Eid Mubarak to you. Someone at the Colombo Mosque saw the moon last night so I can eat. I'm a Buddhist but I've been fasting every Ramadan since there's this genocide going on. I started fasting for Palestine, but I kept doing it for myself. It's actually my favorite month now, but I can't deny, I'm glad when it's gone.

This is what Ramadan means to me, during the Ramadan War.

My Back Story

I was raised Buddhist, and I'm very grateful for that. My mother taught us to meditate and took us to whatever temples she could find in Ohio, which I found to be exercises in drowsiness. As an adult, visiting from university, she drove me to a retreat in West Virginia, which I went to not expecting much. There, however, while meditating outside I could feel it. For maybe 10 or 15 seconds, I was fully locked into my breath, which I saw as colors. Through my breath I felt connected to life and, as corny as it sounds, the universe. I asked the monk, a Sri Lankan named Bhante G, if you could feel high meditating (my only reference as an idiot 'American') and he smiled and said yes, but that's not the point, you have to go beyond that. Whatever it was, I was hooked.

Back at university (in Montreal), I continued meditating and practicing mindfulness in my daily life. I remember feeling vividly connected to the trembling leaves in the trees (always a wonder to me since I got glasses) and feeling loving-kindness towards all the people I'd meet. At the same time, I felt connection to all people of faith. This being Montreal, they had free Shabbat dinner at this Jewish place and I ate and prayed with them. I volunteered with the school chaplaincy and helped produce their inter-faith magazine. I was really into it.

As an adult I've taken my faith for granted and, for years at a time, will barely practice it, but it's always there, latently. And I feel a great connection to people of faith, generally. Whatever people are referencing when they use the word God, I have felt it, and I believe.

My Fore Story

Why was I curious about Islam? After the Al-Aqsa Flood and the (more) genocidal response, I saw drone footage of a Resistance fighter. This footage was released by 'Israel' to quell resistance, but it had the opposite effect on me. I saw a young man, mortally wounded, use his last strength to pray. And I thought what is this faith?

At the same time, I started reading the Resistance to better understand them and I found that I couldn't understand them. Hamas literally means Islamic Resistance Movement and I couldn't understand their literary references. My father—a fairly evangelical atheist—had told me to read the Bible to understand Western literature, and I realized I had to read the Quran to understand whatever this was. And Ramadan was a great way to do it, because, as the Quran says,

The month of Ramadan is the month when the Quran was sent down as guidance for mankind with clear proofs of guidance and the criterion by which to distinguish right from wrong. Therefore, whoever of you is present in that month, let him fast.

Ramadan is a well-structured book club for reading the Quran. So I did it. I've read the Quran three times since then. And I'm beginning to get it.

To me, Islam is a religion of justice, anchored in promise of judgment day, when a God who sees all will show you. To me, the refrain I hear from the Quran is “Give the good news to those who believe and do good works.” Whether you believe in this afterlife or not is literally immaterial. What matters is the person it makes you in this one. And I think Islam makes you a good person if you follow it.

I suppose I knew this, I was friends in University with an Iraqi guy who randomly came to my dorm and danced around like Michael Jackson. He didn't even go to McGill, he was in Montreal on refugee status, I don't know what he was doing there. He was socially gregarious and I was socially awkward. He helped bring me out of my shell a lot. His name was Mohammed and he moved to Calgary, which is not helpful and I'll probably never find him again.

I used to go out with Mohammed and he would go dancing and randomly talk to people on the street, but he never drank, never had sex, and never did anything the culture around me was insisting on. He told me quite clearly that this was because he was Muslim, which at the time I just found odd. I didn't really think about it again for decades.

Once I started ‘practicing’ Islam—like once I started practicing Buddhism—I suddenly understood. If you believe in God, truly believe in God, then it's much easier to be good. People debate the truth claims of this or that religion, which is, I think, irrelevant. It's like asking whether that scribble on a page is really the number '2'. No, of course not, it's just a representation, what matters is what that representation lets you compute. And Islam is, in many ways, the easiest human program to run. It tells you exactly what to do, down to the minute.

Everything is set out for you, when to wake, when to pray, basic hygiene, how to eat, what to read. Islam really is the most practical religion in that way. And in practicing it, I could really feel what They were saying. As the Quran says. “True believers are those whose hearts tremble with awe at the mention of God, and whose faith grows stronger as they listen to His revelations.” I am, of course, not a true believer (Sri Lankans are notoriously easy to convert but it's very hard to get them to stop doing that). But I can see the truth in Islam, and my heart does tremble, just as it does for the red parts in the Bible. Or as it has for the red parts behind my eyelids, alone in meditation.

Ramadan

With that as back and fore ground, this is my experience of Ramadan now. I do it mostly alone, I wake up at 4:45 and eat some food I really don't want to and chug some water; I pray alone, and I go through the day alone, praying to reminders on my phone. I have practiced with friends and gone to mosque with them, but I kinda like doing things alone. I mainly just read the Quran, and don't feel lonely at all.

I actually read the Quran for news. Whatever I read from long ago speaks to today more than anything actually new. When it talks about the fight for justice, I feel like it speaks to this moment. When They talk about people who love worldly things vs. people who love the afterlife, I feel like it talks about our present predicament. And when They promise justice, I get great comfort from that, and long for it. I feel like the references to ‘desert Arabs’ refer to the Gulf Apostates today, and the many lines about those who strive in God's cause refer to the Islamic Resistance against them. People ask me for a source to understand what's going on and I always recommend the Quran. I won't even say it's prophecy, I think in God's eyes these thousands of years are but a moment, and people don't seem to change that much.

When people ask me about Ramadan it's usually about the food and water, which is not really the point. The point is that you (mostly) don't think about food and water all day (until about 3, if I'm being honest) and that frees your mind up for other pursuits. Man does not live by bread alone, as the Bible says, and you can experience that during Ramadan. Disciplining yourself in small ways enables greater discipline. I basically don't do anything bad during Ramadan and I find it easy because I'm disciplined from my smallest moments.

People also say that Ramadan connects you to those who go without, on the daily. And it does. I can physically feel how much my body needs food, water, and rest. Some days I just do not want to eat at 5 in the morning, but if I skip I can feel the energy fading from me throughout the day. Or if I exercise too much, I can feel the water draining from my body, manifesting as a headache by afternoon. You don't know what you've got till it's gone, as the saying goes. During Ramadan, you do.

Eid

Now it's over. Eid is an ending. For me, the overwhelming feeling is of sitting here, when it's light out, drinking water. That's something I haven't done in a month, I haven't touched a cup while the sun is up. And the sun seems so much brighter for it. I can feel the light everywhere, for so long I've done most acts of living in darkness. I feel free, but I know that Satan is now free also, so I'll try to look out.

This Eid, like the last two Eids, I think of the children in Gaza, of the parents who can't give them new clothes, of all the souls that are gone. I think of the orphans, and the orphan army that defends them. I see the fighters—of Al-Qassam, of Saraya Al-Quds—handing out sweets with so much pain in their eyes. I think of Abu Obeida thinking of his children, and how they killed his son with him. I think of all the injustice in this world, and God's true promise that he'll set it right. And I feel it happening, I do. I don't know if I believe in Allah, but I certainly fear Them. And I feel that the wicked are near his True Promise. There is good news coming, I feel, for those who believe and do good works.

Eid Mubarak.

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