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Ramadan

Forging Community Through Fasting

Forging Community Through Fasting

by Vicki Garlock

Increasingly, both Muslims and non-Muslims are using Ramadan as a chance to forge friendships across religious boundaries. Since iftar is a community meal anyway, it provides a ready-made way to change negative stereotypes about Islam and the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims.

Interfaith Perspectives on Food and Fasting

Interfaith Perspectives on Food and Fasting

from the Center of Christian-Muslim Relations of Sydney

“Similar to fasting and abstinence, communal meals play an important seasonal role in the life of the Melkite, that is Greek-Catholic, Church. As a practicing Melkite, my church community often celebrates together with meals on the church grounds, particularly on feast days ... 

Celebrating Ramadan – the Kids’ Perspective

I admit that I just didn’t get it. Several Muslim friends living in America said they don’t really fast for Ramadan anymore because it just isn’t the same here in the U.S. They claim that Ramadan is so much more fun in their home countries. Fun? Ramadan? Really?

Coming Out in the Muslim Community

One of the greatest heartbreaks in my life occurred after coming out at the age of 24: I lost my Muslim community. After my public coming out, via an article in The Los Angeles Times, and the backlash that came with it, I retreated. I distanced myself from the people I cared about, the people I’d been raised with in the masjid in Los Angeles, those whom I viewed as extended members of my own family. I was certain that they had stopped caring about me. It took me years to take responsibility for my part in that break rather than only see myself as a victim of circumstance.

A Holy Month in Maine

The shadow-side of media is steady fare these days. Take YouTube, for instance. Provide a gigantic platform for anyone with a computer and a videocamera and the disastrous possibilities emerge. Last month, YouTube posted a 14-minute clip from Innocence of Muslims, a “preposterously amateurish, nearly unwatchable hack-job of a film responsible for sparking a firestorm of violence and anti-U.S. protests in the Middle East,” according to Discovery News.

From hatred to healing

Who was not stunned by the recent events in Norway, as news of the bombing in Oslo and the subsequent massacre of some 69 young people at a camp on an island nearby broke on the world? As details followed, it appeared that the man responsible for the attacks believed he was fighting for a "Christian Europe" against Islam, Marxism, and multiculturalism.