Suhaib Webb – Ramdn Reflections 5 I Abandoned Them! By

Explaining Ramadan to my girlfriend was difficult.

Been together for a few years,

you know, prior to my conversion and then

just sitting down with her and trying to

explain to her,

like, I'm not gonna eat for 30 days

or 29 days. I'm not gonna drink.

Why would you not eat or drink, man?

Like, McDonald's got the new McRib sandwich out.

I can't eat pork either, baby.

It's just, like, a difficult situation. And then,

of course, the physical aspect of it already

being prohibited in Islam

and using that really to distance myself from

from the forbidden, that was tough.

My family,

my mother, and my father,

man, south.

Dinnertime in the south is, like,

key,

you know, for families, at least 3 or

4 times a week.

No restaurants eating at home. Mom was cooking

and telling her, like, I can't eat with

you.

And explaining to my mother

that this is something that Christ did. It's

something that's in your religious tradition. We just

do it a little differently.

Coworkers and my friends, you know, I went

hard. I just I just abandoned everybody, even

even

even a girl.

And it's weird, you know, when I go

back and visit people in Oklahoma,

one of the things that I hear from

some of the homies is like, why'd you

disappear, man?

I think sometimes

when I converted, it was an era where

you just cut everything out.

My parents, I didn't even invite them to

the mosque or to eat. There was no

seating at the eat. If I could go

back and talk to myself

and talk to those people because at that

time, I admittedly

I don't think I knew really what Ramadan

was, you know. There wasn't a lot of

information

out there, but I would invite people

that were close to me to take part

to take part in the month of May.

And I'm sure, you know, Allah will soften

hearts.

Allah can soften the heart of that that

biker in Phoenix. What about my girlfriend,

my boys,

my parents?

Ramadan is really about stepping back.

The word fasting means to stop in in

Arabic. Right?

Stop and

turn down

turn down the desire for this world and

turned up the desire for the hereafter.

Every Ramadan, we create a greater spiritual capacity

because

we're staying away from the permissible. So if

we can stay away from the permissible, then

it should be easy to stay away from

the wrong.

So I would remind myself that fasting is

about repenting for food and drink and all

of those things, refining the character

in order to create a stronger relationship with

Allah