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 In mid-August, the start of the lunar month of Ramadan, I am invited at the Albanian American Islamic Center in Garfield, New Jersey, for dinner and “iftar”, when Muslim believers come to eat together after a day of fasting which lasts from dawn to sunset.
The experience of migration is often associated with trying to transplant devotions, traditions and memories of migration and such centers become more than just temples for prayer. They return to community centers that provide cultural continuity and enable the collective experience of religious rites.
Here you can meet elderly immigrants from Dibra, Pogradec and Korça who first set up this center, a flow of later immigrants from Kosovo and Macedonia, and students who’ve recently come to study at American universities from Vlora, Puka, Struga, Prishtina , Durres and Tirana.
According to some sources, in 1905, Albanian immigrants have opened the first mosque in the U.S. Although this is debatable, it is known that Albanian immigrants have opened the first mosque in the state of Connecticut, the first in New York, and today 13 Albanian mosques are found in North America.
Iftar dinner is followed with religious lectures by Imam Rifat Alili from Skopje, Macedonia, where examples of the prophets are called to serve as models of life in the implementation of the divine project in the life of every individual.
Lectures are followed by prayers of “teravi” where long passages from the Koran are read and in the middle of prayers, according to Ottoman tradition practiced by the Albanians, hymns to God and the divine messenger Mohammed are sung.
Fasting in the month of Ramadan is an authentically global event. Nearly a quarter of the world's population participate in this massive collective ritual for a month, which is crowned on the day of Eid.
Yet fasting is not a unique practice of Islam. Christianity, Hebraism, Buddhism and other religions have different ways of fasting. Religious traditions seem to call in the opposite direction of the trend of our life. If most of our lives are engaged in material accumulation to enhance our quality of life, religious traditions, whether for a short period, require us to give up on our appetites.
Quality of life, in fact, our freedom, we learn from religious traditions, depend on human ability to control the appetite of themselves, human desires, our animal parts.
Buddha achieves Nirvana in the Uruvella forest after abstention, Biblical and Qur’anic prophets spend time in isolation of meditation in the wilderness, Christ defeats Satan in the desert and Mohammed also takes the first announcement of the divine when he goes to meditate in the cave of Hira. Therefore fasting is not only diet but efforts aimed at achieving a spiritual stage that tries to translate into social role.
In the Qur'an, God tells believers that the intention of fasting, as was previous revealed to other people - where the Koran refers primarily to Jews and Christians - is to achieve the awareness to the presence of God in human life, for man to live with God in constant relationship with Him.
Prophet Muhammad in a number of statements to his disciples has said that a fasting stomach that has no value if not accompanied by the removal of rudeness, deception, and evil.
Fasting of Ramadan marks one of five essential practices of Islam along with the declaration of faith (shahadah), prayers, giving 2.5% of the accumulated wealth of the needy (Zekat) and performing the pilgrimage in the city of Mecca (Haj), where Islamic tradition says that the first temple for the worship of God was built by Prophet Abraham, the patriarch of the three monotheistic religions, Hebraism, Christianity and Islam.
Ramadan is also the month when Muslims believe the word of God, the Qur'an was sent down to the human dimension and because of its high significance, this month is blessed by God.
The Night of Power is believed to be the 27th night of Ramadan month where believers in the whole world intensify acts of worship in the belief that divine rewards are multiplied in the night to mark the significance of the importance of this night and this month.
According to Islamic tradition, this night God revealed the Qur'an, it is the night when angels descend to ground level and the Spirit, and bring divine peace until dawn.
Although these celebrations are common understanding for Muslims throughout the world, practices and traditions that mark Ramadan vary from country to country.
Cairo, Egypt, is famous for featuring lamps that decorate the city during Ramadan, Damascus in Syria and Fez in Morocco are districts known for mystics - sufis, who pass the nights of Ramadan by singing hymns to God, and Medina - the city of Prophet in Saudi Arabia – becomes a pilgrimage site for Muslims around the world.
Since the Islamic tradition places a high value in feeding those who are fasting, in the city of Medina it is a tradition that children are sent by parents to seek wayfarers and to invite the pilgrims to eat iftar dinner with them.
Albanians mark Ramadan in what anthropologists qualify as popular forms of religion, like igniting candles at the cemetery during the Night of Power, or forms of worship that are closer to the normative approach to religion.
Prohibition of religion in Albania since 1967 has reduced the scale and meaning of religious practices and celebrations generally. For believers, often, fasting and other rituals associated with Ramadan are family events, religious traditions passed on vertically from one generation to another, but it is more the result of individual explorations. Yet, there are many cases of the survival of tradition.
In 1995, during a visit to the Castle of Dosës, in the district of Dibra, I noticed with wonder that fasting was the collective event of the whole area. Just five years after the fall of the communist regime, an entire region was fasting and arranging all day activities, social relations and trading life under the regime of fasting.
As indicated by the residents, given that this was the border region, the Communist regime in Albania had closed an eye to religious practices like fasting, making operation of circumcision, and even other religious practices like individual prayers, not to exacerbate the population.
Debate on the start of the month of Ramadan is alive among Albanian believers in New Jersey. Although Muslims in the U.S. have set up religious institutions that make decisions that avoid political debates in the Middle East, the imam of the mosque explains that for the community he serves it is important to start fasting in accordance with the start in Prishtina, Skopje and Tirana.
Laughing, he admits that these considerations do not apply to debates on the use of calculating satellite or geographical changes, but for his community, fasting is an event that connects with fasting families from the home countries.
Since during Ramadan the altruistic activities of the believers are at a higher level, the imam asked the community to be involved in helping the poor where they live, serving the local community.
However, he says, there was resistance from community members who insist that aid be sent to the countries of origin. Revenues collected for sacrificial during Kurban Bayram (Eid ul Adha) or now during Ramadan, he says, are sent to Albania, Montenegro, Kosovo and Macedonia.
After talking with him, and at the end of the night prayers, believers sit down to drink tea and the smokers that have resisted all day without smoking, it seems are trying to get all the nicotine that could not get during the day.
Drinking tea, the imam addresses questions about technicalities of fasting. "With what is better to start iftar", asks someone. Dates and water, the imam replies. Dates symbolize bounty and water purity.
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