in the name of Allah the most beneficent
the most merciful
the youth in the month of Ramadan when
they’re going to school they to our
challenge because they are looked at as
different possibly right they’re not
eating the rest of the people are eating
in the cafeteria or whatever the case
may be the youth may take a stance of
kind of hiding their fast which is fine
because the month of Ramadan the
fastness for a lot but at the same time
if you take a proactive approach and let
the environment understand why you know
the people who you come in contact with
why it is that you’re doing what you’re
doing it makes it an educational
opportunity for the rest of the people I
know in the city of Houston Ramadan
there the MSA in the University of
Houston does something called the
fastathon and they invite a lot of
people who are not Muslim and they
basically give in charity if if one
person who is not Muslim fast the the
organization will give like ten or
twenty dollars basically to a specific
charity that benefits like poverty and
things like that something everybody
agrees to so you find a lot of people
were not Muslim fasting for a specific
day for that fastathon and so
alhamdulillah I’ve been fortunate to be
a speaker there and so they bring in a
speaker and then the speaker speaks
about the benefits of Ramadan but then
we bring up people who have never even
thought of fasting before and how they
felt and so we bring them up and they
get to you know explain their situation
how you know they couldn’t cuss and it
was very tough and they never even
realized that they couldn’t cause this
is this was interesting right somebody
else comes up they said well thought it
was all about food but then I realized
that you know trying to not talk about
people was the most difficult thing for
me right these are regular people and so
I think when the one that you start
looking at all that they start seeing
wow you know these people really just
for one day pondered upon all these
different details and how many of the
Muslim youth are just going through the
motions
and just going to school and man you
know I want you know I want to eat this
and that you know in Ramadan yeah I mean
when I break my fast man I’m hungry or
they want to sleep in later sometimes
because they’re fasting these sort of
tendency sometimes may come from
specific countries because I’ve lived in
the Middle East and sometimes certain
people look at fasting as a day as days
when they go to sleep at fudger and they
wake up at about one or two in the
afternoon so that they don’t have to
necessarily go to the whole faster today
so some youth may have these tendencies
they don’t even know where the
aquarium’s from but the you that really
understand the power of the fasting and
the purpose behind it when they indulge
it they benefit from it friends of
theirs may begin to understand some of
that and then they can do specific
events such as that fastathon or things
that are creative so that they can make
something out of that time because it is
a time that all of the good deeds are
increased so they should somehow get
involved obviously be with family spend
time you know eating dinner and you know
family members different people invite
people to eat and hopefully be in the
spirit of Ramadan because living here in
America you may be in the spirit of
other holidays that are being expressed
in the environment from the social
culture and you may know you know maybe
a Muslim may not share in a specific
holiday like Halloween but you go to CVS
Walgreens anywhere it’s there right so
as Muslims if we don’t shape our
environment and have people feel
something about Ramadan then they don’t
get to share in the same diversity that
we do you know getting the effects of
all the other holidays and so on so we
don’t do that ourselves especially the
youth was so much energy then they will
come to find out that when their
children are growing up as youth they
will realize that they hope that they
were children fast and they hope that
they have Islam so they have to start
now consciously understanding that they
have to do something now