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Or Selat Selamat Hari Raya! — for the holiday that marks the end of Ramadan.
The world changes, and the New Yorker publishes an Irish-American ex-Catholics’ “Confessions of a Ramadan Rookie“:
… In shorthand descriptions of Ramadan, it’s sometimes said that the fast lasts from sunrise to sunset. That’s not true. That would be easy! It actually begins at the first ray of dawn, or, as it says in the Koran, “when the white thread of day becomes distinct from the blackness of night.” On Day One this year, New York City time, sunrise occurred at 5:42 A.M.—a civilized hour at which to finish breakfasting. But dawn came at 4:10. On Day One, the fast lasted over sixteen hours; Day Thirty, this Saturday, will be a breezy fifteen. My father-in-law jokes that, depending on what time of year Ramadan falls, Saudi princes find excuses to spend the month in either Patagonia or Scandinavia, if not the poles themselves, to enjoy the shortest possible days of sacred abstemiousness….
In contrast to some other fasting traditions, Ramadan is intended primarily for focus and elevation, not for penance and atonement. It’s not about mortification of the flesh or otherwise beating yourself up. Around the middle of the month, though, it occurred to me that, despite successfully abstaining from all food and drink, I was only meeting the bare minimum requirements of the fast. During Ramadan, Muslims are also expected to refrain from gossip and complaining, to avoid anger and lust, to increase what should already be a high level of charitability. Fasting was the easy part. I liked to think of myself as someone who was slow to speak ill of people, and for whom generosity was a reflex, but the discipline of the month revealed to me that this was just not the case. I thought of my father, who always had single dollar bills ready in his pocket to hand out to anyone who asked as we walked around Detroit. I thought of a Muslim I know who makes turkey sandwiches every morning during Ramadan, as though he’s preparing his lunch as usual, and then passes them out to the hungry. I’d been focussed on the fast’s physical challenges, but it dawned on me that Ramadan is really about developing new habits, of thought, action, routine. The extremity of the test is what it makes it so vivid…
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What else is on the agenda for the start of the weekend?