 So like everybody, we're here with brother Kevin, and he is a convert and will be sharing some of his reflections about Ramadan inshallah with us. Brother Kevin saw him. Thank you so much for being here with us. Um, can you tell us, let's start by you telling us about your first Ramadan. What were some things that some things or expectations that you had going in. And maybe you can tell us about what ended up being a reality. And what were some surprises for you. Well, this man was sort of an embarrassing story and did, you know, I took Shahada when I was real young after reading the autobiography of Malcolm X and I was just another kind of kid living in Kentucky who didn't know any Muslims or have sort of any access to any Islamic education and so he was really bad at it for a really long time. I was one of those unmasked Muslims after from lived in Kentucky. So I was about 15 and I moved to the DC area and kind of was one of also a great number of unmasked Muslims in that late 90s era in the DC area, but you know believed in Islam in general but didn't have really any practical understanding of how to do it right. So they went until actually went to a law school and took an Islamic jurisprudence class which is in 2009 that I actually even learned about the pillars and the necessity of them in Ramadan in particular which I didn't know even when Ramadan was in the year. Kind of before that but it also been dealing with various health problems and a bad back and medications for that neck and nerve issues and some other stuff so I kind of just gave myself a pass in 2010 but then in 2011 it kind of was out of law school was trying to get my license to practice law but was kind of stuck without having it for various reasons that maybe get into another time but sort of not relevant to the Ramadan story but anyway I was working for Kinder USA which is a charity focused on Palestinian children mainly as a social media coordinator, it kind of fallen in love with social media coming out of the Egyptian Revolution, which gave me a much greater feeling of connection to the kind of the global and a great number of ways and so seeing in particular at the time I was following the Libyan Revolution and seeing that those folks were fasting while they were in that conflict, made me feel ashamed for having not fasted before and for having even neglected the year before just due to some relatively minor health issues ultimately so that's 2011 was the first Ramadan when I when I actually fasted and my expectations were that it was going to be brutal and I had a part of the reason I didn't pass in 2010 is because I was terrified of the impact on my body and my health didn't think that I could handle it. And it turned out to be not as bad as I thought it was certainly a trial but then not as bad as I thought in ultimate as far as the physical impact that ultimately the feeling of connection to the large which I have been without for so many years really warm my heart and my spirit and gave me a feeling of spiritual strength that I had never known before and it was a great great benefit of my life in a number of ways. You know subsequently I haven't had the same back or neck issues or anything like my general physical health is a lot better than it was back then and I kind of credit the discipline that I began to cultivate in my first Ramadan. Thank you for sharing that. So you said that when you started fasting it was a it was a way for you to also connect with the global Oma. Were you able to find that sort of communication connection with the local community at all? What have your experiences been in terms of sharing Ramadan within the local community? That's in the DC area at least where I was at the time. The only Muslims who were in my personal sphere were black American Muslims who were either unmasked or NOI which obviously I'm an Irish American person and so I'm not allowed in the NOI community and that's part of kind of my separation from the community at large that being the main point of connection within my sort of hyper local community and you know I at one point almost sort of went to Adam's Mosque with my Majid but was a little put off. My parents were both I'd say like sort of nomadic activists and participated in a lot of civil rights stuff back back in the 60's and 70's and as you know some other people in my family did so you know like I was I knew what federal surveillance looked like you know before I was very old, I was very familiar with all the stories of COINTELPRO and infiltrations and whatnot and I have my own sort of anxieties about having been potentially entrapped at one point around 2004 or 2005 or attempted to be entrapped at work on me because I don't do that kind of thing, couldn't be talked into it but I was kind of terrified of the local mosque outside of my sort of DC inner city community and that I kind of saw like me as an outsider and a person with this kind of civil rights background as being a prime target to kind of be lack of a better term sold up to river to the FBI or whoever else and my mother does a lot of work for Muslim charities as well so she was a little bit terrified of that happening and advised me to be extraordinarily cautious and also at the time I was working for Kendo USA who had to sue the FBI for harassment to get them to stop messing with them so they could do their work at peace and ultimately did reach a settlement and stop getting harassed so much but it was sort of that risk and so I felt alienated from the suburban mosque community and not safe there and I was actually alienated from kind of the inner city mosque community so actually the only iftar that I went to in my first year was on Capitol Hills and my mom took me to because she was a lobbyist and worked with Sikha Foundation, Islamic Review and a lot of Muslim organizations and so she got me the invite and so to tell the story I went to that and we first got there you know we broke fast and the little food table that was there and kind of got into a conversation with a sister who was there with her young son who was talking to my mother about the work that she did and kind of working towards volunteering her young son to help with my mother and then at a certain point like Keith Ellison and the ambassadors and all of them show up and they're up at the stage talking and actually a Mahjid came in and was standing there. This is my first sort of Ramadan experience where I remember of the community was kind of got in between where my mother was in the stage and ended up kind of encroaching on a space a little bit and the sister who we had been talking to kind of pulled her hand back and struck him on the shoulder and he turned around looked at her kind of perplexed and she just sort of made a hand motion like why don't you watch me step in and he realized that he kind of encroached on my mother's face a little bit and he turned around he bowed his head to her and apologized and got out of her way and gave her her kind of personal space and so that was kind of my first experience with the kind of greater community for Ed and Iftar was certainly an interesting one and certainly from my perspective a really endearing one as frankly I've seen, I saw women gunshot multiple times in the streets in DC with my own eyes I know about a lot of violence of women and so I way too many ways I know more than I'd like to remember it's very common in that area and that community and in that culture and to see you know my Majid being such a big personality and important figure in the community and also a physically large man kind of humbling himself and showing deference to not just the sister who struck him but also to my mother who was not Muslim or her own self was really the breath of fresh air as far as dignity and good behavior and appropriate ethical intergender relations and so that was my most positive experience in my first Ramadan for sure and helped me get over my fears about the rest of the broader community and began to hopefully integrate, ultimately I had to move out to California to kind of get a fresh start before I could really immerse myself in the local Muslim community better. So how have your Ramadan experiences changed over the years? Have you been able to kind of bring in family traditions or cultural traditions into kind of like to tie over what you grew up with to new things that are that came with Ramadan and Eid celebrations? Are you able to do that and have you been able to do that? It's sort of an interesting question. I can't really put my finger on anything like I hummed along the last few years both my siblings, my first and my younger sister and then my younger brother. I lived with them both taking Shahada and I and they made it a lot easier to practice Ramadan with my brother practicing as well. Even before he took Shahada he started, you know, kind of inching his way into the fast. It's like a solidarity fast with me for a few years and that kind of made it a lot easier but you know like I come eat, I wear like my best nikes, you know, that's a sneaker head sort of a guy and you know I might get myself a fresh pair of nikes to celebrate Eid. I got some in the mail right now. I'm already looking forward to wearing around my condo if I can't go anywhere. Quarantine, I'm assuming you're going to still be in quarantine to come eat this year but you know we used to there was a great fried fish place out here and being originally from Kentucky and also BC area were being on the fried fish so we never tried to have big fried fish if Tars. Yeah that kind of thing but you know it's you know the present exchange is sort of one thing but I think just taking the opportunity to try to give gifts to neighbors or whoever else and do charity and that kind of thing which you know kind of coming from that civil rights background were always sort of taught to be good citizens in the broader community but so sort of taking the opportunity of Ramadan to any to dig deeper and to give more whether it's financially if you have the opportunity or through some kind of service it's really the way I think that the best way that I say I channeled sort of my personal familial culture and history into the practice do you have a favorite Ramadan memory that you can think of you know definitely the first one I went to was the one that stands out in my mind the most because it was kind of a transformative experience as far as that goes also you know having my brother take Shahada just the first Ramadan that I had with him where he was practicing last year and we had to pray together honestly it's my favorite my favorite memory was praying with my brother That's amazing and may Allah guide all of our loved ones to Islam What do you look most forward to as Ramadan approaches well I mean sort of generally and I guess probably this year as well it's that for me kind of toward the end you get that I call like Ramadan strong you know in the beginning your coffee headaches and tired and feel a little depleted but sort of like they say with marathon runners you get into it at a certain point and I only know this from here again but haven't been in a long time at least you get that second wind and you find a strength sort of that you didn't know was there and that definitely tends to happen in Ramadan for me kind of toward the second half and yeah that's definitely sort of my favorite part like getting that feeling of unlocking inner strength that I hadn't been able to access before and figuring out what the best application of it would be and how to sort of apply it and use it to kind of grow my life but it always kind of feels sort of miraculous when that happens and really invigorating in a number of ways and so that's looking forward to that that Ramadan second wind Ramadan strong feeling Mashallah so I have one more question you've experienced several Ramadan's and this video is for everybody for our community at large but there's a lot of new Muslims out there who might be experiencing their first or second Ramadan's and I was hoping that you could share some advice or some thoughts that you wanted to share with them in particular I suppose first my sisters and brothers out there going through it to start I really appreciate having you all as a part of our greater family love seeing you at the mosque when I have the opportunity and all of that Mashallah maybe next year now we're all in quarantine which I know is really devastating to a lot of the kind of born Muslim community but kind of to us converts many of us at least have been isolated in Arzlam for a long time and so that part's no big deal nothing new not missing out on as much and I get to focus on recently watched a great cookbook from Sheikh Rami at MCC last year which any of you can find on the YouTube channel which I highly recommend it's been great for the quarantine for sure where he talked about Ramadan is supposed to be the month of the fast not the month of the feast and really kind of embracing the hardship of it which also I watched the Ramadan prep video the Khalil Center's website I highly recommend there's a little bit in there about just humans generally are adaptive creatures and adaptive people and the hardship it gets kind of like lifting weights but for your conscious and your spirit and that you put yourself through it and you will sort of gain gain strength through it and not being distracted by a bunch of iftars and community invites and social obligations and being able to really hone in on your relationship with the law and focusing on that and in whatever way makes the most sense for you personally particularly in quarantine I found a lot of these YouTube videos like Yaqeen also has a great channel as far as lectures to watch they're easily digestible for new Muslims I think addition to MCC in addition to Khalil Center but I recommend mainly just I guess stay hydrated you probably heard that before but you know they won't want to focus on that the hunger part really isn't so bad it's the dehydration that can get you messed up chia seeds are a great thing to have because they kind of release the hydration throughout the day as you digest them rather than just sort of with the water all at once so I always like to have chia seed infused smoothies in the morning which tends to make it a lot easier but don't worry about having to get as much food as you normally would and just cram it in the before or the after and just go ahead and embrace it you're going to be a little bit hungry because you're going to be a little bit thirsty and that's the point and it's okay you can handle it you might not think that you can but humans are resilient and you look around the globe a little more than so many of us who don't even get to eat meat ever sometimes for Ramadan but that's it so you can handle more than you think you can and just be patient with yourself be merciful with yourself tell my siblings that I'm a Muslim not a masochist so if you get to a point where you feel like you're negatively impacting your health just go ahead and get yourself a break take a day if you need to you can always make it up later it's better to ultimately mind your health it's between you and a lot ultimately and don't let yourself feel peer pressure hurt yourself but at the same time just remember you know through hardship comes ease and that's part of the whole point is to put yourself through something so that you can kind of gain strength and think about it like spiritual and psychological exercise and kind of embrace the struggle and inshallah you'll get the rewards and just remember that the second wind Ramadan strong is coming and it's there for you that was amazing advice thank you so much brother Kevin do you have anything else to say before we wrap it up can't really think anything just this is going to be a wild one and inshallah I'm looking forward to I was really looking forward to praying at MCC this year we're going to go to the lighthouse but yeah inshallah next year I'll get to do Ramadan at MCC inshallah Allah is the best of planners so may Allah help us to make the most of Ramadan as it is this year I mean thank you so much brother Kevin this is part of your private and personal story and we really appreciate you sharing it with us I appreciate the opportunity to be able to contribute to the community I work in so yeah thanks for allowing me the chance to get my non financial others I know we're going to struggle financially with what's going on in the world right now and may not be able to do all that we'd like to do with our Sakat this year so finding ways to give outside of financial means is really a blessing and I'm grateful that MCC gave you the opportunity inshallah there'll be more in the Alhamdulillah jazakalakhir Asalaamu Alaykum . . . . . .