This week, Muslim American poet Najeeba Syeed-Miller took the holy month of Ramadan to a new and unfamiliar audience: low-income and mostly Latino children who live in the Maravilla Housing Development in East Los Angeles.
Syeed-Miller said she asked the students to draw pictures of their own conflicts, and to share the stories about their fights. Then, she explained how Muslims tried to fast from both food and anger during Ramadan.
"I was trying to make connections between Ramadan and their own lives," she said, "and explain that you could break your fast on a spiritual level as well as a physical one."
The foray into East Los Angeles represents one of many new ways that Muslims are sharing Ramadan with the broader non-Muslim community. Such efforts multiplied after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks sparked widespread public curiosity -- and some hostility -- toward Islam, and seem to be reaching new levels today.
Around the world this week, more than 1 billion Muslims began observing Ramadan, a season of spiritual rejuvenation marked by fasting from dawn to dusk, charitable acts and special prayers. The fasting by healthy adults is aimed at developing self-control, better health, greater consciousness of God and compassion for the poor and hungry. The month of Ramadan also marks the time that the Koran was first revealed by God through the Angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad.
But in the United States, where ethnic and religious traditions are so often shared and intermingled, Ramadan is becoming a season of spiritual reflection for many non-Muslims as well.
Some people are trying the fast or joining interfaith and intercultural fast-breakings known as iftars. The Muslim student associations at USC and UCLA, for instance, are recruiting non-Muslims to join a "Ramadan fast-a-thon" to raise money for health care and hot meals for the homeless.
At UCLA, Muslims have lined up several local businesses to pledge $1 for each person who fasts for a day, and recruited members from such campus organizations as the Progressive Jewish Students Assn. and the Indian Students Union to participate, said Mariam Jukaku, president of the Islamic group.
The fast-a-thon "will help share the ideals of Ramadan with non-Muslims -- the self-renewal and sacrificing of material things in order to remember God," Jukaku said.
