Suhaib Webb – Ramdn Reflections 5 I Abandoned Them! By
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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