The Ramadhan Month

Ramadan period is the 9th month of Hijriyah Calendar. Ramadan month is a holy month for Muslims over the world. Muslims do fast in all this month. They do taraweh in the night; find the Lailatul Qodar night, real Al-Quran, then ended with fitrah tithe and eid or Idul Fitri.

Fasting is not only about having command over the foods and the drinks, but also over madness, lusts, and many bad things. From medical side, fasting is good for health; it can decrease stomachache illness, and many things. After maghrib time, it’s usually about 6 PM, we can back to eat until we’re going to fast again in the next day. After Maghreb time, and after we eat enough, Moslems do teraweh, but it’s not a must, but doing that is a good way to complete the fasting month.

Lailatul Qodar is a night in this Ramadan, which is very important and described as a night which is better than even a thousand nights.

After a month we do fast, we celebrate it in Syawal, 1 in Hijriyah Calendar. And in that day, we always hope that we back to purified human.

In Indonesia, The Ramadan Period is begun at September, 1 2008 for this year and seems we’re going to celebrate the eid in October 1, 2008. The fasting period in Indonesia is unique. Before the open fast in every single day in this month, we usually have “ngabuburit” time. It’s like hanging out, surrounding the city, finding snacks to eat on the first time. We will find many food and snack sellers in the streets. It’s fun

And the eid or idul fitri we usually eat ketupat (rice cake boiled in a rhombus-shaped packet of plaited young coconut leaves) and opor (chicken dish cooked with coconut cream and various spices).

In Indonesia, eid really makes the roads in traffic jam 3 days before and after the day. It’s really bad. If in the normal time we usually need 10 hours to go to Jogjakarta from Jakarta. In those days maybe you it will take a full day. Pretty bad, isn’t it? The eid in here is much about going back to village, to the place where the people came from, then forgive each other. But I don’t know, I just think it doesn’t take so long to back to the bad habits. Actually it depends on the personal people.