30th August

30^th August

“Eid kuni kutta bolson”

(Celebrate the day of Eid)

Today is the end of Ramadan, and is conveniently this year falling on a national holiday, Constitution Day. Which in itself doesn’t seem to be celebrated much, but it means that people have the day off to do what is seemingly the national past time – (to “Konnak” – to visit family). So that is what I have done this morning - visit my host-brothers and host Uncles houses and drank a lot of tea. I had hoped to visit the Mosque this morning, but it seems my Wahabbi influenced (the version of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia- i.e strict) sister who is visiting, told Almira that woman shouldn’t go to the mosque on such an important day, as it is distracting for the men. This is with the fact that the women pray on a different floor of the mosque. Oh well, i will try again next year.

It is interesting to note that the separation of men and women in mosques isn’t mandated in the Koran - indeed, during Mohammed’s life time, men and women prayed together. Its one of the many interesting things in the book about Islam that I am reading now. This one is less about the actual facts of how the religion is practiced, but more about its history and development, and is therefore even more interesting to me. Especially how much of Mohammed’s early ideas and practices were copied directly from the existing Jewish population of Medina, for example not eating pork and fasting. In fact, at first, Muslims fasted on the same date as Yom Kippur, and it was only later that Ramadan was created as a unique identity.