Reflections on Ramazan/Ramadan from a Christian perspective

Someone suggested that Ramadan fasting causes people to get crankier and more aggressive as the day goes on.  I wonder how much of that is true versus how much non-Muslims think it must be true and then see it all around them.  I was walking today and accidentally bumped into a woman because the sun was in my eyes and she yelled at me.  In Turkish, so I don't know what names she actually called me, but I also couldn't help but wonder if others would have chalked that up to Ramazan fasting when really she is just a cranky person?  I don't know her, so I can't begin to guess one way or the other.
The idealist in me would is saddened by the idea that Ramazan fasting actually makes people crankier.  I understand, from a realist perspective, that the body needs food, that fasting for this long can give you headaches and that generally speaking you're going to be cranky if you can't eat. It's hot and sticky and air condition is not used as readily as it is in the US. But, the purpose of fasting in all three Abrahamic religions is to bring the follower closer to God, to ensure they understand their reliance on God, to stop an obsession or distraction from worldly things, and to remind the follower of the blessings God pours out.  It is also intended to be an expression of compassion as we gain a sense of understanding for those who are poor or weak or otherwise going without. This is the purpose of fasting generally and of Ramazan/Ramadan specifically: to bring the follower closer to God.  The idea that it would then be the reason you curse out a driver in front of you or get snarky with a customer at your restaurant seems to detract from the purpose of the holiday.

Then again, I don't like to fast because it's not a requirement in Christianity and I know it *does* make me cranky.  I do, however, often give things up for Lent when I think it has become a distraction in my life.  For 40 days, I might get to eat and drink anytime I want, but I am giving up something that I have come to love. This year, it was diet coke and I realized that I had a habit of just ordering a soda whenever I was out for lunch or dinner.  It's a disgusting habit but giving it up was much harder than I anticipated.  I would suddenly realize I had no idea what to order if I didn't want alcohol.  I hate paying for bottled water, but the tap water for UK restaurants isn't always filtered and I don't like the taste of my local tap.  Most everything on the men then becomes a variation on soda or alcohol, with an occasional coffee thrown in for good measure.

I admire the Muslim fasting month because it does require self control and it also requires a real reminder of our reliance on God.  While I always remembered I wasn't drinking soda, I didn't always then remember the why.  We don't really need diet coke, so remember that this is a response to God's blessing isn't automatic.  But being hungry every may cause you to remember and reflect on all that God has done for you.

I'm not saying that Christianity should adopt a legalistic approach to fasting. My belief is that God wants us to engage in the things that bring us closer to Him and to disengage in the ones that don't.  As a result of His love and desire, I find a God accepting that I don't like fasting but I do like other things, like writing or art, that take me closer to Him.  If I did fast, I would only face one requirement: "do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting." 

I'm really glad my dad doesn't have to fast because he would so redefine the word "cranky" if he did! (Dear Dad: Aren't you glad Obama's not really trying to force us into being a Muslim state?!) But I do think there is beauty in Ramazan/Ramadan fasting and it is causing me to reflect more closely on my relationship with God - even while I'm not doing it!

I have been surprised, though, that I live as close to a mosque as I do but haven't been woken up by morning prayers.  I actually haven't heard loud-speaker prayers at all!  In Kosovo and Morocco, I woke up every day to morning prayers.  I actually found it soothing in a way; while I am not Muslim and never understood what they were saying, the reminder that I should be in prayer was an important and good one for me. While I never got on the floor, let alone pointed in a specific direction, I would often turn over in bed, say a few sentences and then fall back to sleep.

And that's what I'm going to do now... say a few prayers and then go to zzzzzzzzz....

A (very) little of Istanbul

I landed in Istanbul today in the midst of Ramadan, the Holy month of Islam. In Turkish, it's actually Ramazan, not Ramadan, so that's what I'll be using this month.  (Unfortunately for me, I only know how to say "Happy Ramadan" or "Ramadan blessings" in Arabic, so hopefully I'll learn the Turkish soon, too!)

Turkey will be the third Muslim dominant country that I've stayed in for more than week. In fact, every time I've gone to a Muslim dominant country, it's been for longer than a week. I'm glad I get that time, though, as the adjustment is steeper than, say, when I head to Belgium for a long weekend. I'm not used to being woken at 5am by someone praying on a loud speaker; I'm not used to being so completely incompetent in a local language; and, I'm not used to being so conscious of my American-ness. On that last point, I'm not conscious of it in the sense of shame, but rather in the knowledge of what it means to be perceived by another based solely on your ethnicity and your accent. The expectation that I am wealthier than I am and the expectation that I am a more willing bedroom partner than I am come up regularly based on nothing more than my nationality.

I haven't had much time to do anything yet.  I landed in late afternoon, unpacked my belongings in the room that is mine for 5 weeks, and then... fell asleep.  I blame my British clothes dryer, which stupidly listened to me when I told it to do the wrong thing, forcing me to stay up until 2am to ensure I had dry clothes for this trip.

I hadn't planned on doing much anyhow.  In Ramazan, Muslims are supposed to fast from sun up to sun down. Being a Christian, this is not a requirement of my faith but I have fasted in the past, usually to raise money for charity but occasionally for spiritual growth.  I know how annoying it is when you haven't eaten all day and then someone comes by with a big juicy hamburger. So, I thought I was being culturally sensitive to wait until closer to sundown to get food.  Unfortunately, sun down comes quickly and by the time I went out foraging for food (which should have taken me about 50 feet from my hotel to the nearest grocers), the only thing I could find open in my area was a Papa John's.  Everyone else was celebrating iftar, the breaking of the fast for the evening.

Before I left for the grocers / Papa John's, I was talking to another American woman here. She suggested I head to the mosque if I want an "adventure" as it's not very far from where I'm staying and passed a local fruit vendor.  "But, won't they be praying?" I asked.  She said yes, and that if I actually want to go into the mosque, it might not be the best time to go now.  They likely wouldn't let me in, and if they did taking pictures of people praying isn't exactly the height of tact.  I agreed, noting that I'll probably visit a mosque sometime this month but during the evening iftar celebrations, I couldn't bring myself to even try. I was a little thrown by her response: "That's very culturally sensitive of you."

I should explain that I'm here for a multi-week event with a lot of foreign students and teachers who should be culturally sensitive.  When I attend events like this - or when students arrive for the LL.M. and M.A. every year - I have a presumption that those around me are culturally attuned.  But I've found that there's a very low bar for Americans who travel.  You're not taking pictures of people praying?  Wow - that's very culturally sensitive of you.  You're not accosting women wearing a burqa just so you can show your family back home what you saw?  You're a cultural super star!  You take a scarf with you to a mosque?  Why, they should make you the Ambassador to the UN!

I don't think my colleague was suggesting I treat the Muslim holiday like my own personal photo-fest.  She likely just hadn't realized how dark it was getting outside.  An hour earlier, I could have easily walked to the mosque, taken a few pictures, and been gone by the time anyone arrived for evening prayers.

So, tonight has been particularly low-key.  I talked with the Papa John's pizza guys and watched their TV while I waited for a small Hawaiian pizza, stared at Turkish lira, came back and got some work done.  I'll unfortunately be doing a lot of work this month, which means I won't be doing as much site-seeing as I normally would, but it's good work and it's going to be a fun month.  I'll try to keep you updated here. 

An Open Love Letter to My Siblings

I started this a long time ago but just got around to finishing it.  Sorry siblings.  

But isn't it rewarding knowing that I wanted to write you an open love letter 

at least two times this year?

Recently, my brother "walk[ed] a mile in her shoes" - literally high heels - to raise awareness and money about sexual assault.  He's done this in years past and it's just one of the ways he rallies to support victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.  My brother is, and has been all my life, a true feminist: he supports equality amongst men and women (even if he regularly wants to protect his little sisters), and he matches his actions to his words by mentoring young women (including his sisters), working as an attorney to combat sexual assault and domestic violence, and giving of his time, talents and money to assist in raising awareness about issues of women's health and safety.

He also used to be a capital crimes prosecutor.

Sometimes, depending on how people meet me, they may only hear this latter fact and not the former.  When that happens, I've done a disservice to my brother, to his work, and to our relationship because I've only had the opportunity to portray a small sliver of the man he is.  And when that happens, it always throws me off a bit when people express a belief that we must have a really hard time getting along.  Because we disagree on a single political issue?

It happens with my sister as well.  She's in the US Navy.  An officer, she's currently the highest ranking female on her ship. She's a role model and a mentor for younger sailors, both men and women. She's also my best friend in the world (well, technically, she's tied with my mom).  She is the first person I want to talk to when something has gone right or wrong and when she's off at sea, I spend my days accumulating anecdotes to tell her when she's able to return to normal communication methods. (Some of those anecdotes actually work their way into emails, but a lot are just way more fun to tell her as she giggles through my 30-minute story.)

When people hear that I - a woman who loves travelling to random countries, has lived outside the US as an adult almost as long as I've lived in it, and who has sacrificed corporate law for international human rights law work - am related to a military officer and a former capital crimes prosecutor, they think I must be the black sheep of the family.  I'm not.  I'm actually not sure that we have a black sheep of the family.  We each claim it at different points for different reasons: my brother hadn't left the US and Canada until his honeymoon in his mid-30s while my sister and I both spent time abroad while still in undergrad; my sister isn't a lawyer, which she always points out makes her unique and different; and I'm - well, I've never fired a gun and I've never carried a government employee identification card that was my own. I also drink a lot less than they do and swear a lot more.

People think our values must not match. In fairness, our disagreements over the politics that inform our career choices have not always gone well.  We're siblings so even though we love each other  and we're all ridiculously proud of what the other does, we still have our fights.  And as with siblings, sometimes a fight over something like undone dishes or a conversation about a news story on a war in a far off place, will trigger ridiculous fights.  We know each other well enough to know how to push the buttons you can't always unpush.  I've said things to both my siblings that were inappropriate and hurtful.  I won't repeat what I said to my sister, but I will say that when my brother was doing capital crimes prosecution, I once told him he was a murderer. It was unfair and mean-spirited and it is one of the things I regret most in life.

They, too, have at times been dismissive of what I do - my brother once equating it to flittering around the world hugging people in the hopes it makes a difference. My sister admitted to me recently that she only just got comfortable with what I do a few years ago, and even then she wasn't always sure of it.  She'll tell her friends about the ridiculous questions I ask about her career (and they are ridiculous at times) and has waved away what I do as nothing more than puppy dogs and rainbows.  I do the touchy-feely-good stuff in the family while they do the "hard work" of "real jobs."

Thankfully, most of those fights appear in the past (hopefully all of them) as we've each come to realize that what we each do is an extension of the same fundamental worldview:  that the benefits of a free and democratic society demand service, and that the least in our society require our greatest protection.  I know it sounds cliched, and perhaps it is, but it's a value our parents brought us up with and perhaps without ever paying attention to how it informed our decision, we each chose careers we feel serve the underdogs in our society.

I don't agree with the death penalty.  I'm an abolitionist in that area. But my brother believes in justice and he got into capital crimes prosecution after dealing with the wretchedness that man can dole out to man (and to be gender neutral, that woman to woman or man to woman and vice versa, of course). He now does a lot of criminal defense, but regardless of which side of the bar he's on, he does criminal justice in an attempt to ensure the rule of law operates for those that society would ignore or persecute.  He does it because he believes in our justice system.  And he believes in service.

We will likely never agree on the issue of the death penalty - unless he decides I'm right  -  but, I know that this one aspect does not define us or our relationship.  It also doesn't mean that he's a bad person. It just means that even applying a similar world view, and even understanding the same facts, we can reach different opinions on the necessity of something.

I also don't agree with many wars.  I used to be a complete pacifist before I visited the Normandy beaches, some concentration camps, and Holocaust museums.  I've visited the DMZ on the Korean border, Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, and a host of war sites both domestic and international.  I have come to appreciate that at times a state must go to war, though those reasons should be limited and principally for the defense of one's own nation or for the defense of the vulnerable (yes, I said it and intentionally so). But wars need to be rare and they should protect those who choose not to go to war.

That's part of why I appreciate my sister's service.  It principally comes from the same fundamental belief that wars should be limited but that those who do not want to or cannot serve shouldn't have to.  She once told me she serves so I, with my protestations of recent conflicts, don't have to.  But there's more to it than that.  She serves because she believes in something bigger than herself - in a democracy that serves freedom. 

I don't think she naively believes the US is the only democratic nation that serves freedom. She won't discuss her political beliefs with me at all because she believes her job for now is to serve whatever the will of the people is, so she votes but doesn't tell us who or what she votes for. I think she realizes the flaws in our democratic system - she does have a postgraduate degree in politics - and in the positions and policies our politicians sometimes adopt. Yet, she believes that a democratic nation must be able to protect itself and those who cannot protect themselves.

Hers is a service of sacrifice, too.  She is limited in who she can befriend and who she can date - only officers within two ranks of her, and for dating, no one in her direct line of command.  She serves far from home and perhaps (though she's never said it explicitly) not always in places or for people she would want to serve.

There are a lot of similarities between those who choose a military life and those who choose a life in human rights.  People don't always appreciate that; I didn't always appreciate that.  But ultimately we are two sides of the same coin in many respects.  I recognize that not all military guys or women are good people - we have defined war crimes for a reason.  But not all human rights activists are either, and the broad stroke of the military or police forces automatically being the enemy of the good, white-hatted human rights activist has to stop. My sister is my living proof that those who serve in the military can do so honourably and with the same intentions as those of us who do human rights. We have come to appreciate that the biggest difference in what we do is not what we believe in or why we do it, but rather whether there's a Christmas ornament that recognizes our service.* My parents buy me Christmas ornaments with doves and peace signs to symbolize what I do; my brother doesn't even get career-oriented Christmas ornaments because who wants to celebrate lawyers? My sister, however, has a Christmas ornament that declares her an "American hero," in big red, white and blue letters.  That, of course, is not because our values distinguish us or our actions, but because society does not yet accept the interdependence of the two careers.  I'm just grateful that my siblings do.

So, today I just want to say thanks to my siblings, whom I love immensely and am so proud of for all they do, even when we disagree. You make the world a better place and that inspires me in what I do.

*Okay, the other biggest difference is I still don't know how to shoot a gun while she is an expert marksman in ... something... with guns.