The Evolution of Iftaars
We know that our Prophet (s.a.w) has told us that whoever prepares or offers food to a fasting person will earn as much of a reward as him. Possibly under the influence of this good news, every country in the Muslim world has developed its own iftaar traditions. In some Anatolian villages, Ramadan nights are shared among the well-off members of the community (especially if there’s a guest sheikh ...

The Women Believers of the Mosques
Have you ever been made to feel unwanted in a place by those who behave like they own it? Unfortunately many of the women in our country are made to feel exactly like this, not only during Ramadan, but any time they enter a mosque. It’s not only those who frequent the mosques that stare them down; even the most disinterested people in the area look at them as if to say, “What business...

The School of Ramadan
According to the “Ramadan” entry in the Encyclopedia of Islam (TDV), our Prophet (s.a.w) stated that when the “blessed month of Ramadan” comes, the gates of heaven open and those of hell close; the devils are chained; and the sins of someone who has fasted with faith and sincerity, expecting the reward of his deeds from Allah (s.w.t), will be forgiven. It’s these virtues of Ramadan that make it i...

We Love Ramadan
Ramadan disrupts all our routines and gently imposes its own schedule… We wake up in the middle of the night and try to eat something, our eyes barely open. Drowsiness takes over in the middle of the day, and we succumb to naps at random places and times. Our dinner time depends not on the clock, but on the sunset. We suddenly become unable to watch movies like we usually do, and we can’t bring o...

Fasting as a Celebration
We know the importance of fasting as an act of worship because it’s a command from Allah (s.w.t), and it’s one of the five pillars of Islam according to the Hadith Jibreel, which is a sound narration from the Prophet (s.a.w). We are also aware of its value in the eyes of God… Nevertheless, many of us experience a kind of worry and uneasiness that we avoid putting into words, bot...

Kids' Iftaars
Like all our behavior, acts of worship have a close association with our habits. In other words, our habits determine our behavior, and most of us give as much space to worship in our lives as our habits permit us. People of consciousness and willpower who are aware of this condition know how much of a personal effort is required in the struggle to positively rebuild themselves. More often than n...

The Purpose of Fasting: Accustoming Self to God-Consciousness
Verse 183 in Surah Baqara prescribes fasting for all believers, and at the end of this verse Allah explains the wisdom behind this command. In the words of Quran commentator Elmalılı Hamdi Yazır: “Fasting has been prescribed on us as it has been prescribed on those before us, so that we may shield ourselves from all sorts of danger and reach the rank of God-consciousness by attaining the faculty o...

Keeping Away From the Haraam is not Sufficient
The need for the fasting person to try to keep away from all sorts of haraam is self-evident. We will not be able to experience the worldly and spiritual pleasure of our acts of worship unless what we eat and what we drink, as well as what we speak and what we listen to, are distant from the stains of haraam. This is a point also emphasized in the words of our Prophet (s.a.w). Al-Ghazali compares...

Hunger
Our only knowledge of desperate hunger comes from the war and famine stories told by family elders and the novels we read. The deprivations suffered in various parts of the world do not affect those that are well-off and comfortable in the slightest. Hunger, as told by Knut Hamsun’s stomach-pains-inducing descriptions, leads to rebellion when it is brought about by injustice in the allocation of ...

Moving Lips and Rustling Pages
One of the fundamentals of Ramadan is the muqabala,* which is a celebration of a sunnah that our Prophet (s.a.w) and Jibreel (a.s.) repeated every Ramadan. Mushafs, which would normally not be carried out in the open any other time, are pressed under the arms, people put on their skull caps and headscarves, and run to the mosques where muqabalas are taking place. Ramadan, which brings life to its...

Moments When Your Faith is Tested
Have you ever put yourself in the shoes of Mary (ra), who gave birth to a fatherless child? Or Moses (ra.), as he was standing right by the Red Sea? Or the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), when he was in the cave?

What binds their stories together is that they submitted to what was coming from God during the most difficult moments that a person could live through. They devoted themselves to Him with an ab...

How Are We to Realize the Mawlid?
The word mawlid is defined as “place and time of birth” in dictionaries. “Mevlid,” or the “Veladet Kandili” in Turkish, is the night on which Prophet Muhammad(pbuh) graced the earth with his arrival, coinciding with the 12th night of the month of Rabi` al-Awwal on the Hijri calendar.

The era of the Prophet and the four Caliphs that followed, as well as the reign of Umayyads and Abbasids, did not s...