Toward the end of the evening of our fourth annual Ali family/University of Richmond Muslim Life iftar this past Ramadan, I asked the students if we should continue hosting this iftar given the fact that our daughter is graduating in a few weeks.
“Yes, Aunty! We want to keep coming,” many of them said with laughter. And one of them added, “I’ll be staying here through qiyam (voluntary prayer throughout the night) and suhoor (the meal Muslims eat before starting fasting at dawn)!”
My daughter laughed and said we couldn’t keep hosting the university students for iftar once she had graduated and moved on. “But you can visit, right?” one of her friends asked her. “You visit in Ramadan, and your parents can keep the iftar tradition going!”
For four years we’ve opened our home to welcome our daughter’s university Muslim Life crew for a home iftar in Ramadan, and this was probably the last one. I think I’ll be missing it more than her. Some of these young adults have been coming for four years, for others it’s their first time. Others have come and graduated and are out in the world now.
My father was the faculty advisor for the Muslim Student Association at University of North Dakota throughout my childhood, and the Muslim students he advised throughout his tenure were in and out of our home. One student helped teach my brothers and me Arabic so we could read the Quran (this was pre-Sunday school, pre-Internet era); another hosted his graduation party in our home. Our family’s life was intertwined with the rhythm of university life.
And, so, my husband and I were super excited to open our home to our daughter’s college friends and be that place where students away from home in Ramadan could feel that touch of home and be mothered just a little. We wanted to create a space where they could eat some home-cooked food, pray together in our basement, and share laughter in a relaxed and safe environment, especially this year given the current charged environment (due to many of the current administration’s education, anti-DEI, and immigration policies and targeting of students who engaged in pro-Palestinian protests last spring) on many college campuses for Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, and MENA (Middle East and North Africa) students.
I don’t remember whose idea it was to begin this particular tradition of ours, but each year it’s the iftar I look forward to the most in Ramadan. This year the university’s Muslim chaplain and his wife came as well for the first time, a beautiful way to tie a bow on this Ramadan tradition.
For a month that emphasizes fasting (from food, drink, and intimate relations with one’s partner) from dawn to sunset – as well as partaking in increased forms of worship while also encouraging spiritual self-reflection, prayer, deepening one’s connection with Allah, and letting go of bad habits – there’s also a lot of focus on iftar, or the fast-breaking meal. Sometimes I wonder why the spotlight tends to shine on iftar when what we should be doing is focusing on the fast, our spiritual striving, and the encouragement Ramadan gives Muslims to engage in acts of charity.
The humble iftar, though, has morphed from a simple fast-breaking meal to be a vessel for family togetherness, the creator of singular and community traditions, a method of fundraising and influence-making with elected and government officials, a builder of interfaith bonds, an opportunity to serve people at mosques, and a way to bring communities together for innumerous purposes.
The Attraction of a Purposeful Iftar
The fasting of Ramadan is extremely intentional and purposeful – not only mandated by Allah as a form of worship, as Muslims are taught through Islamic scripture, but also as a means to cleanse our nafs (ego) and a way of understanding what it means to go without. And while fasting is strictly a worshipful endeavor between the individual Muslim and their Lord, the breaking of that fast uses the universal language of food to convey and accomplish so many things.
“Food is so central to celebration, and when we want to share something with our community – it’s going to be food,” said Yasmin Turk, a city planner in Texas and long-time community builder. “We share something that is special to us [in Ramadan] not by making people fast, but by coming together after the fasting.
“There’s such a spirit of generosity – bringing people into our spaces,” Turk said. “It’s a chance to really connect with people and let other people feel that sense of specialness that comes with Ramadan for us in a simple way – which is sharing food.” The proclivity to plan things around iftar comes partly because Muslims want to share this part of themselves, and partly because many non-Muslims know it’s a special time and want to be allies and be part of it, Turk said. “So that is a great combination of coming together for the purpose of community building.”
Turk and her neighborhood Muslims have created a tradition of meeting generally on the first week in Ramadan at a clubhouse to have a simple iftar together. “We give balloons to the kids, we eat, we pray – it’s a good way to start Ramadan,” she said.
Indeed, iftars take on many purposes in Ramadan, from mosque iftars where Muslim communities can gather to break fast and pray together, to “iftars for a cause” where the fast-breaking meal is organized around educating and fundraising for a particular cause. For several years a group of Richmond, Virginia-based friends, including our family, hosted “A Neighborly Iftar,” where we invited non-Muslim friends, neighbors, and co-workers to join us for iftar in an effort to strengthen friendships and neighborly connections.
Sometimes Muslims will organize “sisters iftars” or “brother iftars” to bond with friends, and various mosques and Muslim organizations organize iftars for converts and new Muslims, who may struggle to connect with the ritual of fasting and worship as a new Muslim. We often encouraged our kids when they were little to pick a night in Ramadan and invite their friends over to break fast with them over their favorite foods in efforts to make the month fun and meaningful for them.
Muslim civic organizations around the country host iftars where they invite elected and government officials to mix and mingle with the goal of a little Islamic education and show of political influence for the hosts and good-faith photo ops for the officials. At its highest level, these have manifested in iftars hosted by the United States State Department and the White House during various administrations, with an accompanying fierce debate about whether Muslims should attend or boycott. (President Donald Trump continued the tradition this year with a White House iftar held towards the end of Ramadan.)
Interfaith Iftars that Deepen Community Connections
In the Bon Air region of Chesterfield County, Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University Professor Imad Damaj serves as the outreach and interfaith coordinator for the Islamic Center of Virginia (ICVA), where he has worked closely with Imam Ammar Amonette on several interfaith initiatives, including the Bon Air Community Potluck Iftar, an interfaith iftar that has been going on for several years. The iftar is part of the Bon Air Interfaith Trialogue, a series of events co-hosted by ICVA, Congregation Or Ami, and several churches that share a two-mile stretch of road.
The Trialogues, which began in 2008, draw on a theme decided on by clergy and then invites the public to come to each house of worship for discussion. They also engage in service and youth projects and host the community potluck iftar. “You can’t just take this iftar in isolation,” Damaj told me. “The effort is the trialogue that has been going [for more than two decades]. For example, in the current president’s first administration with the travel ban, we had people, on their own call us and say, ‘Hey we’d like to come and have a show of support. And suddenly … We had two thousand people come to ICVA to show support.
“This is one of the fruits of the trialogue. It was the same thing when the Tree of Life synagogue was attacked in Pittsburgh. Hundreds of us went to an event downtown to speak against it and support the Jewish community,” Damaj said. “Overall you get the sense, when you are in Bon Air, of a connected community.”
As with the Bon Air community potluck iftar, events that build up over time and cement traditions often go a long way in creating a Ramadan connectedness around whatever communities are converging. “I love traditions. There are certain people I love to see every Ramadan,” said Turk. “I also love those last ten nights of Ramadan, the last weekend of Ramadan where everybody is at the mosque and it is a homecoming for people you haven’t seen very much throughout the year.”
During one of the final weekends in Ramadan, Turk went to her local mosque for an event after iftar, pulling into the parking lot at 10:30 p.m. “There were kids playing in the soccer field, and the prayer area was so full that it had spilled out into the outside entrance. Women had filled up the lobby, and there were food vendors, coffee vendors – so much life at night. That fills me up.”
In what feels like increasingly divisive times, traditions and outreach built around iftars during an Islamic month dedicated to fasting and the worship of God feels like an increasingly loving and pluralistic way to honor family and community.