Ramadan 01: Actions Speak Louder Than Words
Look, listen, learn: What you do reveals who you want to be.
Every Ramadan, we all try to take our Muslim life up a notch.
In this series, I share how our multigenerational household (grandparents, parents, and kids) does Ramadan. In addition to fasting, we focus on praying, doing du’a, listening to or watching something with a deeper spiritual value, visiting the mosque for taraweeh when we can, and specific exercises that elevate our worship—together.
If you’re new to Sunday Schooled, here’s a short description of what I write—all the different types of posts I regularly share. And here’s why I write them at all.
Ramadan Mubarak!
Last night, the Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati welcomed Ramadan. And I have to say, it was everything I’d been promised and more. Concerned that the masjid would fill up fast, we arrived half an hour early and there was already a crowd. More than that, a buzz. Energy in the air. It was Friday, true. But it was the first time in three years that we could gather and worship and celebrate—together.
We prayed ‘isha. Many of us prayed at least eight rak‘ah of taraweeh. For some reason, everyone under 21 exited two cycles too soon—but maybe that was the allure of the famous tea tent. I’d heard about this tea tent since I’d moved here: Right outside the prayer hall, there’s a large tent, with plenty of tea and lots of snacks, and apparently the tea tent game kicks into a higher gear in the last ten nights, when there’s suhur too.
Continental. Indo-Pakistani. Mediterranean. Levantine.
Above, a shot of the ICGC prayer hall before ‘isha. If you look closely, three rows directly behind the mihrab, you’ll see a man in a black kurta with a very bald head. That would be the author, courtesy of his lovely wife.
The last two years, when we were often limited to Ramadan with, at most, a few friends or family members, it’s not that we didn’t have profound and joyful spiritual experiences. In some ways, the intimacy of last year’s largely lockdown Ramadan was beautiful and valuable—it gave us space to concentrate on worship and get to know each other as a family.
But there’s nothing like being together in community. And what a blessing from God it is to be part of a bustling, burgeoning congregation. NBC just published my latest, an essay reflecting on the sacred month ahead, motivated by this thought: In Ramadan, we usually learn what it’s like to go without—food and drink. If we’re privileged, though, we get to share that experience with people we love.
Many people don’t have community, though. Many of us could relate to that deprivation in COVID times, when we were forced into marked isolation. I’m hopeful that this painful period of going without inspires us to consider anew the value of solidarity, to think about what it means to be part of an ummah, and to dwell on whether we build an ummah that welcomes people in.
Or pushes them out.
As I write:
We need to embrace an understanding of Islam that sees pluralism not as a deficiency, or even a reality we must begrudgingly accept, but as an earthly reflection of the Divine’s endless creativity. Ummah doesn’t have to mean conformity on a global or even national scale. Ummah can instead be a fluid agreement among hundreds of millions to engage around shared texts and traditions with rigor and respect, including the right to develop identities that allow us to build our unique visions of Islam with other, like-minded Muslims, without any intention of undermining Islam.
When in the past I’d found myself disagreeing with certain mosques around me, I was fortunate to have grown up studying Islam in a religiously literate household. I knew that the Islam that dominated at any one mosque wasn’t the only way of being Muslim. Maybe I’d never be part of that particular community. But I wouldn’t feel Islamically inadequate. It’s one of the things I’m most grateful to my parents and my childhood mosque for: giving me religious confidence.
Last night at ICGC only underscored for me the importance of this topic—and emphasizing my solution: Building religious confidence, so that our kids can start families, grow communities, and nurture faith. Because, and especially in a time of secularization, atomization, and instantaneous communication, a slow loss of religious connection can really quickly become the loss of religious conviction.
While of course we should also do more to make our communities immediately accommodating, the sad truth is that it’s going to take time—and we need a patient, thoughtful approach, which means focusing on and investing in the future.
In empowering coming generations to build. To grow. To continue. And it is to that project that I now turn.
The Rocky Road to Ramadan
After dinner but before praying maghrib last night, we meant to have a short halaqa. I’m going to share that here but, before that, I’ll add one thing. One of the kids was upset about what they were asked to wear to the masjid, on the argument that their best friend was wearing something else to the masjid, and why couldn’t they too? It was frustrating for everyone, because everyone wanted something special out of the first night, and sometimes those desires don’t converge.
And what happens when they don’t?
It made the start of Ramadan a little frustrating for a little bit—but, of course, when is a holiday not filled with people pushing in different directions? And if we can’t learn how to handle disagreement on the small things in our home, neither can we learn to handle it within a community, and that explains why many Muslim authorities enforce conformity—because they lack the tools, born of real experience, of productively and calmly negotiating and navigating differences.
Over dinner, my wife urged all of us to set goals for the month; in between cycles of taraweeh at the masjid, Imam Musa said we should have measurable ambitions.
They both made me think. To the latter, I have certain hopes in terms of prayer and supplication, yes. But to the former, I also have more general ambitions, which include trying very hard not to get too agitated or unsettled or upset when things don’t go my way. I’m not perfect, and all of us do wrong, and I certainly do, but I’d like to try to focus on the big picture more. To step back. Take a deep breath. And ask: How can I be a more forgiving, gentler person?
And that’s what I started last night’s halaqa with, which I’m reproducing here in modified form (to make it easier to understand, I’ve made it shorter and tailored it to a written format).
Ramadan Halaqa 01
In the name of God, who Loves all and is Merciful to each. All praise is due to God, Lord of the universes, and prayers and peace upon our blessed Prophet and teacher, Muhammad.
A hadith is a saying of the blessed Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, something of wisdom he said that his family or companions recorded, and that is then passed down to us. The hadith help us understand the Qur’an and how we are supposed to live it in the world. Many scholarly Muslims produced collections of hadith that they felt were particularly meaningful on certain registers, and these often started with one in particular that we’re going to focus on tonight:
“Actions are by intentions.” Innama’l ‘amālu bi’l-niyyāt.
God doesn’t judge us based on whether we succeed, in a worldly sense—people might say, “James Harden is a great basketball player, but he’s never won a title, so he’s not one of the greatest.” Or, “LeBron James is amazing, but he has four rings and Kobe had five and Jordan has six.” We hear things like this all the time. I’m not wading into that debate here, I’m just pointing out: We often measure people by external, visible markers of success. But that’s not how God works. God doesn’t care if we are rich, powerful, famous, or successful.
In fact, that often works against us.
God judges us by why we do what we do. This Ramadan is a serious chance for us to ask why we do what we do. What the purpose of the things we do is. What they all add up to. How much time a day do you spend on your phone? On talking to friends? On prayer? On reading? On staring into space? On helping out a family member? On taking care of your responsibilities? And if you track all that, it helps you understand what you value. Because, here’s the thing, actions are judged by intentions, yes. But intentions are very often revealed by actions.
What we do says more about us than we can ever say.
I can say I’m a Muslim, but what do I do that reveals that and confirms that? I can say Ramadan matters to me, but what do I do that establishes and continues that? This Ramadan, we should all spend some time asking ourselves how we spend our time. And then ask ourselves what that reveals about our priorities. Because if our intention is sincere, our actions will follow. And if our intention is insincere, our actions will be inadequate. And so, in everything we do, especially in our worship, we should focus on why we’re doing what we’re doing.
Ultimately, that has to be for God, because God asked us to, and because we submit ourselves to Him.
A scholar of Islam once shared a tradition with me, which I apologize if I bungle in the telling of. But it’s here.
When a person is praying, and his mind strays, God Himself asks, Ila khayrin minni?
Literally—“to something better than Me?”
It’s a rhetorical question. Is that thing you’re thinking of right now really more important than your Creator? And it’s beautiful because it invites us to answer. In the same way that the correct translation of Allahu Akbar is not “God is the Greatest” but, actually, “God is Greater,” inviting us to fill in the blank: Greater than what, exactly? Is He really, in oour lives, Akbar? Is He, in mine?
This Ramadan, let’s all ask ourselves a question: What does what I do say about me?
And if we find a disconnect, what do we plan to do about it?
Random Screenings
Alpha.
For medical reasons, I often don’t fast. Before this Ramadan even began, I was already struggling with a downturn in my health. (All is well in the grand scheme of things—I’m just eating a lot more white bread. And mostly white bread.) So I happily volunteered to take R to his first baseball practice ever, which I was really excited about and for, but because it’s a terrible 37 degrees out, I headed over to a Starbucks to pass some of the time.
I’d have breakfast, write this post, and catch up on some emails. However, the table I found was next to three elderly men who were having an intense conversation about Donald Trump. Specifically, that 3 million “illegals” voted in California and otherwise the Donald would have won. But I told myself not to say anything, not to get angry—it is Ramadan—and to channel my frustration into something better. And that is to continue this work with even more passion.
Here is what I mean.
The Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati is a robust institution with a beautiful campus. But it didn’t come from nowhere and it won’t continue to exist just on its own. It requires people to support it, nurture it, grow it, and care for it. The more people who do so, the better off it will be. And therefore, the more people who can do so, the better off we will all be. A community is only as empowered as the individuals in the community are.
One of the most interesting things I read about the progress (or lack of progress) of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that the vaunted Russian army actually has few experiential tools to deal with failure. Because it is so rigid, so authoritarian, and so hierarchical, and its soldiers have few meaningful experiences of improvisation—the way people do in more dynamic, creative, and egalitarian societies—everybody just passes the buck (and disaster ensues.)
Nobody knows how to take charge, because no one ever thinks they’ll have to take charge. When things go wrong, the institutions don’t evolve, adapt, and grow, they freeze, deny reality, or punish those who dare point out the inadequacies.
Societies only work well when people have the ability to keep them going, the desire to keep them going, and are invited to help keep them going. Every human experience works the same way. Including human expressions of faith. Religious confidence isn’t just about making sure you have a strong connection to God. It’s making sure you can help other people have that. Because if good people don’t do it, bad people will.
A vacuum will always be filled, and if positive visions don’t take root, awful ones will.
We owe it to ourselves, our predecessors, and our successors, to invest in ourselves. I think this is the foundation for my next halaqa with the kids.
Omega.
Yesterday afternoon, I picked up our youngest, R, from a playdate with a few friends of his. He’s mad about sports, especially the Cincinnati Reds, the Cincinnati Bengals, and the Brooklyn Nets (not sure what happened there, but apparently Kyrie Irving’s Islam has something to do with it—we reap what we don’t realize we sow.) Usually, our drives to and from home feature lots of sports talk and commentary.
But on this occasion, somehow we got to talking about ancient history, and he asked what the difference between the Greeks and Romans was. I tried to give a cursory explanation but I was cut short by a lightbulb going off in his head: “Wait,” he said. “Weren’t the Romans like too busy to make up their own religion, so they just copied the Greek religion?”
And here’s the best thing out of the many best things about that statement: I don’t know if it emerges from a public school concept of religion that’s deeply secularized, or a domestic milieu that’s intellectually Islamized, and the fact that it can be both is why I love being an American and a Muslim. Ramadan Mubarak, wherever you are. May this month be full of blessings, joy, and closeness with God and community.