‘I thought Ramadan would be easier in quarantine,’ says Basma Khalifa, a Sudanese Muslim who is isolating in East London. ‘You don't have to go outside. You're not running around. You're not doing as much. But you're not as distracted. Ramadan is much easier when you’re distracted.’
Basma, who is a stylist, journalist and documentary filmmaker, adds that spending hours on Zoom calls can feel ‘full-on when you’re fasting.’ ‘3pm-5pm are my tricky hours, so I try and make sure I do most of my work calls in the morning.’
Basma explains that she misses the community aspect of Ramadan. ‘The best thing about Ramadan is being together with people and breaking your fast together, sitting up throughout the night watching TV and chatting and sharing stories,’ she says, adding that she usually spends her weekends at her cousin’s house in Manchester during the religious festival. ‘We'd all just be together and get through it together. We would break our fast with a date or a bowl of soup and then we would all pray together. My uncle or my brother or my cousin would lead the prayers and there would be like 20 or 30 of us. Now, it's a very, very lonely prayer.’
Social media, however, is helping her feel connected to her family. ‘We video call each other on the weekends; we’re everywhere from Australia to Washington DC to Sudan. We share stories and ask everyone how they're doing. And I play quizzes with my little cousins.’
She’s also involved with Facebook and Instagram's global campaign #RamadanTogether – where Muslim creators, including lifestyle influencer Dina Tokio and model Mariah Idrissi, are highlighting the power of community by virtually sharing their experiences of Ramadan. ‘Facebook approached us and we came up with the idea of bringing lots of different people together to chat about what it's like to be a Muslim in this day and age,’ she says. ‘It was important to represent all the different types of Muslims, so lots of different ages and races, people who have babies and people that are single entrepreneurs that are still living at home. I wanted everyone to be different.’
As well as writing a poem about Ramadan for a short film, Basma also took part in a virtual conversation, where the creators ate a meal together, debunked some ‘myths’ associated with Ramadan and chatted about how every year people ask them the same questions. ‘People always ask us - even my flatmate asked me yesterday - so you can’t even have water?’ she says. ‘We were joking that we should put that phrase on a T-shirt.’
‘It was nice to feel like we're all in this together and care about each other, even if we do come from different walks of life. And that there are different Muslims doing different things, wearing different things, eating different things, we’re not all the same person, but the practice of the religion unites us. It was nice to share that.’
Yet Basma’s relationship with her faith hasn’t always been straightforward. ‘I've always had a quite complicated relationship with religion,’ she says. ‘I grew up in Northern Ireland, and there was no one around me that ever was like me. And I've always had this kind of thinking ‘oh, does religion hold you back’ or ‘does it create more problems than it's worth’ - I always, always felt like that.'
'But as I've gotten older,' she continues. 'I started to understand the huge benefits of having a faith and some sort of guidance. Ramadan Together was personally the first piece of religious content I've ever put out. So I wanted to get involved so I could speak to people like me – so that we can just say, "you know what, there's no reason that having a religion holds you back, it's a part of us, it’s not who you are."
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