Happy Easter. Let's Talk About Ramadan
The starvation of Ramadan becomes glaringly obvious in the midst of a genocide in Palestine during an imperialist-induced famine.
I actually started writing this draft last year. At the last minute, I decided not to publish it: I was too self-conscious of how it would come across, like I was some spiritual white Christian lady appropriating a Muslim holiday for attention. I remember the white women going viral for wearing hijabs on college campuses after rules forbidding them; the criticism being that it was the white women who got the attention and not the Muslim women who were legitimately forbidden from wearing them.
I had no idea while composing this draft in 2023 that Palestine, while still under Israeli rule and threat, would be subjected to an ongoing genocide by Ramadan 2024. So here, on Easter Sunday, a day I celebrated hungrily and considered the most holy of Christian holidays, I want to try to write about Ramadan again. I think it’s important, more than ever, as Palestinians (Christian, Muslim, and Jewish) starve to death thanks to U.S., Israeli, and Western-imposed policies. Who’s the terrorist here?
And look, I genuinely don’t think there’s a way to write this without sounding like an asshole. I hemmed and hawed for over a year, ever-cognizant of the encroaching social justice cancel cultures circling the water, waiting for blood: here is a white, Christian, leftist writer doing a cultural appropriation. She has zero ties to Islam; not only that, she was raised in the South and in evangelicalism steeped in severe Islamaphobia and now finds herself in the deconstruction, exvangelical circles of mainline Protestants in the Mid-Atlantic. What a WASP, this girl. She’s never been blamed for 9/11.
Furthermore, she is enmeshed in the polyamory subculture, which hungrily puts forth a dominantly white purview despite its insistence that it does not. The perfection demanded of the polyamorous in all interpersonal relationships, the creation of oppression and victimization in communities in which it does not truly exist, the privilege of white alternative lifestyles, and the financial and social safety nets we are inherently provided: a fact not yet reckoned with. All the little identity labels we love to pile onto ourselves as white people to feel the most unique, the most oppressed, the most individualized, the most special.
Yes, I see your point. I leave my comments wide open for you to yell at me. I don’t get it. I’m no Anthony Bourdain. I’m a grifter, absorbed into the fascination of a culture and its practices that are not my own. But hear me out. I do not profit from this in any capacity whatsoever. You won’t get a book or a paid workshop out of me about my seven-day journey. While I am the blindest to my blind spots, I come to this from a place of curiosity, respect, and profound admiration for what I personally consider the most difficult of religious adherence. This no-fucking, no-eating, no-drinking, just-praying “experiment.” I observed Ramadan for 7 days, and it changed my life, and I’m still thinking about it a year later.
And the truth is, I do this a lot with similar spiritual observations. I just don’t usually write about it. Wary of seeing evangelical Christians coopt the language of Judaism and what they think are ancient Hebrew stances into their writings, having seders before Easter to celebrate Christ without a sense of irony — I keep my spiritual journeys to myself, mostly. Like charity or volunteering, it seems weird or even problematic to write about it or brag about it. But I do: I indulge in this pluralist celebration of faiths and customs and especially foods on other people’s holiest of Holy Days. I am not a pluralist or a syncretist, not really. I am a universalist, sure. But I’m pretty singularly focused on Christ, the man/God I can’t give up no matter what. My loyalty runs deep, and while I could have abandoned this Christianity thing ages ago (and it would have made a lot more sense to many, and people wouldn’t be so angry or perplexed at me when they find out all the other facts about me) I just can’t. I won’t.
C’mon now.
But I feel compelled to write this. Maybe it’s because last year, when I was writing this, I had just finished The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, one of the most beautiful works about Islam ever created, so intense and personal he is still being threatened for it to this day. (Note after feedback: Salman Rushdie is an atheist, and many of his writings are considered heretical among practicing Muslims. If you would choose to learn more about Islam from actual practicing Muslims, I suggest going to other sources: I’m especially fond of the MASGD, or the Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity — as well as the Alliance of Inclusive Muslims.)
Maybe I was drawn to this because of my obsession with Ramy and the way the dialogue swims in my head for days and weeks afterward, the way you can’t escape your faith sometimes, no matter how hard you try. How religion is so good and so evil and so capable of ruining and destroying and uplifting and creating everything all at once. I’ve watched all three seasons and there’s one more to go. Last night, Ramy became one of the first people to publicly declare “Free Palestine” on Saturday Night Live. Not just declare, mind you, but to PRAY.
Yes, I’m aware of the religious theologies many Muslims have that are harmful, as much as there are Christians with the same exact theologies. There are people of every religion (and lack thereof) with genocidal, transphobic, homophobic, sexist, and classist laws and ideologies; Muslims simply seem to be the scapegoat in Western society.
There is a subset of Christians (and, arguably, an entire religion if you consider the Messianics to be this way) who completely mystify Judaism and celebrate its customs, appropriate its culture, and overall engage in sort of theme-park religious imagery that many Jews see as anti-semitic. Am I doing the same thing? I don’t know. I just wanted to know what it was like to go hungry as the poor do because, as much of a leftist as I am, I haven’t really truly known. I have privilege upon privilege upon privilege.
But it’s true that in other religious customs, especially those of us who supposedly worship the same interpretation of a monotheistic creator, I just see beauty and wonder. I feel the call of Allah: Allah being God, Christians being triggered by the word Allah, and “Allah, Allah, Allah” being my favorite song by mewithoutYou, a band where Aaron and Michael Weiss were raised in Sujism and let the Arabic and Christian imagery spill out of their songs. In everyone we meet. There’s a love that never changes, no matter what you’ve done.
I considered observing Ramadan again this year, but I found it too inconvenient. I’m in the midst of my move; I have several tasks and am overwhelmed in my life at the moment. I can barely keep track of anything, and to be frank, I am frightened of losing a potential book deal because I haven’t submitted anything in quite some time.
Wouldn’t that be ironic? To lose my greatest dream. To lose the closest thing I ever wanted in my life. But Christ says you must lose your life to gain it, so if that were the case — what would I have? Petty, petty, petty excuses, petty, petty, petty problems.
How weak was I that I felt I was unable to observe Ramadan due to inconvenience alone? I just opted out. I didn’t even do the full 40 days the first time, so it’s not at all similar, not really. Meanwhile, the Palestinians living through the worst terrors ever seen are STILL OBSERVING RAMADAN? That kind of faith can’t be replicated by people like me, living in privilege. People who give up after a mere inconvenience.
The little battles I face are, frankly, meaningless in the face of the suffering felt by Palestinians, by oppressed people all over the world. The horrors of which I fear we have become numb. Children dying of famine — of preventable famine — means nothing to the majority of American Christians, even on Easter Sunday. What can we say to ourselves? What are we supposed to do about this?
Think of the gluttony of American Easter compared to the piety of Palestinian Ramadan. Imagine them breaking the fast each sunrise and each sunset with what little they have, not knowing if the meal will be their last or if a bomb will be dropped on another hospital. I compare that with my own Easter, full of the most decadent dishes, surrounded by loved ones in a house I own, safety all but guaranteed.
Which do you think Jesus has more in common with?