For Muslims, Ramadan more than just fasting
September 6, 2010
Matthew Flocco, The Temple News
Local Muslims celebrate Islam’s holy month through prayer, charity and bonding with family.
PHILADELPHIA—For Yusuf Dandridge and his sister, Inayah, the month of Ramadan is more than just a holiday.
“Ramadan is a time we fast to feel how it is for people that don’t have food,” 12-year-old Yusuf said. The North Philadelphia resident and his sister explained this as they shared Iftar – a dinner meal that breaks daily fast during the month – with members of Temple’s Muslim Student Association.
The siblings and their friends – Sahir, 10, Sufyan and Ammara, both 6, Mohammed – have been waking up as early as 3 or 4 a.m. since Aug. 11 to eat with their families before they fast from sunrise to sunset, as is custom for Muslims during the holiest month of the year. Only at Iftar can they break their fast, first with water and a date, and then with the regular meal.
Ramadan, the ninth of 12 lunar months on the Islamic calendar, marks the time when Allah revealed the Quran to Muhammad. During this time, Muslims fast not only from food and water, but also drinking, gossiping, smoking and having intimate relations.
In addition to Sawm – Arabic for fasting – Muslims are encouraged by faith to pray and read the entire Quran. After Iftar, members of the congregation are called to the mosque to pray together. This special series of prayers is called Tarawih.
Temple has a large number of Muslim students, about 600 to 700, Heidar Albandar, the president of the MSA, said. Temple is also one of the only universities in the country to have designated areas for washing feet, an essential component of many Islamic rituals.
These feet-washing stations are located in some of the restrooms on Main Campus, including one in the Student Center. It also offers rooms that are reserved for prayer, the main one being on the third floor of the Student Center.
This Thursday, the MSA, along with other organizations like it all across the country, will host Fast-a-Thon. It is intentionally held on the last day of Ramadan – called Eid ul-Fitr, Arabic for Festival of Breaking the Fast – to raise awareness about the issue of hunger and to educate those who are not familiar with the holiday or Islamic traditions.
Students of all backgrounds are encouraged to participate by fasting from sunrise to sunset on Eid ul-Fitr. They are also invited to a celebratory dinner, at which they will enjoy food prepared by the MSA and learn about Ramadan from guest speakers.
“The event actually caters to non-Muslims,” Albandar said.
All proceeds from Fast-a-Thon will be sent to Islamic Relief, an organization working directly with the victims of the recent flooding that has devastated Pakistan.
Two other cultural traditions that many can look forward to during Ramadan are the desserts – some of which will be at Fast-a-Thon – including baklava, as well as the decorations.
Many who practice the holiday adorn their homes with a bright crescent moon and star lights. In Egypt, Ramadan lanterns are hung over the streets to decorate for the occasion.
In addition to charity, prayer and fasting, perhaps one of the most meaningful aspects of Ramadan is the bond that one shares with the community.
“Ramadan gives us strength of willpower,” Khadija Qurbanzada, a sophomore architecture major, said. “It really unites the family.”
For many, it is a time to get together with old friends and family members. Families invite other families and friends into their homes all the time. They share Iftar daily, and go to mosque afterward.
“Through every deed we do, God is trying to teach us to go back to Him,” Rushdi Razif, a junior architecture science major, said during one of the MSA’s Iftar meals. “He spaces out the prayers because He wants to give you space between, to reflect and think about how you can stay as pure as possible.”
Science, religion can sometimes be complementary
February 22, 2011
Matthew Flocco, The Temple News
Matt Flocco thinks science and religion don’t have to be combating views.
ROME—I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Christianity is not that distant from ancient mythology.
Countless stories recall how Zeus came down to Earth and mated with mortals, creating demigods.
For some Christians, especially Catholics, it is believed that Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. Then is it not true that God Himself came down and mated with a mortal, just like Zeus, and that the mortal gave birth to a demigod?
When I brought this up in class last week, a heated conversation ensued. Some students in the class were atheists, some agnostic, some Jewish, some Christian and some monotheistic. But one friend brought up a major difference between the two – mythology was also used to explain natural phenomena.
I just finished reading Dan Brown’s controversial book “Angels & Demons” – a work that’s major theme is the war between science and religion. In the novel, scientist Maximilian Kohler states the following in regards to these natural phenomena and belief in God:
“Spirituality and religion have been called on to fill in the gaps that science did not understand. The rising and setting of the sun was once attributed to Helios and a flaming chariot. Earthquakes and tidal waves were the wrath of Poseidon. Science has now proven those gods to be false idols. Soon all gods will be proven to be false idols. Science has now provided answers to almost every question man can ask. There are only a few questions left …Where do we come from? What are we doing here? What is the meaning of life and the universe?”
At the beginning of the story, a team of scientists led by a priest set out to find the answers and prove God’s existence through physics. They are able to recreate the Big Bang Theory, proving that matter can come from a highly dense point of singularity. Despite Kohler’s personal belief, this team explains God is the energy that creates it.
So maybe the story of Adam and Eve isn’t exactly correct, but we still had to come from somewhere. It must be clear to physicists that because matter can be neither created nor destroyed, something must have always been there, something eternal: God.
For those who do not believe in a higher power because of science, the words of the character Camerlengo Ventresca are perfect:
“Show me proof there is a God, you say. I say use your telescopes to look to the heavens, and tell me how there could not be a God!”
The only flaw of this character is that in his astute belief, he refuses to see the wonder science brings. He said it destroyed God’s miracles.
To those who are so set in their religion that they refuse to ignore the beauty of science, I say this: So what?
So what if science can explain the colors of a rainbow or the symmetry in a body? This does not destroy their power. Science didn’t create these miracles. It interprets them.
Religion and art do the same thing. They didn’t create the universe either, yet they exist so we can try to understand and interpret the meaning of the world around us.
To those who understandably doubt God’s existence because of all the conflict caused by religious clashes, here is a quote from Vittoria Vetra, a devout Catholic and brilliant scientist in the book:
“We gravitate toward the [religion] with which we were raised … though, we are all proclaiming the same thing. That life has meaning … Look at the diffusion of religion around the globe…Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us go to Mecca, some of us study subatomic particles. In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves.”
Religion is overrated. The connection between you and your higher power is so much more important than the rituals you perform.
My God does not exist through politics. He exists through the love of my family and friends, the blessings of art I see and the music I hear and the miracles He performed. Where does yours exist?
Religion’s interconnectivity comes full circle in Rome
April 19, 2011
Matthew Flocco, The Temple News
Matt Flocco sums up his religious studies in Rome with “Music of the Spheres.”
ROME—While chanting monks, accordion players, and the Italian version of Beauty and the Beast I saw last week might be very cool, I’m here today to talk to you about a different kind of tune than the rest of the paper: “Music of the Spheres.”
This ancient philosophy explains that there is a harmony between God and heavenly beings that moved around the Earth, especially the Sun and Moon. The idea was later explained in a literal and physical sense by Johannes Kepler, according to astrology scholar David Plant. Kepler explained that geometry, astrology and other sciences worked together to explain the movement of the planets.
Last week, I watched the film Agora for class. It displays a clash of ideologies in 5th Century Alexandria (Roman Empire), running the gamut from Roman Paganism to Judaism to Christianity to astronomy to philosophy. It is impossible for me to go in depth, but what you need to know is that every denomination of faith is portrayed in a bad light in the film. The only clarity comes from the teachings of Hypatia, who studies the planets years before Kepler, Copernicus, and Galileo. In the beginning of the film, there is a motif of the circle as a symbol of perfection. God or the gods have made the shape and orbit of the earth in this way. In the film, Hypatia comes to a revelation that the shape of earth’s orbit is an ellipse, an imperfect circle.
The circle and ellipse are seen all over Rome, especially in Vatican City. This concept is explored in the novel Angels and Demons, where Professor Robert Langdon explains that the preferred shape of the church shifted from a perfect circle to a perfect ellipse. If one were to look at a cross section of the dome of St. Peter’s he would see that it is obviously a perfect circle. However, when one sees it from the square, he might be shocked to find out that the dome is not a half-sphere. Upon closer scrutiny, as pointed out by my art history professor, it in fact looks like the top half of an egg.
It is only fitting that this dome sits above the tomb of St. Peter, the founder of Christianity. The iconic egg was used even before Easter as a symbol of Spring, rebirth and the life cycle. For Christians it is a symbol of Christ’s resurrection. The belief goes that Jesus was sealed in a tomb, and after three days the tomb opened and he ascended into Heaven, starting a new life. In this way, the shell of the egg is like the tomb, Jesus is the yolk inside. It may be a coincidence, but a “yoke” is a beam of wood that animals carry on their backs. In this way, the yoke/yolk represents Christ’s burden of his crucifixion.
The Easter egg and the ellipse don’t stop there. Rome’s Holy Week starts and ends in the elliptical St. Peter’s Square, where the Pope delivers mass and blesses the people below. On Good Friday, the anniversary of Christ’s death, the Pope leads a procession at another egg: the Coliseum. This is called the Stations of the Cross, and represents Jesus’ ordeals on his journey to Golgotha, where he would be crucified.
To some, Jesus was the Messiah. To others, he was a mortal man. To still others, he was a martyr, dying for what he himself believed in. In my class reading for Agora, the author wrote that Hypatia’s martyrdom (she is killed by Christians) serves as a transition from a pagan Rome to a Christian Rome. At the end of the film, the camera zooms out into space, as if a heavenly being were looking down on the mortals, shaking its head in dismay at the mess that has been created.
Hypatia’s discovery that the earth’s orbit is imperfect sends the audience a powerful message. As she looks up into the sky, she questions the planets that are named after her gods, and how perfect they really are or are not. A millennium and a half later…are we so different?
Religion is arguably the largest catalyst for war in the history of the world. Over the thousands of years of our existence, people have killed others in order to prove that their belief is the correct one. Many do not believe in a higher power because they see this warfare. How many of us have asked ourselves: “If there really is a God, why is there so much pain?”
After the sin of Adam and Eve, God wiped the slate clean with the Flood and tried again by allowing Noah and his family to start anew. It was a rebirth of the world. Yet since then, ongoing conflict has scarred the surface of the earth.
The book of Genesis states that “God made man in His image.” If this is true, we are forced to look at the world and the people He created. If we mortals are imperfect, isn’t it possible that we are made from an imperfect God? Maybe this is why He started over with Noah, and then again with Christ. Maybe this is why the shape of our spheres and our orbit are not perfectly round.
It seems (almost) all too perfect that I end this journey talking about eggs and Easter. I have always been interested in religion, and yet the more I dig here in Rome, the more it seems I am just cracking the surface. Watching films, viewing art, and walking around the city have caused me to question religion and look at it from all different angles. This four month journey has given me my own rebirth and spiritual insight.
There is no single correct answer for what lies out there. My Truth is this: there is something greater than us, but how we interpret it does not matter. As humans, it is not our place to tell others what to believe and what not to believe. Let people educate themselves and choose what they believe in.