For Muslims in the Bay Area, a time of fasting, prayer, charity and gatherings with family and friends now carries sadness, frustration and guilt, as the suffering and death in war-ravaged Gaza cast a cloud over the month of Ramadan.
“There’s people in our community and our congregations that have straight up lost their whole families,” said Ahmad Tarin, religious director at the Centerville Islamic Center in Fremont. “How can we sit at the time of sunset and break our fast with a table filled with varieties of fruits, and all kinds of other foods, knowing that our brothers and sisters in Gaza are starving? At times you don’t even want to eat. It breaks our heart. It breaks our soul.”
Men pray at the Centerville Islamic Center in Fremont, Calif., on Wednesday, March 13, 2024. Muslims are celebrating the holiday of Ramadan, which runs from March 10 – April 9. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
The start of Ramadan, Islam’s annual month of fasting from sunrise to sunset, with a nightly meal followed by special prayers, started March 10 or 11, depending on the congregation. “For the Muslim community, we look forward to the month of Ramadan throughout the year,” said Mohammed Nadeem, a marketing professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas business school and former president of the Muslim Community Association in Santa Clara. “Ramadan is a big part of our life.”
But this year is different. The attack Oct. 7 on Israel by Hamas — designated a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union and in control of Gaza since 2007 — killed about 1,200 people, provoking a bombardment and invasion of Gaza by Israel that has according to Gaza’s health ministry killed more than 31,000 people, two-thirds of them women and children. For the past six months, a near-total blockade by Israel has severely limited entry into Gaza of aid, including food. The United Nations said late last month that one in six children under 2 in northern Gaza was suffering acute malnutrition.
This Ramadan, each bite of the celebratory post-fast meals now comes with guilt, said Zahra Billoo, executive director of the Bay Area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, “because Palestinians are being starved.”
Danville fitness instructor Dareen Sakalla and her husband have each lost dozens of extended family members to the war in Gaza, including three of Sakella’s great uncles killed with their spouses, children and grandchildren in an Israeli bombardment, she said. Sakalla has 63 uncles, aunts and cousins who remain in Gaza, living in tents, searching every day for food and water under threat from snipers, missiles and bombs, moving every few days to escape the violence, she said.
Because of the hunger in Gaza, Sakalla’s family and many Muslim friends are downsizing the after-sunset Ramadan feast called iftar, she said. “We’re agreeing to do potlucks and have simple meals together,” said Sakalla, 42. The widespread modern practice of sharing iftar photos on social media has been shelved, she said. “No one’s posting pictures of their food.”
The Gaza war has largely silenced the typical Ramadan gripes about how hungry or thirsty people are from fasting all day, Tarin said.
He was struck by a video he saw this week of a man in Gaza overcome with emotion after receiving flour. “When I had my kids I don’t think I was that happy and excited compared to how he was just to have a bag of flour.”
Muslim people make up 1% to 3% of the population in the Bay Area’s counties, according to the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute. The vast majority of the well over 100,000 Muslims in this region observe Ramadan, Nadeem said. At the Muslim Community Association mosque in Santa Clara, the special Ramadan nighttime prayers draw major crowds — up to 5,000 people, Nadeem said. “We pray in the parking lot, in the lobby, in the religious areas,” Nadeem said.
Men break their fast for Ramadan by eating dates and drinking milk at the Muslim Community Association in Santa Clara, Calif., on Thursday, March 14, 2024. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
Fasting, praying and gathering for a month bolsters a feeling of connection among the estimated 2 billion Muslim people in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, the U.S., Europe and elsewhere, Nadeem said. That means catastrophes affecting Muslims far away reverberate through celebrations here. Last year, the earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria and killed more than 55,000 people came a few weeks before Ramadan, tinging the month with grief, said Billoo, of San Jose.
The tragedy in Gaza has made this Ramadan the most wrenching in recent memory, Billoo said. “We wake up every morning in mourning for the people in Gaza who have been killed overnight by Israel,” Billoo said. “There are large Palestinian populations in the Bay Area, many of whom are from Gaza. Every gathering has taken on a more somber tone. We are grateful for the opportunity to worship in community together, but also heartbroken as this carnage unfolds minute by minute halfway across the world.”
Muslims in this region and elsewhere are struggling to find ways to help people in Gaza. The Muslim tradition of zakat requires that people give 2.5% of their wealth every year to those in need, and much of that giving takes place during Ramadan. This year, Tarin said, “there’s almost like a hold on sending funds anywhere right now but to Gaza.”
But not knowing whether that charity will get to people in their time of greatest need has created a sense of frustration not ordinarily an element of zakat, Tarin said.
Sakalla said she and her Muslim friends are focusing their giving on reputable organizations working in Gaza, and sending money to the few people they know who can receive money via wire transfers and may be able to share that charity, or food it buys, with others.
“You see reports of children literally starving, literarily turning to skeletons because there’s no food, and you’re wondering, ‘Where is my donation going?’” Sakalla said.
As with charity, Ramadan prayers are also focused almost exclusively on Gaza, Bay Area Muslims said. “When all doors are blocked,” Tarin said, “It’s like I can just raise my hands to God and hope that the higher power does something.”
“In Danville, the Sakallas and their four children have experienced a ray of brightness that has helped pierce the gloom hanging over this Ramadan. Non-Muslim neighbors have, for the first time, begun coming by for Ramadan, bringing food — including dates, an iftar staple honoring the prophet Muhammad — greeting cards and flowers, and wishing them well.
“They all know,” Dareen Sakalla said, “we’ve been going through such a terrible time.”
Arafat Ansari, volunteer, sets out dates in preparation of breaking fast for the day for Ramadan at the Muslim Community Association in Santa Clara, Calif., on Thursday, March 14, 2024. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)