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Ramadan for drinkers |
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By Khaled Diab With booze in short supply, the month of fasting can be a thirsty wait
for some Muslims. |
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November
2008 In While the
majority of people go without food or drink from dawn to dusk, some Muslims
suffer a special kind of thirst. For those who drink alcohol, the holy month
can be a very dry spell. Many do
this voluntarily, much like Christians give up certain ‘bad habits’ for Lent.
One Bosnian woman describes people who practice this temporary abstention as
being “Muslims
on batteries”. In When I
used to fast, I would have ‘one for the road’ just before the holy month
began, try to keep on the Ramadan wagon for the fasting season, and join
friends for a new season of drinking after the Eid festival. Curiously,
Ramadan was the only facet of Islam I stuck to religiously. Long after I’d
stopped entering mosques except to admire their architecture, I still
continued to fast. This may have had something to do with the periodic and
festive nature of the season, rather like becoming a football fan for the
duration of the World Cup. The discipline, humility and endurance required
may have played a role because it made it a ‘cleansing’ personal challenge,
as opposed to an empty a religious ritual. While
it’s okay for Muslims to stop drinking during Ramadan out of choice, society
often takes a paternalistic attitude towards drinkers. During Ramadan,
Egyptians are barred from purchasing alcohol and all alcoholic outlets
besides ones catering to foreigners close down. The first time I became aware
of this peculiar legislation was when I was out with some foreign friends and
we ordered drinks at the bar, only to be told by the waiter that I wasn’t
allowed to. Feeling
humiliated, I complained to the manager who made sympathetic noises and
admitted that he would love to serve Egyptians, who made up the bulk of his
clientele, but he would face an enormous fine if an inspector walked in. In
fact, Ramadan is a month of major losses
for bars and restaurants that serve alcohol. This law
is patently unfair because it forces Egyptian Christians to live by an
Islamic rule, and it casts the state in the role of moral guardian. If
alcohol is legal, what right does the government then have to force its
citizens to behave temporarily like ‘good Muslims’? It also
leads to some absurd situations. Egyptians who do not wish to stop drinking
clean out the off-licences just before they shut. Sometimes in mixed groups
of expats and Egyptians, the foreigners will order binge quantities of booze,
while the Egyptians will order a token soft drink and, with one eye on the
door, they will all make merry. The first
Ramadan I was in Well, I
shouldn’t complain too much, at least drinking in Egypt is not a punishable
offence like it is in the Islamic theocracies of Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan,
and the law is more honest than in, say, Morocco, where Muslims are
officially not allowed to consume alcohol, but everyone turns a blind eye –
except during Ramadan. In some
countries, a veritable ‘alcohol war’ is brewing between alcohol-free puritans
and the booze brigade. Despite having licences to operate during Ramadan,
several restaurants and bars in the Jordanian capital, The owner
of Books@Cafe,
a popular In Turkish
revellers have been organising a campaign of boozy
civil disobedience – which has continued into Ramadan – to defend their
right to drink at a popular Hundreds
of millions of Muslims will be looking forward to the post-fasting
festivities of Eid el-Fitr,
which will be around 1 October, where I will get to observe the Indian
version in This
column appeared in The Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free section
on 27 September 2008. Read the related
discussion. ã2008 – Khaled Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this
website is the copyright of Khaled Diab. |
