2024-03-12 08:00:00
“No longer doing Ramadan was the last act of my apostasy,” Samir*, a 35-year-old Belgian-Moroccan who lives in Molenbeek and works in Brussels in a company where the employees are predominantly Muslim, confides to RTBF. A choice that he will have difficulty making at work, at the gym or in the neighborhood. “At the beginning, I wanted to be open regarding just being myself, but following having to deal with people we don’t even know, I changed my mind,” he says. At the gym, the thirty-year-old has to face criticism. “Why don’t you respect Ramadan, are you acting European or what? ”, men say to him following seeing him hydrating. Samir finds himself forced to pretend and hide to eat and drink. In the evening, he participates in Iftar (the breaking of the fast) at his parents’ house. “They wouldn’t understand, I don’t want to hurt them.”
To read: Here is when Ramadan will begin in Belgium
“I asked myself a lot of questions regarding this patriarchal religion which did not suit me, it took years. I stopped doing Ramadan around 34 – 35 years old. The price to pay is also that of rejection from the community. I haven’t had contact with my family for 15 years, but I wanted my children to be free,” confides Najlae*, a 49-year-old woman, born in Morocco and arrived in Brussels at 14 following a forced marriage. She definitively renounced Islam. “Today, I am an atheist and so are my children, who are young adults. I show myself as I am.” The almost fifty-year-old no longer lives in Molenbeek. She settled in another Brussels municipality, where community control exists much less.
To read: Ramadan in Morocco: eating in public, watch out for prison!
Ramadan is a period of prayer and fasting, which constitutes one of the pillars of Islam. Throughout its duration, believers – with the exception of the most fragile people – must abstain from eating, drinking, smoking and having sexual intercourse from sunrise to sunset. Exceptions exist for children who have not reached puberty, pregnant women, the sick or the elderly. In Belgium, the Muslim population is estimated between 7 and 9% of the total population. The majority of Muslims are of Moroccan and Turkish origin.
*Changed first names
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