A season of peace in a time of war
As Ramadan begins, Palestinians and Israelis find healing responses to the Gaza conflict in quiet contemplation and empathy.
Muslims gather for Iftar meal during the first day of Ramadan at Sheikh Abdul Qadir Gilani mosque in Baghdad, Iraq, March. 11. Muslims throughout the world are marking the Ramadan – a month of fasting during which observants abstain from food, drink, and other pleasures from sunrise to sunset.
AP
Negotiators meeting in Cairo last week had hoped to secure a cease-fire in Gaza before Ramadan, the Muslim holy month that started Sunday evening. Elsewhere, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres made a similar appeal for Sudan, a predominantly Muslim country where warring generals are fighting a protracted civil war. Neither truce has come about yet.
But the groundwork for peace is often laid in smaller gestures. In years past, for example, some Muslim families in Jerusalem and the West Bank have invited their Jewish neighbors to help them break the daily fasts of Ramadan with joyous evening meals – reflecting the holy month’s emphasis on charity and reconciliation.
Celebrations like those may be muted this year. Amid the wars in Gaza and Sudan, Muslims around the world have approached Ramadan in quieter contemplation. Many planned to forego traditional festivities in favor of more devout worship and selflessness. They “want to spend more time with God,” Dr. Ahmed Soboh, director of the Islamic Center in Yorba Linda, California, told the Whittier Daily News. “Many will find it more meaningful to serve others who are in need.”
That desire has not gone unnoticed. In Israel, a tourism group that has partnered with Muslim communities in the West Bank to enable Jews to encounter how Muslims practice Ramadan is seeking a different approach this year. To avoid intruding in private homes, it will invite Israelis and Palestinians to share their aspirations for peace in evening conversations via Zoom.
“We understand that Ramadan won’t look the same this year,” Ilanit Haramati, program manager of Shared Paths, told Haaretz. “It’s not clear that it’s right to enter a mosque as a visitor now, or even wander with a group of Jews on the street in an Arab community.”
Such empathy and respect reflect a broader trend reshaping the Middle East. Across the region, religious tradition is gradually becoming less politicized. A 2022 Zogby Research Services poll conducted in seven Arab countries found that “strong majorities ... believe that when religious movements govern, they make countries weaker.” The survey found broad desire for freedom, innovation, equality for women, and more modern approaches to teaching religious tenets.
Those attitudes coincide with a shift among younger, progressive Jews worldwide who, amid the Israel-Hamas war, feel torn between “embracing simultaneously a God of loving social justice and a state that rejects liberal democracy,” wrote Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor, in The Washington Post last week. Young Muslims in France who increasingly see Islam as an individual path to spiritual growth rather than a politically stigmatized identity.
Ramadan begins a six-week period that includes Easter and Passover – a time when Muslims, Christians, and Jews turn thought more deeply to values of humility, sacrifice, and love. “Above all, it’s a way of getting closer to God,” Youcef, a high school student in the suburbs of Paris, told Le Monde. Despite the persistence of war, a season of devoutness reveals the mental foundations of peace.