Pleasures of life on hold for holy days

By LIBBY MIDDLEBROOK and NZPA

Sex, eating, and drinking are off limits for thousands of Muslims for the next month as part of the traditional spiritual cleansing of Ramadan.

The annual ritual began in New Zealand yesterday, compelling obedient Muslims to abstain from eating, drinking, smoking and sex between sunrise and sunset in an effort to spiritually renew themselves.

Additional prayer is also required during fasting, due to finish on December 29 if the moon appears that evening.

If it is concealed by cloud, Ramadan will end the next day, and will be followed by a day of celebrations.

"Fasting is one of the five pillars of Islam ... From daybreak until sunset there's no eating, drinking or naughty games like sex," said Sheikh Amjad Ali, an Islamic and Arabic studies teacher.

Ramadan commemorates the time when the Koran was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad about 1400 years ago.

Sheikh Ali, who teaches at Almadinah School in Mangere, said up to 5000 of Auckland's 25,000 Muslims would take part in Ramadan.

Young children are not required to fast.

Auckland Islamic Information Centre director Mohammad Thompson said the cleansing was also to help Muslims "feel for people less fortunate."

Muslims would celebrate the end of fasting by giving presents, eating special foods and enjoying entertainment and other cultural traditions.

"It's not like Christmas," he said. "We don't get into materialistic things. It's about catching up with family."

During Ramadan in Egypt, Jordan and other countries, benefactors provide millions of free meals to the poor.

The tradition, known as "tables of mercy," dates back 1000 years, to when the Fatimid caliphs in Cairo decreed the poor should be fed throughout Ramadan.

In Egypt, an estimated six million people - 10 per cent of the population - frequent such tables.

As the first day of fasting wound down in Cairo yesterday, traffic ground to a halt in the hours leading up to iftar, or breakfast, as people whose nerves were frayed by lack of nourishment - and more often than not, lack of cigarettes - tried to get home in time to break the fast.

After sunset, streets throughout the Middle East fill up as people go out to shop, eat, pray or gather with friends.

Daily schedules are turned upside down as people spend more time awake at night and businesses adjust their hours.

Throughout most of the region, restaurants are required by law to remain closed during fasting hours.

In Jordan, Kuwait and other countries, serving food during the day is punishable by fines and/or time in prison.

In Saudi Arabia, non-believing foreigners who eat, drink, or smoke in public during Ramadan risk being deported.

Religious leaders in Jordan and Egypt have urged Muslims to use this Ramadan to show solidarity with Palestinians in their two months of conflict with Israel, and to call for the liberation of Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest shrine.