Finding ways to observe Ramadan
Many Muslims urge awareness about mosque access for disabled members
When her daughter Mehreen was 7, Joohi Tahir took her to her local mosque for Friday prayers. Mehreen became restless and started to squirm and wriggle. After the service, a woman came up to Tahir and, nodding to Mehreen, said “it’s not fard (obligatory) for you to be here.”
Mehreen has autism and tends to move around while seated, rocking and responding to her surroundings. That afternoon, Tahir said, she left her mosque in tears and didn’t bring her daughter back for almost 10 years. Like many Muslims with disabilities, she said, she became “unmosqued.” She didn’t feel comfortable bringing Mehreen to prayers with the rest of the family, even for celebrations like Eid al-Fitr, the completion of the month of Ramadan.
As a practice in steadfastness, Ramadan, which starts Sunday evening for many Muslims, is a challenge in endurance for those who participate. In the past, Muslims who have disabilities or chronic health issues often felt left out. But many who struggle with fasting or praying during the month have found alternative ways to participate with their communities that allow them to uphold the values Ramadan is meant to encourage, such as patience, service to others and community building.
The ninth month of the Islamic calendar, Ramadan is considered a holy month by Muslims because it is the month when they believe the Quran was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. It is meant to be a time of slowing down and spiritual connection, and most Muslims refrain from eating or drinking anything — even water — from sunrise to sunset. Many mosques hold extra prayers in the evenings for people who attempt to read and recite the entirety of the Quran throughout the month. For those who want to break their fasts with family, friends and wider Muslim communities, iftaar parties, meals after sunset, abound. But Muslims who have disabilities sometimes struggle to participate in these rituals, which are meant to foster togetherness.
Noor Pervez started trying to fast in his adolescence and said he quickly realized his body was not cut out for it. In his early 20s, he was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a chronic illness that spread muscle pain throughout his body and, in Pervez’s case, damaged his nerves. “I remember praying really hard to be able to do it,” he said, “but eventually kind of admitting, ‘God, this is really not working out for me.’”
He said that as he revisited these struggles every year, he’d think back on his elderly aunt, who would sometimes visit from Pakistan during Ramadan when he was little, adjusting her prayers to what her body was capable of performing. That helped him understand that he could do the same, and he started to find ways to practice without straining his body, like donating more money to his mosque or spending more time volunteering at food kitchens.
“I’ve been opening myself up during Ramadan to more education work around Islam, disability and sexuality, like presentations and talks and Twitter threads,” said Pervez, who is originally from Chicago but now lives in Washington, D.C. He serves as the accessibility director at Masjid al-Rabia, a mosque in the Loop. “It’s really easy to sit there and say that everyone should be included, and a lot harder to actively think about the ways we’ve left people behind.”
In sickness and pregnancy, or during other difficult circumstances, Muslims are allowed to pray at home. Though the policy is a way to make connecting with God easier, it also can be the reason some mosques are slow to create infrastructure to make it easier for disabled Muslims to attend prayers, particularly if those disabilities are not visible. And for those who cause noise or movement, like Mehreen, members may feel that it’s important for communal prayers to remain undisturbed for the majority.
Some of the work Pervez talked about is being done in Chicago by those who have disabilities or their family members. In 2012, five years after the incident in her mosque, Tahir started working with others to start Muslims Understanding & Helping Special Education Needs, or MUHSEN. The Chicago-based organization works with mosques to encourage community members and leadership to better support families with disabled members.
“A lot of Ramadan is spiritual practice, like coming to mosque at night, and hearing the Quran being recited,” Tahir said. “Families with disabilities don’t get to do that.”
Part of the group’s work, she said, is providing volunteers with training so they can assist Muslims with disabilities in mosque, or at home while family members are in prayers.
Congregations can help, too, by simply supporting those who are trying to return after an absence, said another Muslim with disabilities, Omer Zaman, who was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy when he was 17.
Zaman said he started displaying symptoms when he was 15, and soon it was painful for him to pray standing up. For a while he continued to pray on his feet, like everyone else, for fear of being accused of trying to get out of prayers. As he struggled with movement and strength in his early 20s, he said he became a hermit, retreating to the back of the mosque for prayers and avoiding talking to people. By his mid-20s, he said, he had no interest in praying and focused only on work and his children. When he finally felt able to engage in faith again, he started by listening to talks about spirituality and studying the Quran with a friend.
“I needed that social interaction,” he said. “I wanted to hear someone else’s prayer.”
When he was ready to return, he started attending a different mosque. His presence there, he said, is encouraged by other members who, like his family, support him being there. Zaman is able to park his wheelchair behind chairs set up for those who need them on the right side of the men’s prayer hall at Islamic Center of Wheaton, where he prays some Friday afternoons. He greets members he knows as he enters the prayer space and feels part of the mosque community. The older members of the mosque who sit in the chairs near him are often the most encouraging — perhaps because they can relate to his physical and emotional struggles, he said.
“The first year I started attending, by the middle of Ramadan, volunteers were saving a parking spot for me and helping me enter if I came in without my dad,” the Lombard resident said. “Some of the older folks would kiss me on the forehead and tell me they were really proud of me.”
At Masjid al-Rabia, where Pervez serves as accessibility director, the mosque’s cofounder, Mahdia Lynn, said she finds ways to practice Ramadan each year despite medications that limit her participation. When she first came to Islam, she said, she tried to fast the traditional way, but like Pervez, she quickly realized fasting wouldn’t work for her. She said she used to feel guilt but tried to find an alternative.
“I learned that the faith says that if you can pray, you should pray. If you can’t kneel while you’re praying, then pray standing up. If you can’t stand up while you’re praying, then sit down. If you have to lay down, then lay down. If you can’t do that, then just be where you are,” she explained, referencing a hadith, or saying, of the Prophet Muhammad. “It was really the Quran that helped me understand that this tradition is meant to meet people where they are.”
This Ramadan, as one way to focus not just on consumption for the body but also healthy consumption for the soul, she said, she has deleted social media apps from her phone, and the mosque is hosting a community conversation on disability and Ramadan which, she said, will be available online as a video conference, and with a transcript.
“It’s really easy to sit there and say that everyone should be included, and a lot harder to actively think about the ways we’ve left people behind.” — Noor Pervez, accessibility director at Masjid al-Rabia, a mosque in the Loop