In Mindanao, war shatters the Ramadan
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RAMADAN has always brought good memories of Lidasan’s childhood. She used to spend it in Parang with her grandfather, Datu Bara Lidasan, whose hajj name, “Amir,” she took after. “Amirah,” the feminine of “Amir,” is an Arabic word for leader.
She used to spend Ramadan in Matanog, a town that used to be a part ofMaguindanao but is now a part of the new Shariff Kabungsuan province before her parents moved to Maharlika village in Taguig, Metro Manila.
She considered it as the time when people don’t want to get irritated or annoyed. “The whole month is devoted entirely to prayer,” she said. “Even the act of taking a bath, and cleansing oneself on the eve of the Ramadan make their intentions clear that they want to becleanse,” she said.
But her most memorable years, she said, happened on her third year high school, when she went on an “umrah” in Saudi Arabia. An “umrah” is a pilgrimage to Mecca undertaken at any time of the year. “It was my happiest moment,” she said, “I was 15 at that time.”
Her stay reached up to the season of the “hajj,” considered the “fifth pillar” of Islam, a pilgrimage undertaken from the 8th to the 12th day of the 12th month of the Islamic calendar, she said.
Prayers Amid Conflict. Muslims in Basilan in one of their prayers during the observance of the Ramadan this month. (davaotoday.com photo by Melgre Millan)
“Pilgrimage is a time when you devote a journey to your faith,” she said, “When you are in the mood for pilgrimage, you’re ready to be united with other colors, race, nation who share the same faith with you.”
She described the feeling of belonging to one community, of sharing something in common, which is Islam. “When you’re there, you really feel this “oneness, this unity,that at the call to prayer, everybody drops everything, and leave everything behind, including their store, just to join everybody in prayer,” Lidasan recalled.
Since the meaning of religious practices can only assume its weight when people are inside the community and when the family is intact, everything crumbles when the community is displaced in times of war. “Then it will already be between you and your God,” she said. “Only your faith remains.”
She said it really takes a truly faithful and religious Muslim to go through all the sacrifices of Ramadan when he or she is displaced and removed from his or her community. “When you’re in an evacuation center or constantly on the run, you’d be thinking how to keep your family safe,” she said. “We need families, clan community to make to make our religion work.”
The sight of the new moon in the Islamic calendar marks the end of the Ramadan. Eid’l Fit’r, the feast to end the Ramadan may fall on the second week of October, base on Saudi Arabia time, where most Muslims in the Philippines base their celebration. “On the eve of the Eid’l Fit’r, no one sleeps, everybody awaits the new moon,” she said.
She said she longs for the day when they can celebrate the whole month of Ramadan with real peace of mind. (Germelina Lacorte/davaotoday.com)
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