The celebration of Ramadan came to a close on Saturday evening. For years, the University of Michigan has seen students on campus gather to break fast once the sun sets, often through the iftars organized by The Muslim Coalition, a coalition of over 30 Muslim-adjacent student organizations. This past semester, the organization provided meals for all 30 days, including throughout Spring Break, with the mission of bringing the community together and reflecting the Muslim diaspora.
Ramadan is a month-long holiday observed by members of the Muslim faith where its participants do not drink or eat from sunrise to sundown. Once the sun sets, however, these communities hold iftars, meals where they break their fast. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Ann Arbor resident Tahura Badar said it’s a time for reflecting on one’s emotions and performing acts of charity.
“It’s about controlling our desires and focusing on our inner self — on our personality — and controlling anger is one of them,” Badar said. “It’s just a bunch of controlling your emotions and it’s helping others as well. So in Ramadan, we fast, and we’re encouraged to give Sadaqah, which is basically donation, which is a mandatory act for everyone who can afford it and depends on the income level that you’re in.”
Since Ramadan was observed over 30 days this year, each day was sponsored by a different student organization within the Muslim coalition. In an interview with The Daily, LSA junior Minahil Raheel, co-chair of The Muslim Coalition and former Ramadan events coordinator for the coalition, said the high volume of collaboration was reflected by the diversity of food at each iftar.
“Each iftar is actually organized, or co-sponsored by a different organization,” Raheel said. “This year we had to have a lot of them do collabs. So, for example, we had the Pakistani and Indian Muslim Student Association do a collab together. We had the North African Student Association, Egyptian Student Association do a collab together … so we kind of gave everyone an opportunity to have their own cultural food.”
The iftars were held at a variety of venues. The most common was the multipurpose room in Trotter Multicultural Center, but some organizations were able to host iftar in other locations on campus including the psych atrium in East Hall, the Winter Garden in the Ross School of Business and spaces on North Campus.
In an interview with The Daily, Engineering freshman Sujood Abdelhameed said while the dining halls had halal options, it was nice to come to these sponsored iftars and try new foods.
“There’s variation (at the dining hall) but you get used to it a lot,” Abdelhameed said. “I feel like (The Muslim Coalition makes) more effort to show different cultures. Like one day it’ll be Arab food, one day will be Somali food, one day it will be Western food, so I really like that they put emphasis on where the food is coming from, especially because it’s specifically places that have a big Muslim community in it.”
Badar recounted her favorite iftar of the season, where she was able to try Bosnian food for the first time.
“I’ve never had Bosnian food before, and I think that probably might be my favorite,” Badar said. “There was a sweet dish… hurmašice, and it’s basically biscuits and sweet syrup. That has to be my favorite, and I’ve been craving it ever since.”
Information sophomore Faduma Abukar told The Daily she was nervous when she first came to campus about how she’d be able to celebrate Ramadan, but she was pleased to find she wouldn’t celebrate alone.
“Having Ramadan here has really helped me feel a little bit more included in the University because I didn’t know this was a thing when I was a freshman and I was so excited to learn about it because I thought I was gonna have to fend for myself,” Abukar said. “Now I know that there is a community there to help you and you get to feel more a part of the Ramadan month.”
While iftars are associated with Ramadan, they are open to the public and anyone is welcomed to join in the celebration. Badar told The Daily she was excited to overhear non-Muslim community members ask questions about Islam and get to try foods from different cultures.
“I met a bunch of different people who are not even Muslims and when I sit on tables and I eat, I overhear people with non-Muslim backgrounds having questions,” Badar said. “They want to know more about Islam and that’s really, really comforting to me. I really like that people are questioning and they want to know more and they’re curious.”
LSA sophomore Sarah Hossain expressed to The Daily the difficulties of celebrating Ramadan separately from her family.
“I’m an international student here, so I feel (culturewise), I really get to see the difference of how iftars (were in my) first year,” Hossain said. “Just because it’s all students here, versus I’m with family back home. I definitely miss family more during Ramadan because I’ve grown up having iftars with my family.”
Abdelhameed shared this sentiment, saying celebrating with peers is a different feeling than celebrating with family. “I feel like it doesn’t really feel like Ramadan,” Abdelhameed said. “Ramadan’s — half of it is just like the vibe of being with your family and helping your family prepare the table and eating together and things like that. So I feel like, here, it doesn’t feel like it’s Ramadan. Kind of just feels like I’m just not eating and then I’m eating.”
While the iftars on campus might not replace the feeling of home, Raheel said this was one of the reasons she wanted to organize iftars on campus in the first place: to foster a community that students could go to during one of the religion’s most important holidays.
“Coming here as a freshman, my biggest concern was how am I going to do Ramadan away from my family?” Raheel said. “Never done that before, but I just saw how welcoming the community was on campus as a freshman — it made me want to get involved and be a volunteer.… I’ve just definitely wanted to give back in as many ways as possible and one of those ways is making a community, fostering that environment where people can just come after a long day of classes (and) they have a place that they can go.”
Daily News Editor Audrey Shabelski can be reached at audres@umich.edu
The post UMich students celebrate diverse Muslim cultures during Ramadan appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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