For hundreds of millions of Muslims, this week marks the start of Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting and praying. In some Middle Eastern countries, government and business virtually shut down during Ramadan, but in Indonesia, with the world’s largest Muslim population, work for the most part goes on unaffected.  

On Wednesday, the first day of Ramadan, loudspeakers broadcast the call to prayer at the Sunda Kelapa mosque in Jakarta, but the scene is quieter than usual.

The food vendors and merchants who usually line the entrance to the mosque are gone. There is little demand for their products during the Islamic holy month, when Muslims focus on fasting and spiritual introspection.

Hananto Prasetyo says Ramadan is special time for Muslims. He says in this one month they evaluate and test themselves, from desire and other forbidden things, to get closer to God.

Away from the mosques, few concessions are made to accommodate the sacrifice Muslims in Indonesia make during Ramadan.

Some Muslim majority countries basically shut down for the month to allow people to rest and pray. History professor Azyumardi Azra at the State Islamic University says that is not the case in Indonesia.

“In the few early days of Ramadan of course life is getting slower a bit for a few days, but, and then probably on Monday next week life is getting back to normal,” said Asra.  “It is different from fasting in Ramadan in many Middle Eastern countries because in many Middle Eastern countries people are awake all night and then they sleep all day.”

Indonesian Muslims like Edi Hadiman must perform their religious obligations in addition to regular jobs. And he says that is the way it should be.  He says it is a test for Muslims, but religious people should remember that it is difficult to get into heaven.

There are some restrictions on businesses in Indonesia. Most bars and nightclubs must either shut down or stop selling alcohol.

Some strict Muslim groups, such as the Islamic Defense Front or FPI, have tried to enforce these restrictions in the past by raiding bars and restaurants.

Azra says these groups are supported by authorities who want to been seen as standing up for Islamic values.

“They have some kind of collaboration. In fact now they ask FPI and other groups to help the police. So they use them actually. The police use them. So I think this is not appropriate, you know you cannot use this group as supporting police,” Azra added.  “The police should enforce law and order without involving this kind of group.”

But he says for the vast majority of Indonesians observing Ramadan is personal choice that reinforces Islamic values of tolerance and peace.

Husain Abdullah is approaching his most challenging month of the football season.

That’s when the Minnesota Vikings backup safety observes Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting and prayer. As a practicing Muslim, Abdullah will not eat or drink at all during daylight hours for the 30-day period that begins Wednesday.

Even while sprinting in the heat and humidity during drills, sometimes in full pads, Abdullah is adamant about his faith. He will not allow himself so much as a cup of water until the sun sets and before it rises.

“I’m putting nothing before God, nothing before my religion,” Abdullah said. “This is something I choose to do, not something I have to do. So I’m always going to fast.”

This time, the Vikings will be better able to help him handle the lack of nourishment.

“Last year it occurred in early September, and we saw a dip in his performance,” coach Brad Childress said. “We said, ‘What’s wrong with Husain Abdullah? It doesn’t seem like he has enough spunk.’”

Abdullah worked recently with the team’s nutritionist on a meal and hydration plan to make sure he gets enough calories to maintain his energy, stamina and health in the coming weeks. He’ll eat a big breakfast and a big dinner, when it’s dark of course, and get up in the middle of the night to take a protein shake.

“I think we have our arms around it now and know when he is going to wake up and when he is going to eat and what we can pack on him before the sun comes up,” Childress said. “Last year he was shouldering it all by himself. He is playing well. He is a good special teams player. He’s interchangeable and can be in the emergency nickel situation because he is a smart guy. He’s got great football instincts. He is a guy you pull for.”

Abdullah insisted a back and hip injury last year was more a factor in his struggles than the fasting.

“I couldn’t bend. I couldn’t run, and I really wasn’t the same player,” said Abdullah, who played in all 16 games as an undrafted rookie out of Washington State in 2008 and led the Vikings with 24 special teams tackles.

This year, he’s had a strong training camp, giving the Vikings confidence in their depth at safety behind incumbent starters Madieu Williams and Tyrell Johnson. Jamarca Sanford is also getting a serious audition.

Fasting is a rare practice in pro sports, since proper nourishment is critical to optimum performance, but it’s not unprecedented.

Abdullah’s older brother, Hamza, plays in the NFL – an Arizona Cardinals safety – and plans to abstain from daytime food and drink during the holiday.

Former NBA star Hakeem Olajuwon also observed. When the Houston Rockets had an afternoon tip-off or a grueling practice during Ramadan, he was often panting in thirst.

“I find myself full of energy, explosive,” Olajuwon would say, according to a biography posted on NBA.com. “And when I break the fast at sunset, the taste of water is so precious.”

Last month, however, an Islamic organization and German soccer officials determined that a Muslim player may break his fast for matches during Ramadan. They decided a player may do so if he is obliged to perform under a contract that is his only source of income and if fasting harms his performance.

Abdullah has been encouraging teammates, trainers and coaches to join him in the discipline. Childress passed, but head athletic trainer Eric Sugarman agreed to fast for a day or two.

“Some people are going. Some people are kind of reluctant to sign up for it,” Abdullah said. “They’re like, ‘Ah, maybe I’ll just drink something.”

Abdullah grew up in Pomona, Calif., with seven brothers and four sisters and has observed Ramadan since he was 7. It’s a time he looks forward to, not dreads.

“I used to kind of keep it to myself,” he said. “But now I’m actually excited that Islam is getting some positive attention.”

Few questioned their work. After all, charity is an obligation, a virtue among the Muslim faithful. Even the poorest of those solicited found a way to spare a few dollars.

But it was all a ruse, the FBI said late last week as the two were indicted in a vast anti-terrorism investigation, the largest since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The women, Amina Farah Ali and Hawo Mohamed Hassan of Rochester, collected cash not for poverty-stricken grandparents, but for the violent terrorist organization Al-Shabab, the FBI says. Al-Shabab, which is tied to Al-Qaida, has trained foreign fighters and carried out suicide bombings.

How did the two women manage to conceal what the FBI said was their true intent as they sought donations in the Minnesota Somali community, the largest outside of Somalia?

Women collecting for charity, area Somalis say, would have provided the perfect cover.

In a culture where females are the most devoted keepers of causes and the most trusted couriers of cash, local Somalis say women collecting for charities is common. These women in particular — pious, hard-working, bold — would not have been doubted, said Abdifatah Abdinur, a Rochester community leader.

“Women are the backbone of the Somali community; they do these things,” Abdinur said. “But this is the first time anyone has heard of them doing something wrong.”

“Extradition is agreed for all the people sought by Germany,” a spokeswoman for the court in Amsterdam, told AFP.

She said that no appeal would be allowed against the ruling and the suspects, arrested by the Dutch navy in April after an attack on a German cargo ship off the Somali coast, would be sent to Germany within the next ten days.

At a hearing last month, the Somalis had pleaded with the Dutch judge not to send them to Germany.

Defence lawyers had argued that the ship attacked had been registered in the Bahamas and not in Germany as claimed.

On April 5, after an exchange of gunfire, the Dutch frigate Tromp freed the freighter Taipan that had been targeted by pirates about 900 kilometres (560 miles) east of the Somali coast, and arrested 10 suspects.

The 15 crew members, who took refuge in a protected area of the ship, were all unharmed, but a Dutch soldier was lightly wounded in the operation.

The suspects were flown to the Netherlands in April from Djibouti, after Germany issued European arrest warrants for them.

Another Dutch court, in Rotterdam, is to hand down judgment on June 16 on five other Somalis, aged between 22 and 44, whose boat was intercepted by a Danish frigate in the Gulf of Aden on January 2 as they were allegedly preparing to board the Dutch Antilles-flagged Samanyolu.

Prosecutors have sought seven-year jail terms for the five, who said they had approached the Samanyolu for help with their hands in the air after their boat developed engine trouble and they ran out of food and water at sea.

According to the prosecution, however, the Danish frigate caught them as they prepared to board the Samanyolu after attacking it with automatic weapons and rockets.

The trial was the first to be held in Europe of suspected Somali pirates, who have attacked hundreds of ships in the region to hold them to ransom.

Dutch marines arrested the pirates off the coast of Somalia two months ago during an exchange of fire.

“The court assumes that Germany has jurisdiction over the offence,” the court said in a statement on Friday.

The suspects’ defense lawyers have argued against the decision, saying the suspects should be tried in the Netherlands.

They rejected the claim that the attacked ship had been registered in Germany.

“If we can prove that we don’t know under which flag the ship was sailing, if we can prove that there is no documentation verifying the owner of the ship, why does the court now say so easily, it’s enough, you have to go to Germany?” lawyer Michael Balemans told Reuters.

The coast off essentially lawless Somalia has become a piracy hub, as hijackers demand payment for the release of ships. The pirates have collected tens of millions of dollars in ransom.

Somali soldiers on Thursday launched a major counter-offensive to recapture recently lost ground from Islamist insurgents in Mogadishu, sparking a fierce battle that left at least 21 civilians dead.

Newly-trained government forces backed by the African Union mission in Somalia (AMISOM) kicked off their operation early in northwestern Mogadishu, drawing a barrage of retaliatory fire from rebel groups, witnesses said.

The internationally-backed government had lost ground last month when insurgents, mainly from the Al Qaeda-inspired Shebab movement, punched through a strategic frontline and closed in on the presidential compound.

“The Somali government forces advanced on the terrorists’ strongholds this morning,” Colonel Ahmed Ibrahim, a government security official, told AFP.

“They took control of several neighbourhoods which had been held by the rebels and the fighting is still going on. There are several bodies strewn across the streets,” he added.

Medical sources counted at least 21 civilian deaths after the first few hours of fighting but expected the toll to rise, with no immediate information on combatant casualties and several areas impossible to access independently.

“Today’s clashes are very heavy. The artillery and mortar fire exchanged by both sides is reaching distant neighbourhoods,” Ali Muse, head of Mogadishu’s ambulance services, told AFP.

“Our teams have so far collected 16 dead civilians and 59 wounded,” he said. “But the toll is likely to be higher since the fighting is continuing.”

Duniya Ali, an official at Mogadishu’s main Medina hospital, also said that five of the wounded brought in Thursday morning had died of their wounds, among them three children.

This year alone hundreds of civilians have died in the crossfire as a result of both insurgent attacks and retaliatory fire by African Union or government forces.

Thousands have been killed in such incidents over the past three years and hundreds of thousands forced out of the city into crowded camps.

On May 21-22, even as President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed was in Turkey mustering further support for his embattled transitional federal government (TFG), the Shebab and its Hezb al-Islam allies launched a devastating attack in Mogadishu.

They seized large swathes of the Shibis and Bondhere neighbourhoods, moving them within barely more than a stone’s throw of the shrivelling perimetre housing the presidency and other key institutions.

It also gave them a strategic vantage point over Mogadishu port and the ability to disrupt supplies to the government and AMISOM.

AMISOM said at the time that the insurgents had crossed “a red line” and that the rebel advance warranted tough reprisals.

It was February 2005. The youngster, a member of the persecuted Somali Bantu people, could claim no written language and wasn’t exactly sure of his age — perhaps 12, although a U.S. Customs official decided he looked more like 14 when he arrived with his mother and three younger siblings.

“In our culture, we don’t know exactly our birthday,” Aden said.

As rapid-fire English swirled around him at Richland 2’s Dent Middle School, the newly minted eighth-grader decided to simply sit in silence, listening to his teachers and hoping to avoid any conflict with students.

“It was really tough,” he said.

Now, five years later, a smiling Mabruk can claim a high school diploma — awarded this morning at Richland Northeast High School’s commencement — as well as a deeper understanding of the English language and a future that he hopes will include college.

He is the first of Columbia’s Somali Bantu students to graduate from high school, fulfilling the dreams of his late father, who hoped his eldest son would come to the United States “and do something good.”

“My father, he always had a big dream to come to the United States,” Aden recalled, but the elder Mabruk died of tuberculosis in the Kenyan refugee camp before the family came to America.

“I have no photograph of my father, but I see him in my mind,” he said. “He would be really happy.”

A journey of miles and years

It has been a long and perilous journey for the Mabruk family, one of about 25 Somali Bantu refugee families who came to South Carolina as part of one of the largest U.S. government refugee resettlement programs in history.

More than 12,000 Somali Bantus were flown to the United States after many years of languishing in Kenyan refugee camps.

The Somali Bantu, descendants of African tribes originally living in what are now Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi in East Africa, suffered persecution and enslavement in Somalia and other parts of the continent for two centuries.

In the 1990s, as Somalia plunged into civil war, the Bantu, mainly living as farmers in southern Somalia, were again targets of warring factions. Their farms, animals and crops were stolen, women raped and men killed.

There was an initial storm of controversy over the Bantus’ settlement in South Carolina when the city of Cayce rejected the federal government’s plan to resettle the 120 Bantu there. Cayce leaders contended that locating all the Bantu families in their small city across the Congaree River from Columbia would be a financial drain and a drag on its public schools.

Eventually, the Bantu, who are Muslim, were placed throughout Columbia, sponsored through Lutheran Family Services and congregations that helped guide the families through the cultural transformation.

As time went on, most of the Somali Bantu families left the Midlands to join other relatives across the United States. Of the original 25 families, only seven remain, said Habeeb Abdullaah, a member of the Islamic Center of Columbia. Those families worship at the mosque, and many of the children, including Mabruk, were tutored in English there.

The families are scattered to places “as far-flung as Washington state to South Dakota,” Abdullaah said.

Despite the language and cultural barriers, the transition to the United States was an exciting one for Mabruk.

St. Peter’s Catholic Church agreed to sponsor the family, and church members were immediately impressed by Aden’s drive to succeed.

“He got off of the plane and almost immediately said, ‘I want to learn English,’” said Emily Hero, director of parish life for St. Peter’s Catholic Church. “He is so driven to learn.”

His siblings, including a younger sister and two younger brothers, are similarly motivated, she said.

“This family was a little different from the other families,” because the father had died in the refugee camp, she said. “I think there was a big commitment on the part of St. Peter’s because she did not have the spouse.” Aden and his siblings also were helped by a USC tutoring program in his apartment community founded by education professor Doyle Stevick to aid the Somali Bantu children.

Aden’s mother works full time and continues her effort to master English. But her son acknowledges that the Somali Bantu parents still struggle with English even five years after their arrival, while the children have rapidly assimilated.

The Bantu have no written language, so some cannot yet even spell their names.

“I don’t know why right now, a lot of parents really wish they could go back to their country,” he said. “I wish our parents’ dreams could come true, but it’s life.”

‘A part of this family’

As he toiled away at his studies and his English, Aden remained largely isolated with a few Somali Bantu friends until he came to Richland Northeast and began to run cross-country.

“I really didn’t have any friends, but cross-country was the main door. I got to know so many people,” he said.

In 2007, he joined the school’s Youth Action Council, which promotes civic engagement and involvement in service projects. “That built up my leadership. That really changed me,” he said.

Kim Sanders, a Richland Northeast guidance counselor and adviser to YAC, remembers the shy, bespectacled boy who came to the tutoring and testing center every day to work on his studies. At first, he could barely speak the language, but when he was asked to invite the faculty to a council event, he practiced and practiced his line until he got it right.

“It was neat to see,” she recalled. “Here is this boy you barely understand and he is going before the entire faculty to invite them to a service learning luncheon.”

Eventually, Aden gained so much confidence and language facility that he made a presentation at a national service learning conference in Nashville, Tenn., last year, she said. But along the way, he also felt open enough to share the struggles of the Somali Bantu community in Columbia.

He became a citizen of RNE, she said. “Long before he could get his U.S. citizenship, he became a part of this family,” Sanders said. “It is a total transformation of this very quiet boy. I know that he will succeed because he has that reliance and perseverance. He is just a phenomenal young man.”

For now, Aden is focusing his dreams on mastering written English so he can go on to college. He skipped the final week of high school to enroll in an intensive summer English immersion study at USC that began Monday, although he will take time off this morning to walk with the 303 other RNE graduates.

For the summer, he will take up residence at the home of his English as a second language teacher, Vickie Westbrook, who is making sure he has transportation to USC for the daily 8 a.m.-5 p.m. classes.

“I am always thinking that I am going to make a difference,” Aden said. One day, he said, he may return to Africa. “I always wanted to make a difference, especially with the Somali Bantu children.”

AFP –

The fighting broke out when newly-trained government forces backed by the soldiers of the African Union mission in Somalia (AMISOM) apparently launched a major offensive to recapture key Mogadishu neighbourhoods.

The internationally-backed government had lost ground last month when insurgents, mainly from the Al Qaeda-inspired Shebab movement, punched through a strategic frontline and closed in on the presidential compound.

“The Somali government forces advanced on the terrorists’ strongholds this morning,” Colonel Ahmed Ibrahim, a government security official, told AFP.

“They took control of several neighbourhoods which had been held by the rebels and the fighting is still going on. There are several bodies strewn across the streets,” he added.

Medical sources counted at least 21 civilian deaths after the first few hours of fighting but expected the toll to rise, with no immediate information on combatant casualties and several areas impossible to access independently.

“Today’s clashes are very heavy. The artillery and mortar fire exchanged by both sides is reaching distant neighbourhoods,” Ali Muse, head of Mogadishu’s ambulance services, told AFP.

“Our teams have so far collected 16 dead civilians and 59 wounded,” he said. “But the toll is likely to be higher since the fighting is continuing.”

Duniya Ali, an official at Mogadishu?s main Medina hospital, also said that five of the wounded brought in Thursday morning had died of their wounds, among them three children.