An encounter with religious difference.

One of my very first religious studies classes at UC was an evening course taught once a week. It was called the Muhammed Seminar and had attracted quite an interesting mix of students from various backgrounds. I didn't consider any of us to be too different and I still don't, but one of the things that came up during the class was the Muslim students' observance of Ramadan.

I've studied Islam plenty of times before so I was familiar with the festival and the practices that went a lot with it - namely the fasting from sunrise to sundown. What took me by surprise when I encountered students who were participating in the fast and quietly eating their dinners about an hour into the class was sort of strange. When I had studied Islam and the festival of Ramadan I had fallen into a sort of pattern that most people tend to when they examine religious practices other than their own. What I had done was compare the religious traditions of Islam with the religious traditions of Judaism as a way to sort of break it down and make it more relateable to me - less alien, I suppose. I had compared the fasting on Ramadan to the closest thing I could find in Judaism which was fasting for Yom Kippur or one of the other fasting holidays.

Now, obviously the two aren't that similar and the Muslims observing Ramadan have a different kind of fast in front of them (for one thing it lasts for many days). The attitudes towards it - the casualness with which it was met, the very few (if any) complaints that I heard, were startling to me. So I guess what I'm trying to say was that it wasn't really the religious tradition or the people observing it but HOW they observed it that caught me off guard. To this day I'm not sure exactly what it was that I found so unnerving and awesome (like awe inspiring, not TOTALLY GREAT) about the attitudes towards the observance, but I do know that it was just different.