As Ramadan enters 2nd week, young Muslims in Winnipeg have their minds fixed on Gaza

Meisaa Alatrash says she once got her purse searched by the Israeli military while trying to enter Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque for night prayer during Ramadan. She was 10.

"They checked our IDs, they checked our bags. They just let whoever they want in and refuse others," the 20-year-old University of Winnipeg student says. "I remember my family and I getting refused and we couldn't enter the mosque."

Alatrash, who was born in the West Bank but has lived in Canada most of her life, was visiting relatives in Bethlehem during Ramadan in 2014 — the only time she's celebrated the holy month in the land where she was born.

She says that because of Israeli restrictions on the movement of Palestinians, she didn't get to see her mother's family in Jerusalem then. Things like that made her feel like she was in a prison, trapped in her own country, she says.

Still, she says, she associates that Ramadan with happy memories.

"It's a lot nicer [than here] just because I [had] family around me, and my relatives and all.… We would break our fast and then stay up till sunrise, you know, eating, chatting, praying," Alatrash said. 

"It was a while ago. Things were a lot different."

It's been more than a week since Ramadan started for practising Muslims worldwide. For the whole month, millions of people — except for the sickly, the elderly, pregnant women and children — will fast during daylight hours. There's a meal before dawn, and then there's the iftar, a large feast, after sunset.

It's been just over five months since Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and triggering an invasion of the Gaza Strip that has so far killed 31,500 people in the territory, according to Gazan health officials.

Young Muslims in Winnipeg say they're feeling the aftershocks of the conflict in their own lives — more so now, when their religion asks them to consider what it feels like to be in the shoes of the less fortunate.

"The whole point of fasting during Ramadan is so that we can feel what others feel," said Sualeha Sualeha, president of the U of W's Muslim Students' Association.  "At the end of the day … I don't have to worry about basically where my next meal is going to come from."

"There's people that do have to worry about that, especially what's going on in Gaza right now."

'This many people died today'

The United Nations says a quarter of Gaza's 2.3-million population is starving. Gazan health officials say women and children account for two-thirds of the dead.

Walid Mohamed, 26, usually breaks fast with his parents and some of his siblings. He says  the table talk usually starts the same way: a recounting of the day's death toll.

"It will be like, 'Oh, Israel bombed Khan Yunis today, or Israel bombed Raffah today, or Israel bombed northern Gaza today," he said. "Most of the time, the conversation does not have any small talk … it's just straight to the point: There's this many people died today."

He says it's a conversation that's been going on for several months. 

Mohamed's family came to Canada from Sudan, also suffering a decades-long conflict that's resulted in the displacement of millions. 

However, he says,  unlike Sudan, the Gaza conflict is much more talked about, and that it's always looking you in the face.

"Whenever you open social media, that's the first thing you're most likely to see," he said. 

"We're seeing kids being pulled from under the rubble. We're seeing mothers. We're seeing very old people fleeing …Seeing this obviously has made people change the way they engage about this, if you want to call it conflict, but I refer to it as a genocide."

'People are showing up despite fasting'

Sualeha says all Muslims students she knows are processing the same feelings of sadness. For some, she says, they've been a call to action.

"[This] is the month that we're supposed to strengthen our relationship with God," she said. 

"The biggest thing is prayer for the people of Gaza, and that holds a lot of weight in being able to express your emotions … [That's] the biggest thing right now, along with people having just protests going on every week. People are showing up despite fasting."

Mohamed said he's been aware of the Israel-Palestine conflict since he was a teen, and that he's been going to protests since 2019. He's been attending those organized by the Canadian Palestinian Association of Manitoba every weekend since the invasion began.

He said what's happening in Gaza is one of the reasons he's pursuing a career in criminal justice.

Alatrash says all she's been thinking about since Ramadan started is the Palestinian people.

"Past years we would have, you know, a table full of food and varieties and all that kind of thing. But this year it's not like that whatsoever," she said.

"When you see these women and children being starved to death — it's oppression, it's torture, it's genocide. Like, it's not something that can be described. And, of course, there's so many feelings that I can't even describe, to be very honest with you, because how can you describe the feeling of seeing your own people starving to death?"