Isle Muslims focus on faith for Ramadan

Thirty days of prayer and fasting during Ramadan a year ago brought Nazeehah Khan to a deeper level of commitment to her Islamic faith. The teenager decided to wear the "hijab," or traditional Muslim head scarf, every day as a symbol of identity.

"Last year was a very important Ramadan for me. I graduated from high school and took a trip to the Middle East. Ramadan was a time for me to analyze myself and re-evaluate my relationship with my family and God," said Khan, 18, president of the Islamic Society at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

The group, with almost 100 members, would normally hold an event on campus to celebrate Ramadan, but the holy observance began Friday, when school was not in session, Khan said. The dates of the monthlong holiday vary every year, depending on the cycle of the new moon.

The society’s adviser, professor James Frankel, who teaches Islam and other religions at the university, said, "Ramadan is called the month of patience. Fasting is an act of patience — you want to eat, but you have to wait till the fast is over for the day. It’s not just a fast of the stomach; it’s really also a fast of the complete person," requiring physical as well as spiritual discipline.

"Fasting is an exaggerated form of everyday piety," Frankel said.

During Ramadan, Muslims also try to refrain from arguments, bad language, undesirable habits and the like, which are "conditions that break the fast just as if you had eaten something or drank water," he said. They are reminded of how dependent on God they are for everything, and it is also a time to "feel sympathy for others, especially the poor, the hungry."

Khan, who was born in Hawaii, said her decision to don the head scarf was not so much for modesty, which it also stands for, but as a statement of her religious and cultural identity.

"I also started wearing the hijab because I felt I had to represent an underrepresented crowd, which are Muslims in Hawaii," she said. "A former teacher had actually asked me to guest-speak at a high school because she said her students watched a movie about the Palestinian and Israeli conflict and had never even seen a person in a head scarf, which is how forming stereotypes becomes so easy.

"After Ramadan I was thinking for myself more, not just how my parents influenced me. My relationship with my parents wasn’t just as mother-daughter or father-daughter (anymore). I was understanding them as a person, not just mother or father figures."

Safiah AbdelJawad, another member of the Islamic Society, said following the rituals of Ramadan gives her "a good high, a good feeling" that makes her want to continue fasting and praying five times a day even after the season is over. It’s difficult in the beginning, she said, but once she gets used to it, "I’m not going to let anything come in my way. For me it’s obeying God’s orders, and it shows no matter how low my faith, at least I’m doing something to make up for it."

AbdelJawad, 20, an education major at UH, especially enjoys meeting other Muslims and developing new relationships at the mosque. At the end of each day of Ramadan, she goes to the mosque to pray and break her fast with the traditional repast of dates and milk, she said. It gives her a chance to eat dinner with her family for a whole month, as their busy schedules usually do not allow it.

"During Ramadan I never miss prayers. … I like what I call ‘miracles.’ When life gets hard and you don’t know what to do, you turn to God and ask God to help you out; and the next thing you know, everything gets better. It’s call ‘isti­khara,’ a special prayer; it helped me a lot," AbdelJawad said.

AbdelJawad has been proudly wearing a hijab since she was 10. "I feel unique, not like everyone else. I have more respect," she said.

Raised in Hawaii since she was 5, AbdelJawad said no one harasses her or makes rude remarks about her head scarf. But "it still hurts" when she sees people on the news still label Muslims as "terrorists" 11 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — "I don’t think you should judge someone on what a small group of people did."

AbdelJawad said certain Muslim customs might appear unfair to women, like the segregation of sexes or having women positioned behind men during worship, but the reason is to avoid sexual attraction when everyone should be concentrating on prayers. She also thinks inheritance laws that favor men over women are fair because men have the responsibility to support their families and relatives.

Frankel explained, "The Quran teaches that men and women are completely equal in the eyes of God in spiritual matters. … It also teaches that in society, based on physical realities (gender differences), the roles for men and women are different," with most women bearing and raising children.

"Historically the Islamic, Christian and Jewish religions and many others are patriarchal," Frankel said. "But people are not as reflective or critical of their own religion as they are of others. This is what I struggle with as a professor of Islam and religious studies — I want people to apply a similar standard of criticism and realize that all religions are works in prog­ress that are undergoing reinterpretation and modification all the time."