A Non-Muslim’s Ramadhan

A Non-Muslim’s Ramadhan 

Hello I’m back with another blog post! Haha it’s been a year since I’ve published something, and I hope this won’t waste your read. Disclaimer: the post is a discussion of my personal experience, opinion, views and beliefs. Some of it may be wrong, sound offensive or ignorant, but hey, let’s be civilized!

I have been with MSU for quite some time now, eight (8) years to be exact. MSU, being the melting pot of the south, sitting on a hill in the Islamic City of Marawi, observes the Holy Month of Ramadhan, along with the residents of the city. Me being a student, and now a faculty, has observed the holy month before along with my boardmates and friends.

I don’t have background on Islam, so I just did what our senior boardmates did. I belong to a protestant campus ministry, and we called such activity as Duyog Ramadhan (roughly translated as Ramadhan together.) We will wake up before 5am to eat (because we have our morning devotion at 5am). And so that was my knowledge about Ramadhan, where Muslims fast for a month. I tried doing the same activity for days but I just can’t make it through a month.

Fast forward, this year was the first year I have celebrated Ramadhan as a faculty, yey! Days before that, I was receiving messages from my friends and saw some of their stories in messenger saying “maaf “to everybody whom they sinned against, it is Ramadhan, and they want to make peace. I never had that on my previous Ramadhan experience, and I also do this personally at the end of the year, so I know how humbling it is to ask for forgiveness from the people whom you did wrong and giving forgiveness to those who wronged you. And that is beautiful.

On casual conversations, my Muslims friends would then ask me whether or not I was fasting. I said no, this time I won’t be fasting because I already did that before and I think that was enough. Well, to tell you, I have a considerable amount of Muslim friends who are very close to me, so the considerable number of questions whether I was fasting or not kept coming.

As the clock approaches 4pm, every day, my friends would ask, “Sir, anda tano khan?”, that is, “where shall we eat?.” There I saw something I haven’t seen as I observed Ramadhan before, people sharing meals and breaking the fast together, showing brotherhood and care towards each other. Some organizations, families, and even group of friends would sponsor an “iftar” (the meal to break the fast) at different masjids to give food to people praying there for free.

And they would say that they are most behaved during this holy month, not that they are not behaved, but you know what I mean HAHAH. They would avoid gossiping, telling lies, or doing something “bad” because “puwasa imanto” or we’re fasting right now, thus the number of prohibitions.

I actually had one funny experience when I spent the night at my friends’ boarding house. Upon entering,  one hurriedly cleaned the room, swept the floor and kept all the messy things back in their respective places. One also prepared a bed for me to sleep in, and it looked like a hospital bed because of the white linens. Prior to going to bed, we agreed that they’ll wake me up at around 3:30am so that we can eat before the fasting starts (which I guess is around 4:30am). I woke up at 3:30 due to the noise made by utensils against a plate, the opening of a rice cooker and their soft conversations in dialect which I could hardly decipher, but thanks to context clues, I did! One said, “let’s not wake sir up because we lack food, we ran short of rice and viand.” He added, “let’s just tell him ’Sir we did not wake you up because we know you are tired and haven’t slept well for the past days’, lets just prepare a breakfast for him and wake him up at around 7am.” So yeah, I heard the whole conversation and just slept trying not to laugh. I really appreciate the gesture and it made me feel warm. And yeah, they did not wake me up at 7 so I left their boarding house hungry at 8:30.

We would then hang out at the commercial center by 8pm after their Tarawe prayer and then spend extended hours there, sometimes until 11pm. It seems like the campus comes to life at night because of the number of people roaming the commercial center dining in the restaurants or just hanging out.

Special shout out to my Gym Buddies (ML Squad) who needs to stop playing at 2am because of Tahajud and 3:30 because they need to eat. Maybe it was part of your Ramadhan wish to reach Mythic rank, am I right?

My Ramadhan experience this year tops the previous years’ experience that I had, simply because I spent it with Muslims. There I gained a little deeper understanding of Islam, and it is beautiful. I won’t be converting, if that’s actually a concern. And surprisingly, that thought was never brought up, I guess its because from my perspective and theirs, we are connecting on a level beyond and over religious views. If only the rest of the world could do so, then we can say that religion shouldn’t really divide us, because the more we see it, the more human we actually become.

And that is how a non-muslim bulletproof teacher experienced Ramadhan. Eid Mubarak everybody!