To a blessed month
I like to write about football but life is more than the good game of 22 blokes kicking a ball. Happy Ramadan.
My friends, hello.
I haven’t written about the good sport of football in long form for a little while. I haven’t used Twitter or social media as much as I previously have and that’s cool and fine.
Different priorities take centre stage at different parts of time. Right now life things are more important than football analysis (shock) but in a couple of months I’ll be writing multiple thousand words pieces about the likes of Alex Iwobi and Nathaniel Phillips, I am certain.
For the next month, for the hours the sun adorns the day, Muslims will engage in the practice of fasting from water and food, and engaging in prayer, charity and spiritual mindfulness, away from the all-to-common habits of over-indulgence, gossip and argument.
For the non-Muslim, this is a description that is usually met with confusion, admiration and relative shock at the grand and difficult changes to the normal daily routine; Muslims however will quite unanimously agree that it is often the month they look forward to most within the calendar year.
I am one of those people. I cannot wait. It is a practice that leaves me feeling new, fresh, at peace.
“CREDIT: @owaikeo”
For the last two years, Ramadan, like wider society, has been bound by the restrictions of the Covid pandemic, which by no means is over when observing or discussing the issue with medical professionals, but is nonetheless far less stringent in it’s chokehold on our sense of freedom and sociability.
Across the last two years, that profound sense of interconnectedness has been lost and the habitual in-and-out of lockdowns have facilitated a community that deals with things in their sole nucleur family without making that first step, to reach out and meet freely with groups of people — instead choosing to deal with the busyness of life and it’s stresses rather independently.
“JEDDAH A Saudi father and daughter during iftar, a meal normally shared with many relatives. Credit: Iman Al-Dabbagh for The New York Times (2020)”
There comes an additional excitement this Ramadan from a necessary need to rekindle that brotherhood, family and connectedness. The structures of adult life put up barriers to all of these things typically, so a month where these themes are central and acted upon with less friction is something to be cherished.
My days of social media browsing have been wildly fruitful (as well as enjoyably wasteful), but it is sitting down in real life to eat a meal with old friends that will be more memorable than tweeting photos of the wide neck and the long neck guys of 2018 fame.
I’ll probably be on social media less often. I’d like to do a fundraiser again, splitting it between a local charity in Manchester and a charity that works more internationally or for Muslims, given the month. I’ll be on Twitter to share that around, for sure and would greatly appreciate your future donations.
Until then, I wish my Muslims friends a blessed month. To my non-Muslim friends, enjoy the next four weeks likewise (and I’d recommend asking one of your Muslim friends to introduce you to the idea of fasting for a day; it’s an experience I’d recommend everyone to try).
I will be replenishing a spiritual and religious engine that has gradually emptied across the last 12 months.
I will also be making prayer for Josep Guardiola’s Manchester City and their 2022 Premier League and Champions League trophies. That is another thing I would recommend you join me in doing.
Take it easy,
Umir.