Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

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Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

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Students feast, celebrating the end of Ramadan

The flowered banner greeting the guests at Sunday’s Ramadan Dinner read “Ramadan Mubarak,” or Happy Ramadan. And although Ramadan is a Muslim holiday, the message welcomed both Muslims and non-Muslims to the celebration.

The annual Ramadan Dinner filled the Louis Room in Norris University Center to capacity, with all of the 350 seats sold out before the evening and a wait list of about 20.

Since the Muslim-cultural Students Association started the event eight years ago, the dinner has grown to become a popular campus event known for its food, friendship and celebration of the Muslim religion.

“I think it’s become a tradition at Northwestern,” said McSA co-president Tamanna Salikuddin, a Weinberg senior. “It’s a good opportunity for (Muslim students) to let their friends into a very special part of their life.”

Ramadan is one of the most important months for Muslims, who fast from sunrise until sundown for the 30-day period. The time of fasting builds discipline and helps Muslims focus on God.

“It’s where one can basically reflect on what God has given you,” said Farhan Syed, a Chicagoan who has attended the dinner for the last three years. “You’re actually feeling the hunger and desire of those that are less fortunate than you are. It makes you more compassionate.”

Ramadan also fosters closer relationships in the Muslim community, especially at NU, where students eat together to break each day’s fast.

Anees Fazili, a Weinberg freshman who emceed the dinner, said his friends in McSA made the holiday even more special for him.

“This fast is not a burden. It’s a celebration,” Fazili said during the ceremony. “This was my first Ramadan away from home, and I now had a larger family to share it with.”

To celebrate the end of Ramadan, Muslim students extended their family to non-Muslim friends.

For Shawn Liu, the dinner was a new experience.

“This setting is kind of different,” said Liu, a McCormick freshman who came with a group of Shepard residents. “I heard that it’s a big event. The food lived up to my expectations – a lot better than SAGA!”

In his keynote address, Islamic scholar Umar Faruq Abdullah told the guests to recognize that Muslim culture and religion has had a wide influence in America, a fact he said has been ignored throughout history. For example, the practice of cattle ranching, thought of as an American cowboy tradition, came from Spanish Moors.

Also, the quad, a common feature in American universities, was adopted from architecture in Islamic universities in the Middle Ages.

“Our knowledge of ourselves and of history is quite impoverished,” Abdullah said. “But there is a certain parallel between the contact that we have today as Americans to the Muslim world.”

Despite this ignorance, the country’s tradition of pluralism and acceptance will help foster a better understanding of the Muslim cultural influence in America, Abdullah said.

“Many of the founding fathers held that the civil liberties and the religious freedom was the greatest experiment in the history of mankind,” Abdullah said. “In this time we have a moral responsibility that given the personal knowledge we have of each other, we have to protect the image of other people. There’s hardly an American who doesn’t have contact with a Muslim. Our image should be based on that.”

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Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881
Students feast, celebrating the end of Ramadan