Respecting Ramadan

In Dubai now on business and bumping into all sorts of signs as to how businesses accommodate/respect the requirements of Ramadan, which always surprises me by arriving earlier each year (nature of the difference in calendars). Good example (quoting the letter from my hotel in my room) is "restaurants within the hotel will have separate sections or closed curtains as a sign of respect to our Muslim guest and no alcohol will be served during fasting hours."

As an American Catholic, about the only thing you can compare it to in length and observation is Lent, which, when I was growing up, was quite different from the rest of the year but whose differences are now more muted. One hears the same from Muslims about Ramadan in general around the world, but clearly that varies by place and UAE is pretty close to ground central on the subject--certainly in geographic terms.

I feel like I've passed through the Middle East/PG before during Ramadan, but since I'm usually moving so fast, I tend not to notice as much. This trip doesn't feature the constant blur-shifting I am usually subjected to, so I'm allowed more observation--so to speak

Comments

[Glenn]

I'm here in Morocco and while I do not observe Ramadan, us international students do our best to respect the Muslims here, by not drinking or eating in front of them. Smoker only smoke in their rooms. Respect and tolerance are two very interesting, but different stances on religion.

[Robert Langland]

Ramadan :A very good friend of mine is in Saudi, in the construction business. His gripe, he has to work with very grumpy arabs and still make things go while they call in sick...

[Cadet Echo Boomer]

Indeed, this is a challenge that carries over to training foreign military personnel as well:

According to a good friend in undisclosed predominantly Muslim country it goes something like this:

Trainer - "Why aren't y'all at the mortar range?"

Trainees - "It is holiday, would you like chai?"

Trainer - "Look you @%$#^%#'s, were going to invade your country (again) in about two weeks, and you are going to need to know how to fire that $#@%$@% mortar!"

Trainees - "Training later, today holiday, care for chai?"

When worlds collide, you best hope you have already budgeted sensitivity training for that fiscal year . . .

[Tom Barnett]

The way I hear it, the region's Friday is sort of like our Sunday, and their Saturday is like our Saturday (partial workday). It will be curious to see if that holds up over the decades or whether it's sort of mushed by the desire to synch up more with the world as a whole.

Or maybe the world continues to work around it.

[Robert Langland]

It seems even more complicated than previously thought. I asked my friend to elaborate:

"Well, the work week here in Saudi is Saturday to Wednesday. In fact, until about 2 years ago, the whole ME worked to this week. Then, United Arab Emirates changed the work week to Sunday to Thursday, and then Qatar and Bahrain followed suit.

So, with the West's normal weekend of Saturday/Sunday, we here in Saudi only have direct contact with you guys for three days a week (Monday to Wednesday). The others have managed to get that out to four days by changing their weekend.

They have been talking in Saudi about changing the weekend here for about 5 years now. But, as usual, Saudi is stuck with its moral obligations as custodian of the two holy mosques, and therefore has to tread lightly when trying to change such things. Friday being the holy day (why, I'm not sure), is the stumbling block. There's no chance of that changing. So it looks like we're going to be stuck with this for some time to come.

In the meantime, us Westerners who deal with overseas clients, are stuck with taking calls throughout our weekends, and at ungodly hours (got a call at 3am this morning from the US). The Saudis just switch their phones off........."