Sunday, November 23, 2003

By Suzanne Martinson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette photos
From left: Maysa Sgharib, Egypt; Azra Mahmood, India; Belkis Karaman, Turkey; Gissou Raji, Iran; and Lila Ghanem, Palestine.

From left: Elaine Linn, U.S.; Aniratna Djuwita, Indonesia; Nighat Ali, Pakistan; Afaf Khaleq, Palestine; and Rashida Haqq, U.S.

Dalal Ghanem of Wilkins is 9 years old and eats her first meal of the day before sunrise, her second after sunset.

She is fasting for Ramadan, the 30-day Muslim observance that requires the faithful to abstain from food and water during daylight hours. There are exceptions. Children are not required to observe the fast.

"I don't have to fast," explains Dalal. "I do it because I want to."

	Women share memories, recipes of Ramadan

With that simple observation, Dalal shows how faith -- perhaps all of our faiths -- is passed from one generation to the next.

Today the Post-Gazette looks into the faces of women who follow the teachings of the prophet Muhammad to observe Ramadan and keep it holy.

The fasting represents a time of renewal, reflection and spirituality for Muslims, a time to seek peace in their lives and in the lives of others.

It is also a time of celebration. After each day of fasting, the evening prayer may be followed by a feast as families and friends gather to break the fast.

Sometimes they gather to make new friends. One recent evening at the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh in Oakland, 12 Muslim women whose roots traced to 11 different countries broke the day's fast by cooking special dishes that represented their varied Muslim heritages. Some had never met before.

They began the evening with prayer. During the month of Ramadan, they will read the Quran from beginning to end, one-thirtieth of the holy book each day. Because Ramadan begins with the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, which is based on the cycles of the moon, its dates vary. This year it began Oct. 27.

Whatever foods they eat to break the fast, one constant is dates, a sweet that was historically available to both rich and poor. The potluck was "a way for me to share my religion, to share the diversity, to make Islam more than two little one-minute news-bites on Fox News," says Elaine Linn, who arranged the potluck. "There are 1.3 billion Muslims, and there is one Muslim belief, but there is not one approach to eating. We would show the faith through food, which is something we all understand."

When the Ramadan fast ends Tuesday, Muslims will come together again for Eid (pronounced Eed), the spiritual and social celebration that marks the end of this holiest of months.

Two days later, most of the 10,000 Muslims in the Pittsburgh area will feast again. For Thanksgiving.

That seems appropriate somehow. We are a country of minorities, a fabric of cultures and religions and beliefs. In America, religion is a matter of choice, not law. It is ever-changing. Today, America has more Buddhists than Presbyterians, nearly as many Muslims as Jews.

This diversity is not accomplished without challenge, suspicion or even fear. Some people might pause in confusion when people are "different": The Muslim who excuses himself from work to pray five times a day. The Jew who wears a yarmulke at his desk. The Buddhist whose shrine smells of incense. The Muslim researcher who wears a head scarf at her table. The Hindu who dons a turban to tend his store. The Christian whose forehead is marked with ash. And the list goes on. There is freedom from religion, too.

Today, we celebrate the discipline required for the fast and the joy in breaking it with foods from many lands. Forgive me, but in a religious culture that treasures hospitality, sharing such a feast requires the first names for newfound friends.

And we leave it to 19-year-old Imad Haqq to tell us why. He uses the very words his mother, Rashida, has passed on to him: "The cure for ignorance is education."

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