Ramadan in the Time of Pandemic

You can read a slightly different version of this in the San Jose Mercury News

This year’s Ramadan (April 24 to May 23) comes at perhaps the most challenging time of our lives. A killer virus is advancing like wildfire across the globe, leaving heartbreak and death in its wake. Confined to our homes, we are stressed and uncertain of the present and the future.

But hope is native to our nature. The Quran, the Islamic Book of Divine Guidance, instructs us never to give in to despair. Certainly no one despairs of God’s Mercy … (12:87)

When we become complacent and think that we can dictate our destiny, God warns us: And We will surely test you with something of fear and hunger and a loss of wealth and lives and fruits, but give good tidings to the patient, who, when disaster strikes, say, “Indeed we belong to God, and indeed to Him we will return.” (2:155-156)

But God also assures us that Surely with hardship comes ease. Indeed, with hardship comes ease. (94:5-6) 

In this trying time, Ramadan reminds us to slow down, to pause and reflect on life’s big questions of meaning and purpose. So, where are you going? (81:26) asks the Quran. We must ask ourselves: Where, indeed, am I going with my life? Is it aligned with God’s expectations of me as defined by God, or am I going astray from a combination of ego, ingratitude, impatience, forgetfulness and other assorted flaws?

As we Muslims welcome Ramadan into our lives, we must remember the many in our community who have lost their jobs - cabdrivers, office assistants, caregivers, domestic help, daily wage earners, and others. They are among the more than 22 million of our jobless fellow-Americans facing a frightening future. We are traditionally most generous during Ramadan, and we pray that we can be even more generous during this Ramadan. Charity, the Quran tells us, is for the neediest, regardless of religion, particularly those who do not ask for help due to modesty or embarrassment. We must find and help them without in any way hurting their sense of dignity and self-respect

The doors of our mosques are closed, as are the doors of churches, synagogues, and temples. But thanking God for His blessings, mercy and forgiveness in the sacred days and nights of Ramadan can open windows in our hearts. Never for a moment should we forget that repentance can lead to redemption and remembrance of God to renewal. The dark shadow of life’s pain will, God Willing, be dispelled soon by the bright sunshine of life’s promises.

As it happens, today, Wednesday, April 22, 2020, is Earth Day. Fifty years ago, it dawned on us that there was no Planet B, that the Earth was the only home we had, and unless we cared for her, we were doomed. The forced isolation of the coronavirus has done one good thing: with little pollution defiling Mother Earth, the sky looks clearer and the vegetation pristine. Covid-19 pandemic has taught that we are not really the masters of the universe that we think we are. We know very little and our capacity is extremely limited. We have been committing crimes against nature, against animals, against all the sentient beings that we share the earth with. A single novel virus has collectively brought us to our knees. To survive, we must replace our hubris with humility. Repentance can lead to redemption and responsibility to renewal. That is also the lesson of Ramadan.

Muslims Seek Common Ground with Fellow-Americans in Ramadan

You can also read the article here in the San Jose Mercury News

Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting from dawn to dusk (mid-May to mid-June this year), arrives at a difficult time for Muslim-Americans. Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center that tracks hate-crimes in America reports that faith and race-based attacks against Muslims, Jews, Blacks, Hispanics and immigrants have risen significantly since the election of Donald Trump. The Supreme Court’s decision to hold hearings on the president’s Muslim travel ban has given the anti-Muslim animus a boost, forcing many of us to rethink what it means to be an American these days. And with president Trump moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem that has already resulted in the death of at least 58 Palestinians, the move ‘blessed’ by a pastor who said in the past that “religions like ‘Mormonism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism’ lead people “to an eternity of separation from God in Hell," the future looks grim indeed.

Despite these dark developments, Muslims will welcome Ramadan with hope, humility and optimism. This is what the month is about: Confidence that the clouds will disappear, and the sun will shine again as we strive to affirm God’s living presence among us and unite to serve the common good of the country, no matter how daunting the challenge.

What is it about fasting that inspires this confidence? The Quran explains: “Fasting is prescribed for you, as it was prescribed for those before you, so that you may learn self-restraint.”

Self-restraint has two parts: What it forbids and what it encourages. The former includes abstaining not only from food and drink (often the easier part, even if for fifteen hours or more) but more importantly, from such vices as anger, arrogance, backbiting, lying, schadenfreude, solipsism, religious chauvinism and money mania. The latter includes a combination of gratitude, magnanimity, empathy, humility and moderation but above all, patience. Patience is the key virtue, which is why sabr, the Arabic word for patience, occurs over 100 times in the Quran.

Living up to the moral and spiritual demands of fasting is a struggle, especially when we recognize that God has no use for our hunger and thirst if we don’t curb our wayward thoughts, bad habits and dark desires. For me, patience is the elusive goal. Even when alone, I sense the need for patience, as when I am tempted to speed through a yellow light about to turn red. This may seem a minor trespass (although a $500 fine for running a red light in San Jose is hardly minor!) but I find that being attentive to small things makes loftier goals more attainable. Patience gives me a keener sense of the value of time. Tolstoy was on to something when he said the two most powerful warriors were patience and time. Honoring time has helped me fast from the small screen and social media while gaining a deeper insight into ‘Memento Mori’: Remember, you will die.

If we claim that practicing self-restraint in Ramadan makes us better human beings, it must reflect in the way we interact with our families, communities and the larger society. Given the current political climate, meaningful engagement with our fellow-Americans from all walks of life and spanning all faiths is critical.

A day before Thanksgiving in 2016, our Evergreen Islamic Center received a hate mail warning about the “new sheriff in town – President Donald Trump” who will do to us “what Hitler did to the Jews. You Muslims would be wise to pack your bags and get out of Dodge.”

When word leaked out, we were overwhelmed by the support we received from our neighbors, activists, reporters, politicians and law-enforcement officials. Their support continued into the 2017 Ramadan months later when larger than usual number of them joined us for community Iftar (breaking the fast) at sundown on Sundays.

This year we expect to host even more Americans during the Sunday Iftars. We particularly hope those who have misgivings about us and want to ask the hard questions will join us. We don’t have all the answers. All we know is that discussing concerns honestly and openly in mutual respect can remove fear and prejudice.

If nothing else, we hope they will come just for the food, for one of the most heartening lessons of Ramadan has been that few things in life forge friendship more fiercely than food, spicy or not.

The million-dollar question, of course, is: How long do Ramadan’s virtuous practices last?

I wish I could say they last from one Ramadan to the next for me, but they don’t. My resolve to become a better human being begins to fray by the fourth or the fifth month. I hurry past an octogenarian on a wheelchair without pausing to greet or offering to help. I become judgmental. I use unkind words. Instead of smiling at people in the elevator, I stare at my shoe. I splurge on clothes even though I have plenty. At the traffic light, I begin to live at the edge of yellow bleeding into red.

Yet I know that without the reflection and the renewal I experience in Ramadan, I would lose my center, my purpose. Without purposeful fasting steadying my sail, my boat would be adrift on the sea of life.

Instead of attempting quantum leaps, I will seek incremental improvements in patience, compassion, charity and respect for a textured truth. I will strive to answer the question the Quran asks, “So, where are you going?” by separating the signal from the noise and nurturing the values that give my life meaning. And I will try to summon enough spiritual stamina to sustain the effect of Ramadan for a month or two more than in the past, before forgetfulness enters the heart and I risk becoming a captive to my cravings. If I sincerely work at being good, tempered by humor and humility, perhaps I will even glimpse the ineffable and the transcendent.

Do We Know Our Children?

(You can also read the article here.)

Five days after the bodies of Golam Rabbi, 59, and Shamima Rabbi, 57, were discovered at their home in San Jose, California, about three hundred friends and relatives gathered at the Five Pillars cemetery in Livermore on a Friday to bury the couple. With the sun on our back and a brisk breeze blowing, we prayed for their forgiveness and salvation as the bodies were lowered into the grave next to one another while the Imam recited verses from the Quran.

Shamima Rabbi and Golam Rabbi

Police have charged the couple’s two sons, Hasib Golamrabbi, 22, and Omar Golamrabbi, 17, with homicide. “I want everyone to know what happened,” said Hasib in a jailhouse interview. Both brothers pleaded not guilty to the murders at their arraignment.

I knew the Rabbis for over two decades as Bangladeshi immigrants who worshiped at the same mosques. We were members of the Evergreen Islamic Center where Golam, an engineer, and Shamima, an accountant, volunteered their services. Soft-spoken, humble and generous, they radiated peace. Friends sought Golam’s advice on how to grow the perfect apple or the peach, drawing on his extensive knowledge of gardening. He often brought his two sons to the mosque to pray next to him. Although I found them rather reserved, nothing seemed amiss or foreboding.

Ever since 9/11, Muslim-Americans have been stereotyped as jihadists and extremists and found themselves in the cross-hairs of politicians and presidential candidates like Donald Trump who would stand to gain from such labeling. We had been under siege for home-grown terrorists like those responsible for the 2009 Ford Hood shooting, the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings and the San Bernardino attacks in 2015.

But this macabre murder is a darker development in which young people have allegedly turned on their own family. Every parent’s nightmare is that their children will kill themselves due to depression, anxiety, stress, or emotional rage, or get killed in gang fights, or wind up in jail, or most frighteningly, run away to join ISIS, as did a teenager from Virginia last year.

Added to these fears now is the fear of violence being turned on the family itself, causing despair among us bordering on fatalism.

A week after the killings, a few Bangladeshi-American families in the Evergreen area met to try to make some sense of what had happened. After a lot of anguished back and forth, we concluded that we only had a superficial relationship with our children, other than constantly worrying about them. We led our lives and they led theirs, with the occasional intersection that didn’t mean much. We didn’t know what animated them, whether they felt alienated from us, or what they wanted to do with their lives. In the end, we resolved to be more involved in the lives of our children, not as parents but as friends. And not just with our kids, but with the kids of our community. What we realized is that it takes a community to raise a youth in these tough times.

It is impossible to fathom what Hasib and Omar had been thinking prior to their alleged roles in the killings. A recent Instagram posting by Omar offers a clue: “I always hated myself. Not sure what I am doing here.” No clue could, of course, be clearer or more chilling than what the brothers had scrawled on the wall and the floor of their home (police have matched the writings to the brothers): “Sorry my first kill was clumsy,” and “I can’t be like you telling a lie … I can’t love someone without telling them.”

While the Quran does not directly address the issue of patricide and matricide, it talks extensively about mercy and forgiveness. “My mercy encompasses all,” says a verse, complemented by a saying of the Prophet Muhammad: “My (that is, God’s) mercy takes precedence over My anger.” Another verse states: “If one is patient in adversity and forgives, this indeed is something to set one’s heart on.”

There is a most stirring example of the power and grace of forgiveness in recent times. In June of 2015, a 21-year-old white supremacist named Dylann Roof, embraced with open arms at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, opened fire during a prayer meeting, killing nine people. Within a few days, however, relatives of the nine victims declared that they had forgiven Roof. “We have no room for hating, so we have to forgive,” said the sister of one. “I pray God on your soul.”

But while mercy and forgiveness are pertinent for the wider public, it should be remorse and repentance for the alleged perpetrators. The Quran says: “Those who committed evil deeds and then repented afterwards, surely your Lord is forgiving and merciful.”

Are the sons feeling any remorse? Are they repenting? Do thoughts of atonement even cross their minds?

We have no way of knowing, unless they themselves disclose what is in their hearts.

No matter how noble the instincts of mercy, forgiveness and repentance may be, however, they will not override the imperatives of justice. San Jose’s deputy district attorney Matt Braker has said that “there are some unanswered questions to this case. Police are working tirelessly to answer those questions and to ensure that both of these victims receive justice."

So what can we do as we await the trial that is likely to be as sensational and gripping as any in recent memory? Perhaps it is contained in one of the verses that the Imam recited after we had buried the Rabbis: “Our Lord! Lay not on us a burden greater than we have strength to bear.”

Reviving Science in Muslim Countries

I have been an admirer of Dr. Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy’s writings on bringing about a scientific renaissance among modern-day Muslims. His 1991 book, Islam and Science – Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, was an eye-opener for me. The Quran is a book of moral guidance and not a book of science, he wrote. In one clear sentence, he exposed the inadequacy of Muslims who would do away with the scientific method and install revelation (as they understood it) as the source of scientific progress and discovery. His subsequent writings on the topic only deepened my admiration.

Which was why, in an otherwise incisive article in Physics Today, I was disappointed by a solution he proposed for Muslim renaissance in science. Dr. Hoodbhoy recommends behavioral changes among Muslims to excel in a ruthlessly global marketplace dominated by science and technology. Such changes would allow Muslims to develop intense “social work habits” that “are not easily reconcilable with religious demands made on a fully observant Muslim’s time, energy, and mental concentrations. The faithful must participate in five daily congregational prayers, endure a month of fasting that taxes the body, recite daily from the Quran, and more. Although such duties orient believers admirably well toward success in the life hereafter, they make worldly success less likely. A more balanced approach will be needed.”

Is Dr. Hoodbhoy suggesting that daily prayers, recitation of the Quran and month-long Ramadan fasting are hindrances to a Muslim’s attaining scientific excellence, since they disrupt sustained concentration? Although he does not spell out the details of “a more balanced approach,” the implication is clear: Do away with these religious demands, or, at the very least, reduce their frequency.

I am surprised by the obvious errors Dr. Hoodbhoy has made in his argument. While it is commendable for Muslims to offer the five daily prayers in congregations, it is not a must. The prayers (with the exception of the Friday noon prayer) can be offered in private, taking no more than a few minutes and very little space. In fact, that is how most observant Muslims meet the requirements of their faith during workdays in their professional lives. If, for some reason, they cannot offer the daily prayers on time, they can make them up later.

His use of the word “endure” for the month of fasting is also perplexing. Most Muslims do not “endure” fasting but look forward to it as a time of physical cleansing and heightened spirituality.

The major flaw in Dr. Hoodbhoy’s suggestion is that religious practices prevent observant Muslims from focusing and maintaining the continuity of their thoughts, particularly in science. In fact, the opposite is true. Properly practiced (a challenge for many Muslims for whom religious observances have become rituals without meaning), prayers and fasting instill discipline, a prerequisite for concentration. His mentor, Nobel physicist Abdus Salam, was an obvious example. Salam was one of the great theoretical physicists of the twentieth century but he was also a devout Muslim, punctilious about the demands of his faith. In numerous essays and articles, Salam explained how his faith inspired his science and vice-versa. While most Muslim scientists of our times can hardly match Salam’s achievement, the science of many of them is also informed by the awe and wonder inspired by their faith.

So why are Muslim nations so far behind in science compared to the West? Why does the observation of Turkish-American physicist Taner Edis that “if all Muslim scientists working in basic science vanished from the face of the earth, the rest of the scientific community would barely notice” ring so true? Why is creationist literature unleashed by a Turkish clergy named Harun Yahya sweeping the Muslim world?

One reason is the lack of separation of mosque and state, and consequently, separation of mosque and science, in many Muslim countries. Science thrives on unfettered inquiry. If the clergy can impose religious limits on free inquiry and threaten dire consequences if the limits are transgressed, science can never advance.

Another related reason is the lack of quality education. Take the case of Dr. Hoodbhoy’s own country, Pakistan. As William Dalrymple observed (The 'poor neighbor, The Guardian UK, August 14, 2007) on the occasion of Pakistan’s 60th independence anniversary, only 1.8% of Pakistan's GDP is spent on government schools. 15% of these government schools are without a proper building; 52% without a boundary wall; 71% without electricity. Many of the barely functioning schools cram children of all grades into a single room, often sitting on the floor because of lack of desks. While 65% of India’s population is literate and rising, the figure for Pakistan is 49% and falling. Out of a population of 162 million, 83 million adults of 15 years and above are illiterate. It is worse for women: 65% of all female adults are illiterate. The absence of quality government schooling has compelled the poorest Pakistanis to place their vulnerable children in the madrasa system. Madrasas offer free education but can turn their young wards into ideologues under the tutelage of fiery preachers, as the recent red mosque showdown in Islamabad demonstrated.

When one adds to this grim status quo the general lack of accountability and respect for law by the leaders of many Muslim countries, it is easy to see why engaging in genuine scientific research can become hazardous to one’s health.

Yet there is hope. Even diehard conservative Muslims are becoming aware of the central role of science in defining the destiny of modern nations. Slowly but surely, they are beginning to see that science does not undermine religion but enriches it. The wind of change is blowing and it can be stopped or reversed.

Feb. 7, '06

Crazy over Cartoons

A privately owned Danish newspaper with a circulation of 150,000 published 12 crude cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad in an unflattering light, most notoriously as a turbaned terrorist. That was in September 2005. Hardly anyone beyond Denmark noticed them. Then suddenly European newspapers in Germany, France, Norway, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland decided that the cartoons were a litmus test for freedom of press and began reprinting them. The right to blaspheme, one German newspaper declared, is a fundamental freedom of democracy. A French newspaper wrote that democratic and secular societies must not be awed or intimidated by any religious dogma and that even God must remain fair game for caricature.

True, but does gratuitous assault on religious sensibilities serve any purpose, other than inflaming religious passions and forcing a bogus showdown between what some pundits pompously call “Islam versus the West?” Where is the journalists’ responsibility? If the media want to start a debate between the conflicting demands of the secular and the sacred, between self-censorship and the right to speak or write one’s mind – and it is an important debate – certainly it can be done more intelligently than by mocking religious icons. As Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post wrote, caricatures of Prophet Muhammad might not be the best starting point for a constructive dialogue.

But if European newspapers displayed errors of judgment or engaged in deliberate provocations, the violent Muslim reaction in the West Bank and Gaza, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Indonesia and other Muslim countries was worse. Peaceful street demonstrations, recalling ambassadors, cutting off trade ties and pulling products off grocery shelves are legitimate ways of showing displeasure but issuing bomb threats against diplomatic personnel, sacking offices and setting foreign embassies ablaze are utterly unjustifiable, unacceptable and most tellingly, un-Islamic. Peaceful disagreement is a tenet of any civilized society and in that sense Muslim mobs have blown it, however difficult it may be for us to acknowledge. We must wean ourselves from the romance of violence, or the radicals will continue to bury any progress made by the moderates.
To their credit, imams in Lebanon, Jordan, Indonesia and other countries as well Muslim leaders in Denmark and France have condemned the violence and warned Muslims not to allow the radicals and the misguided in their midst to distort the image of Islam.

The most important question Muslims can ask in this context is: What would the Prophet have done? Numerous instances from his life show that the Prophet would never have approved of the Muslim violence spawned by the cartoons. The Quran makes this clear when it asks the Prophet to “show forgiveness, speak for justice and avoid the ignorant.” (7:199) President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, where eight protestors have already died, echoed this Quranic teaching when he asked the Afghan people to forgive those responsible for the cartoons. "We must have as Muslims the courage to forgive and not make it an issue of dispute between religions or cultures," he said.