Navigating Ramadan Content & Consumption

Lessons from the night sky

“Nature is where I feel closest to God,” I said to my husband, cranking my neck up toward the sky. We were sitting out on the back patio of a lodge in Big Sur, off the grid without service, admiring the stars twinkle. “I wish the sky could look like this at home.”

It can’t. The city lights drown the stars out; there’s not a way to turn off all the power. We can’t disconnect off the grid like that, and we’re too busy looking down, not up.

We are in the age of information, the age of staying connected, the age of social media, the age of stuff. Closets are bursting and schedules are maxed out. We can’t be still; we’re always rushing from one thing to the next. We can’t sit with our thoughts; we’re always looking something up or checking on someone or endlessly scrolling. Our attention spans are shot; we need information transmitted in bite-size reels or aesthetically pleasing graphics—black words on white pages just don’t cut it anymore.

I’m not certain we would notice the stars in the cities, even if they were more visible.

Ramadan isn’t immune to the greater backdrop of a society that is becoming increasingly filled with things and activities to keep us endlessly occupied and entertained. The Ramadan version just comprises different elements: there’s the curated products—the banner signs or crescent trees or star lights or tablescapes or mosque blocks or children’s baskets; there’s the bazaars and the suhur fests and the iftar buffets; and sometimes it’s informational too: the various programming series and Instagram posters and livestreams, the frenetic mosque-hopping and scholar-sighting.

Don’t misunderstand me: I would be at fault if I took the position of passing judgment on any of this. I remember the IHOP suhurs from college with a fond nostalgia. I tried to hang star-and-crescent lights on my banister (my kids pulled them off). We’re blessed with access to on-demand education in all corners of the country—can you imagine if there was none?

I dare not critique any of these things, and certainly not in isolation; I don’t know which of those might bring joy to an individual person or bring them closer to God.

But that is also part of my point: it is the cumulative effect of all the Ramadan stuff and events and programming which can feel like throwing it all at the wall and seeing what sticks. I wonder sometimes if it’s become ‘everything everywhere all at once’, inspiring overwhelm rather than clarity of purpose.

And then, of course, there’s the phenomenon of propagation. One brand of goods spawns five more. One set of Ramadan something-or-another means one for everyone in the family, or new ones each year. One suhur fest in the month becomes one every week.

When does it become enough? When does it stop?

Some of it is in the name of festivity, of making Ramadan special–particularly for children–in a country where it’s observed out of the mainstream consciousness. The spartan, decor-less Ramadans of our childhoods in 80s and 90s America isn’t the norm in Muslim countries, and we can correct for that now in the age of Etsy and local pop-ups.

Some of it is in search of community. Community iftars and events can be tremendously meaningful; they keep people from becoming too isolated, they’re a way of solidifying identity, a boon if you grew up without even a mosque nearby; there is strength in numbers within the ummah, after all.

But what happens when the stuff morphs instead into an obstacle, sparking an insatiable need for more or newer or better? What happens when community is an obstacle, when getting together means delaying isha or talking about people in ways you wouldn’t if they were present? What happens when displaying a packed Ramadan schedule—even one filled with educational programming—is an act of self-satisfied arrogance?

What happens when everything in cumulation becomes a barrier to God, not a path toward Him?

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I know referring to the “back in my day” argument is baseless. I know the slippery slope fallacy. And I know this perspective can come off like the Muslim version of the Christians who bemoan the commercialization of Christmas and balk at a ‘Merry Xmas’ shorthand.

Yet still, I wonder.

I conceptualize observing Ramadan like a dashboard of dials; we dial down the food and the lust. We dial up prayer and Qur’an. The desires and distractions are stripped away, and in that negative space, tawakkul and taqwa grow. In the emptiness, our attention is re-oriented toward the Divine.

I wonder about how we are filling the space in this age of simultaneous connectivity and distraction, if the Ramadan consumerism & content are commodifying our attention—which has become the ultimate currency.

I don’t have any solutions. I don’t claim to know what is right. I just know that this month, ideally any month, I don’t want to sell my attention to anything that doesn’t bring me closer to God, an increasingly challenging task when everything everywhere is vying for it.

As with many things, there are multiple perspectives, and perhaps what this comes down to practically is conscious consumption.

This is where I remember the first of Imam Nawawi’s hadith, about actions being determined by intention. What is the intention? We must have an intention to be conscious of what we are doing. The intention is the why.

Is it because we feel like we “have to” because it’s what the kids “need”? Is it because of an aesthetic we saw online? Is it because of FOMO? Or is it because, to buy this item or to attend that event–like the stars in Big Sur–is truly how we bring ourselves close to God, or how we inspire closeness to God in others?

Perhaps it is also about moderation. What is stunning about the night sky, after all, is the balance of the stars against the darkness. In the cities, we can’t see many stars. Yet out in nature, where we can see many, the sky inspires not just from the stars themselves, but because of the space between them. Imagine a sky where the stars kept being added and added and added until there was no visible sky left. It would no longer inspire awe; it would become a blinding white light that would turn us away.