Participating in Ramadan as a spiritual Muslim woman

Any of my friends in high school will tell you the only time they have ever heard me pray was mid-illegal U-turn or merging on the highway at 100 miles per hour


I was born into a practicing, yet extremely liberal, Muslim household. Growing up, the tenants of Islam were taught to me more as moral lessons than specifically religious and religious holidays have always been more cultural and family traditions rather than practices of faith.

My mother prays five times a day, but you’d never be able to ‘tell’. It was only at the time when my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer that I actually realized my family had some sort of beyond-face-value religious inclination. My mother would teach me a prayer a day at the age of five, but everything seemed to make sense in a sphere that was wholly moral and not exclusively religious.

Surprisingly didn’t stain my first Eid outfit

At the age of seven, I was first called out for being Muslim – and it wasn’t meant in a good way. To an extent, my Islamaphobic encounter on the school bus didn’t make much sense to me, because whatever I knew as religion was being a good person, doing the right thing and having faith in God guiding you through dark times. Even the note in my grandmother’s bathroom distributed at chemotherapy – “Never ever, ever give up”- could be religious by my understanding. It meant having faith even when all hope seemed lost.

I kept my first fast until an hour before it was supposed to break when I was nine years old. My grubby little hands found their way into every dish in the kitchen, and only when I was fistfulls of food deep did I realize all my efforts were lost. I found magic in late night prayers, and swayed peacefully to the prayer recited over the megaphone at the Islamic Center in DC on Eid morning.

Eid prayers in DC

The first time I began to question my belief was not when I was scrutinized for being a Muslim, the equivalent of scum in the early 2000s – thank you Western media – but rather at Sunday School in fifth grade. I had the unfortunate experience of being stuck with a bigoted Arab Islamic studies teacher, who couldn’t see beyond her own family views. She was crass, and harsh, and had no business teaching 11-year-olds.

She told me I would go to hell for eating gummy bears and marshmallows, because they had gelatin, a pork product, in them. As these ridiculous instances got worse, I began to boycott Sunday School more and more, until my mother finally experienced my plight firsthand and promptly pulled me out, even though I missed the melodic recitation of prayers in class. But I had the presence of mind to know that my boycott was due to religion, or my faith, but rather, a refusal to succumb to an individual’s interpretation of something I believed in and understood on my own.

It wasn’t until my freshman year of college that I learned that the versions of the Qu’ran I had read are not technically considered the Qu’ran, as they are interpretations, because no direct translation can ever be achieved out of the native Arabic. I learned about my religion academically through a different lens, one of metaphors, mysticism, magic and rich history, and came to find myself connected once again with a faith I had always held in my heart, especially in times of trouble (any of my close friends in high school will tell you, the only time they ever heard me pray was mid-illegal U-turn or merging on the highway at 100 miles per hour) but not been proud to share.

Further classes taught of commonalities in Hindu and Muslim mystic traditions prior to British Imperial Rule in Undivided India only solidifying my belief that my religion is an inclusionary moral code, with rich artistic, literary and cultural tradition which is often forgotten, and not an exclusive set of standards to judge an individual by.

I don’t find myself nearly as funny at 3:35 am

In recent years I have fasted consistently sporadically, but only because summer in Pakistan forces one into it (and one year because it got me out of physical activity at a summer program) but as I sit in my room carefully calculating how many meals I can fit into the next few hours before I begin my fifteen hour separation from my favorite thing on earth – food – I am thankful that I have the opportunity to experience my faith in an organized way once again.

My participation in Ramadan is voluntary, and on my own terms – not solely because it is required of me – but because it is an opportunity for me to reflect and center myself in the madness of the world as it is today, and bask in so much of the wonder and academic weight of Islam never presented in its popular cultural image.

To me, my religion will always be about myself and my belief in God. What my faith and intention is, is not something that could ever be swayed or attacked by any outside force or ignorant, radical, or bigoted individuals and groups, and I am very proud of it.