From Boston Globe
Brian Buzby had a splitting headache the first day of Ramadan from caffeine withdrawal and mild dehydration. He loved the late night Taraweeh prayers at the mosque, when a portion of the Koran is recited each night, and stayed long afterward talking with friends. Then he returned home to his apartment in South Boston and opened the refrigerator again.
“I don’t even go to sleep before suhoor,” the 30-year-old student told a small group of fellow converts gathered at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center last week, referring to the 3 a.m. predawn meal. “I go home and I keep eating.”
A burst of laughter; their teacher, Hossam AlJabri, smiled.
“We’re still in the beginning,” he said. “But Ramadan will just keep throwing beautiful things at you.”
Ramadan — which occupies the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, when Muslims believe the Koran was revealed to the Prophet Mohammed — is the holiest time of the year in Islam, a time for fasting, self-improvement, family celebration, and intensive prayer.
For converts, Ramadan, which began the second week of July and continues until early August, can also be lonesome and bewildering. Fasting from food and water from the first light of dawn to sunset is a physical challenge. Family, friends, and colleagues who are not Muslim are not always quick to see its purpose or benefits. And without family to share the predawn suhoor meal and the evening iftar meal — those can be big family meals, or something smaller — some converts miss out on Ramadan’s communal spirit.
But Boston’s largest mosque, the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, has been working to help converts enjoy Ramadan and navigate its tougher terrain.
“It’s not totally my first Ramadan, but I wasn’t part of a community last Ramadan — and there’s a big, big difference,” Buzby told his friends at the new converts’ class last week.
Unlike some suburban mosques whose members are mostly families, or mosques whose members are mostly one or two ethnic groups, the cultural center in Roxbury is diverse, urban, and filled with students and other young people who are in Boston temporarily, or just beginning to put down roots.
And the imam, William Suhaib Webb, is particularly attuned to issues facing converts — he is one.
“Especially for converts who are out of college, not married, and don’t have a strong social support group, I think the mosque becomes a place where they can come and get some family time in,” Webb said in an interview.
