This past week was the start of Islam’s holy month of Ramadan. For 1.8 billion Muslims around the world, Ramadan involves not only prayer but also sunrise-to-sundown fasting and nightly feasting. While the pandemic has resulted in increased precautions at holy sites and mosques and in family homes, the fundamentals of this month remain the same. Let us take a few minutes to examine not just Islam but the broader sociological topic of religion.
Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, is a monotheistic religion, meaning that its followers worship a single god. Like the other two religions, Islam has its notions of the sacred, things set apart and requiring special religious treatment, and the profane, ordinary and familiar realm of everyday existence. The Qurʾān is the sacred text for Muslims, and as such, it should be handled with respect. This is different from how you would handle a school textbook or a tabloid magazine. In fact, all religions with sacred texts prescribe how to handle and even dispose of them. In addition to religious texts, physical spaces can also be sacred. The holy cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia are sacred cities. Non-Muslims cannot visit Mecca and are restricted in certain parts of Medina. While nonbelievers may scoff at these restrictions or even violate them, it is important to remember that the followers of the religion are the ones who get to decide what is sacred and what is profane in their religion, not outsiders or nonbelievers.
In addition to the notions of sacred and profane, religions also have beliefs, ideas generally held to be true within society. Not surprisingly, the beliefs of one religion may be radically different from another. Even within the same religion, there may be different branches with very distinct belief systems. Under Islam, the branches are Sunni, Shi’a, Ibadi, Ahmadiyya, and Sufism. These branches can be subdivided further into various sects. The behaviors or practices in these branches and sects may vary from one another. What often doesn’t vary is the strong sense of solidarity or belonging the adherents feel toward their particular group. Note, in this context, solidarity refers to group unity and does not necessarily imply fundamentalism, a strict adherence to conservative religious ideology. One can have a powerful sense of belonging to any group of any ideological strip — whether conservative, liberal, or somewhere in between.
