RAMADAN FROM A REFUGEE PERSPECTIVE

EID MUBARAK! HAPPY RAMADAN!

Ramadan is a very important period in the life of a Muslim. It is considered one of the holiest Islamic months. It's also one of the Five Pillars of Islam, these are five principles which Muslims believe are compulsory acts ordered by God. The most visible and well-known part of Ramadan is that they cannot eat or drink or have sex from sunrise to sunset. But Ramadan is much more than fasting. It is a time of purification, prayer and meditation, it is a time in which the population lives in a different way, interacts in a different way and faces a penance that is sometimes hard to fulfill.

However, this Ramadan is different from any other. Across the Muslim world, these perplexing times have been made worse by the severe economic impact of the pandemic. Furthermore, the constant wars in conflict-dominated countries that cause millions of Muslims to be displaced from their homes has compounded the suffering of this culture. Their religion and celebration of special dates is threatened as refugees and displaced people do not have the sustenance or food to carry out Ramadan as they would like. Can you imagine a Colombian celebrating the day of the candles on December 7 without any candles? Well, this is more or less the situation of many Muslim refugees in the poorest countries of the world.

According to France 24, about 700,000 people fled the violence to countries like Bangladesh and are forced to live in precarious conditions. Cox Bazar became one of the largest camps in the world and in the conditions refugees live in, Ramadan is a cause for distress. It is true that there are NGOs and other organizations that help refugees with food to reduce the impact of violence in their Ramadan, however Ali Tafich, Director of the NGO "Light and Life" says that there has been a large annual decrease in aid since due to the pandemic governments have had other priorities and have not been able to support refugees as in previous years. 

In addition, it is important to highlight that in goal 2: zero hunger of the SDG's for 2030 there are key statistics that say that about 11% of Lebanese, 93% of Syrian refugees, 62% of Palestine refugees in Lebanon, and 94% of Palestine refugees from Syria cannot meet their basic food needs. Which leads us to think that the fasting season that Muslims must do from sunrise to sunset, was already an activity that thousands of Muslim refugees in the world must do indirectly.

But not everything is bad, their resilience and courage in the face of adversity, their devotion to family, friends and specially Allah have made the circumstances for refugees to unite in the month of Ramadan more than ever, share what little they have with strangers and with their neighbors in the camps and celebrate these important dates as a single society united by religion and beliefs. Their resilience and courage in the face of adversity.