{"id":950,"date":"2011-08-04T12:26:25","date_gmt":"2011-08-04T16:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beliefbeat\/?p=950"},"modified":"2011-08-04T12:26:25","modified_gmt":"2011-08-04T16:26:25","slug":"ramadan-f-words-friends-family-fasting-forgiveness-female-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2011\/08\/ramadan-f-words-friends-family-fasting-forgiveness-female-problems.html","title":{"rendered":"Ramadan F-Words: Friends, Family, Fasting, Forgiveness &amp; Female Problems"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ramadan 2011 is underway, with Muslims around the world fasting and praying accordingly.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beliefbeat\/2011\/07\/muslims-brace-for-a-long-hot-hungry-ramadan-2011.html\">As promised<\/a>, I met up with Aman Ali (in hat) and Bassam Tariq, the &#8220;30 Mosques in 30 States&#8221; guys<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beliefbeat\/files\/2011\/08\/30mosques.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-951\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/70\/2011\/08\/30mosques-194x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"194\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a>, when they <a href=\"http:\/\/30mosques.com\/\">stopped in Seattle during Day 2<\/a> of their 30-day Ramadan roadtrip. (Not counting flights to Alaska and Hawaii &#8212; it would be hard to drive there, even on a full stomach!) Aman and I briefly overlapped as reporters at The Journal News, a daily newspaper outside New York City, so I got a kick out of seeing the reporter become the reported.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/nicole-neroulias\/30-mosques-in-30-days-interview_b_916365.html\">Here&#8217;s the link to my interview with them.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Speaking of friendship, a new poll reports that U.S. Muslims are the<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/08\/04\/us\/04extreme.html?partner=rssnyt&amp;emc=rss\"> &#8220;most loyal American religious group&#8221; <\/a>(in terms of supporting the country and president), <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/08\/03\/us\/03muslims.html?partner=rssnyt&amp;emc=rss\">strongly against al Qaeda<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jta.org\/news\/article\/2011\/08\/02\/3088821\/poll-finds-american-jews-and-muslims-share-common-values#When:19:02:00Z\">share common values with Jewish Americans<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, there&#8217;s been another uptick in stories about Shariah, partly fueled by a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/07\/31\/us\/31shariah.html?_r=2\">New York Times story about David Yerushalmi, a<\/a>\u00a0Hasidic Jew behind the scenes of the anti-Shariah movement. (The story is written by Andrea Elliott, who won a Pulitzer Prize for <a href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/news\/national\/series\/muslimsinamerica\/index.html\">her series on an Egyptian imam in America<\/a>.) As I <a href=\"http:\/\/www.getreligion.org\/2011\/08\/wheres-the-grass-roots-reporting\/#comment-223597\">noted over at GetReligion<\/a>, I&#8217;d love to see more reporting on how the Christians and Jews who object to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.readthespirit.com\/explore\/2011\/8\/1\/dispelling-myths-about-islamic-law-shariah-explained.html\">Shariah, which is Muslim law<\/a>, reconcile this with defending their own religious legal systems in America &#8212; Jewish bet din and &#8220;get&#8221; divorces, Catholic canon law, etc. It&#8217;s a slippery slope, which is presumably why &#8220;Yerushalmi\u2019s legislation has drawn opposition from the American Civil Liberties Union as well as from Catholic bishops and Jewish groups.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Here are some other interesting stories about Ramadan, Muslims and Islam from the past few days:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/08\/04\/us\/04extreme.html?partner=rssnyt&amp;emc=rss\">To fight radical Islam, U.S. wants Muslim allies <\/a>(NYT)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2011\/WORLD\/meast\/08\/04\/iran.ahmadinejad.victim\/index.html\">Ahmadinejad praises woman who pardons attacker <\/a>(CNN)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/muslimmatters.org\/2011\/08\/03\/a-womens-guide-to-spirituality-in-ramadan-during-menstruation-and-postnatal-bleeding\/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Muslimmatters+%28MuslimMatters+Posts%29\">A woman&#8217;s guide to spirituality in Ramadan during menstruation and postnatal bleeding<\/a> (MuslimMatters)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What do you think? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.<\/p>\n<p>*<a href=\"http:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify?uri=beliefnet\/beliefbeat\">Click here to\u00a0<strong>subscribe to Belief Beat\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/beliefbeat\">click here to\u00a0<strong>follow Belief Beat on Twitter<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ramadan 2011 is underway, with Muslims around the world fasting and praying accordingly. As promised, I met up with Aman Ali (in hat) and Bassam Tariq, the &#8220;30 Mosques in 30 States&#8221; guys, when they stopped in Seattle during Day 2 of their 30-day Ramadan roadtrip. (Not counting flights to Alaska and Hawaii &#8212; it&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[378,382,372,379,383,8,32,381,368,380,385,384],"class_list":["post-950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-politics","tag-30-mosques-30-states","tag-ahmadinejad","tag-aman-ali","tag-bassam-tariq","tag-iran","tag-islamophobia","tag-middle-east","tag-muslims-islam","tag-ramadan-2011","tag-ramadan-roadtrip","tag-sharia","tag-shariah"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ramadan F-Words: Friends, Family, Fasting, Forgiveness &amp; Female Problems - Belief Beat<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2011\/08\/ramadan-f-words-friends-family-fasting-forgiveness-female-problems.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ramadan F-Words: Friends, Family, Fasting, Forgiveness &amp; Female Problems - Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ramadan 2011 is underway, with Muslims around the world fasting and praying accordingly. As promised, I met up with Aman Ali (in hat) and Bassam Tariq, the &#8220;30 Mosques in 30 States&#8221; guys, when they stopped in Seattle during Day 2 of their 30-day Ramadan roadtrip. 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