toward the masjid a few blocks in the distance, its white silhouette pulsating in the 43 degree heat as if dancing to the undulations of the muezzin’s voice over the loudspeaker.
Even as a non-Muslim, I felt a wave of piety pass through me in those moments. This was a side of Islam that most of my American compatriots may never come to appreciate. During the month of Ramadan, I was invited by my ESOL student Dhafer to break the fast with him and his family one night. The uneven mechanics of the English language did not come naturally to Dhafer, and despite his enthusiasm and the extra time I spent with him, he had failed to pass on to the next level. Nonetheless, he insisted that I come to iftar on the night of his 50th birthday, saying, “I learned very much, and I am grateful”. His family treated me like one of their own, and sent me home with a plate full of couscous and slata mechouia. Between chance interactions like these and being embraced by musicians on the Tunis jazz scene, I found community in the most unlikely of places.
Years later, and back in the U.S., I can’t help but share a piece of my heart with the Muslim community at this particular time. This year, the first day of Ramadan came just days after Trump announced his immigration ban, this time with COVID-19, not Islamic extremism, as its justification. Trump, never one to let a crisis go to waste, has also baited Islamophobia with his comments implying that mosques would not be required to abide by the same lockdown rules as churches, as if this country has ever privileged any act of congregating among racial or religious minorities.
Right now, individuals who are perceived as Chinese are being treated in similar ways to how Arab, Muslim, and South Asian communities were treated after 9/11, and after Trump began campaigning on his Muslim Ban in 2015. In fact, according to a study done by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), hate crimes against Muslims had increased by 15% in the first year of Donald Trump's presidency.
Between mid-March and mid-April, there were over 1,500 anti-Asian hate incidents reported on AP3CON’s reporting website alone. Anti-Asian violence is happening in both red and blue states and in the most “liberal” of cities, and the federal government has done nothing about it. I’ve had nightmares about the Asian supermarket in my hometown getting terrorized by a white supremacist. In my dream, I can see the 4-year-old me playfully kicking at my mom’s skirt while sitting in the seat of the shopping cart as it rattles down the aisles. I can smell the pregnant sweetness all around me as my mom bags mangoes from the Phillippines and guavas imported from Taiwan, just before seeing their bright marigold and bumpy green skins get suddenly riddled with bullet holes.
“Anti-Asian violence is happening in both red and blue states and in the most “liberal” of cities. I’ve had nightmares about the Asian supermarket in my hometown getting terrorized by a white supremacist. ”
In my waking life, this scenario seems outlandish and anachronistic, but these are crazy times. When the news came last year that a white supremacist shooter had terrorized two mosques in New Zealand, and when a man drove clear across the state of Texas to shoot up Latinos at a Wal-Mart, I grieved for days.
Because we are living in the most Trumptopian timeline, and because I am an Asian American woman in a yellow Asian body, living in an anti-Asian America, my inbox brims with Google alerts for “Anti-Asian violence” coverage each morning, I constantly check on my parents, and I don’t go to the store without a sidekick. I stay extremely busy and upbeat during the day, but I cry from time to time when I think about my mother and father, who are both of retirement age but still working. How badly I wish I could protect them from all enemies, from the microscopic to the misguided and murderous. At times, I’m just homesick to be with them.
Ramadan, from what I’ve gathered since that first interaction with Sara more than 20 years ago, is not just about fasting and self-deprivation, but about introspection, discipline, family, and faith. It is a time to be reminded of all of the people who go hungry all year, to learn empathy for the destitute in the most real way possible, to meditate on higher truths, and to engage in acts of public service. Children, the elderly, the mentally ill, the pregnant, and the sick are cared for and not obligated to fast. This sort of devotion and compassion is precisely what we could all use during a time when millions are living in solitude and feeling that extra degree of distance from life as we know it. Meanwhile, unlike what Trump would have us believe, mosques across the country are helping with COVID-19 relief and imams are incorporating public health practices into their Ramadan messaging, like “community begins at home”, the theme of the New Brunswick Islamic Center’s month of observance.
Of course, most of us won’t be fasting. Quite the opposite, really: we’re more likely to be indulging in every unholy snack, substance, or beverage we can wrangle off of Instacart. For my part, however, Ramadan and what it represents has never felt more spiritually relevant, even if its observers, like my own right now, are a community under siege. For Asian Americans like myself, it’s a moment to practice a little faith, reach out to family, and take comfort in the idea that we’re part of a global community that’s more resilient than what we’re facing in any one point in time.
Ramadan mubarak, Ramadan kareem, and Ramadan mabrouk (to my Tunisian family out there). Here’s hoping that at the end of this trying, despairing time, we can speak the humble, reassuring words of my student Dhafer: “I learned very much, and I am grateful.”
