A Qualitative Study of Ramadan: A Month of Fasting, Family, and Faith

Abstract

Islam is a major world religion and the Muslim population is one of the fastest growing religious populations in the Western world, including in the United States. However, few research studies have examined the lived religious experience of U.S. Muslim families. Much of the attention on Islam among researchers and the media tends to be on controversial aspects of the religion. The purpose of this paper is to examine the unique religious practice of the month-long fast of Ramadan, especially its perceived role on marital and familial relationships from an insider’s perspective. Content analysis of in-depth, qualitative interviews of twenty diverse Shia and Sunni Muslim families living in the United States (N = 47 individuals) yielded several emergent themes. This study presents and explores data on the focal theme: “fasting brings us closer together.” These data suggest that Ramadan serves a sacred, unifying, and integrating purpose for many of the 47 practicing Muslim mothers, fathers, and youth in this study. Meanings and processes involved in Ramadan and family relationships are explored and explained. Implications and applications of the research findings are discussed and some potential directions for future research are outlined.

Generative Devotion: A Theory of Sacred Relational Care in Families of Faith

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Exploring the experiences and perceptions of haemodialysis patients observing Ramadan fasting: a qualitative study

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How Does Fasting Affect Cognition? An Updated Systematic Review (2013–2020)

“…Unlike our previous review [22], we omitted religious fasting as these tend to involve an implementation of a "fast" that diverge from the dieting literature [29,30]. Religious fasting also has psychosocial elements and rituals that may impact cognition [30,31]. Additionally, we included studies that used ingestion of a glucose beverage as a control condition since an increasing number of studies include this method as a comparison to fasting.…”