When the George C. Marshall High School cross country team assembles each day for practice in Falls Church, Virginia, Maha Hassan is not among the runners.
Instead, the 16-year-old athlete walks around the school track on her own to try to keep her conditioning up.
Hassan is not running this summer because she is observing the Ramadan fast, which means she abstains from all food and drink during the daylight hours. <!--IMAGE-->
Added challenge
The timing of the Muslim fast changes each year. It occurs during the ninth lunar month of the year and begins with the sighting of the new moon. This year the holiday began on August 11, during one of the warmest months of the year.
“I would like to run but I have to remember that I am fasting. I have to remember that I would be too tired and wouldn’t be able to try my hardest,” says Hassan. “After Ramadan is over, I can run on my own until winter track in November.”
Hassan has fasted since the age of 13 and decided to observe Ramadan instead of participating in cross country. Her decision to fast came after spending the summer with her cousins in Sudan.
“When I was talking to my family, I felt like it should be more important to me and that I should be more involved in my religion.”
Hard choices
Young Muslim athletes often try to participate in both fasting and their chosen sport. However, hot summer days have prompted many teen athletes at Marshall High School to reconsider. <!--IMAGE-->
Marshall football player Rakin Hamad, 17, is one of them. He fasted last year, enduring grueling practices in the heat without water.
“It was pretty hard. There were some points where it was just too hot. There were times I had to go to the trainer and just lie down.”
After learning that his coach planned to hold two practices a day, Rakin reluctantly decided not to fast this year.
He will start applying to colleges soon, and believes playing on the varsity team could bolster his chances of getting into the university of his choice.
“I just decided I couldn’t fast this year especially since it’s the middle of August when the heat is unbelievable and with two practices, it was just too much.” <!--IMAGE-->
Soccer player Carma Khatib has found a middle ground that works for her. She fasted for the first time last year, trying it for one day. Khatib felt the experience helped her empathize with the less fortunate, who do not have food to eat.
This year, she’s figuring it out as she goes along.
“I’ve fasted a couple of days. During soccer, I either don’t fast or I fast but I drink water so I stay hydrated.”
Personal decisions
These different approaches to observing Ramadan are not unusual, according to Joshua Salaam, youth director at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, a mosque and community center in Sterling, Virginia.
“Some Muslim youth are not at the same religious level of others. Some youth don’t pray at all, some don’t fast.”
Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, director of the Minaret of Freedom Institute and a professor at Georgetown University and the University of Maryland, agrees.
“From my personal experience, Muslims are pretty good about fasting,” he says. “It is more common to see Muslims neglect their prayers rather than the fast because the five daily prayers cause more of an interruption during the day.”
Double devotion
Samee Khan is trying to maintain his dedication to both religion and football. <!--IMAGE-->
An observant Muslim, the 14-year-old prays five times a day and fasts every year.
He also plays on the freshman football team at Herndon High School in Virginia. As a child, Samee’s father used to take him to Redskins training camp to watch the professional football players practice.
“I’ve always wanted to play football,” he says. “It was my first love.”
The three-hour daily practices take place in the early afternoon, during the hottest part of the day, making Samee’s fast particularly challenging.
“It’s horrible. Sometimes you have trouble breathing. You have this terrible taste in your mouth,” he says. “The coaches don’t really cut us any slack.”
Having two fellow Muslims on the team helps, as does support and encouragement from his non-Muslim teammates, who admire Samee’s discipline.
It isn’t easy, but Samee wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I have a love for football and a love for my religion. So I’ve got to do both.”
There is concern that protests in the United States against the construction of a mosque near the site of the 2001 terrorist attacks could bolster anti-American extremists in the Muslim world.
Some of the people attending prayer service in Jakarta did not know of the controversy in the United States over the construction of a mosque in New York. The proposed mosque and Islamic center are very near the location of the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The project's sponsors say their aim is to increase interfaith understanding and tolerance. Supporters say allowing the mosque to be built is a question of freedom of religion. Critics say building a mosque two blocks from where Muslim terrorists killed 3,000 people is insensitive and disrespectful to the victims.
Here, some who have followed the debate, like Agus Sutiadi, support building the mosque, but can sympathize to a degree with the opponents' strong emotional response.
He says he can understand if there is some rejection there in the U.S. but he believes that America is big, strong country with mature people and over time, they will permit the mosque.
In Indonesia there have recently been protests organized by Muslim fundamentalist organizations against building new Christian churches.
The sect Ahmadiyah has also come under pressure from Muslim groups and the government for, they say, teachings deviate from basic Islamic tenets.
This man, Zulfachri, says these fundamentalist groups do not represent the vast majority of Muslims in Indonesia. He says while some protesters in New York may shout anti-Islamic slogans, they also do not represent the majority in America.
He says it is the same as in Muslim countries. They also have hardliners, he says, and he thinks the hardliners are only the minority in America.
Some, like Ali Amin, see the whole controversy as less about Christians versus Muslims and more about political parties looking for advantage in the U.S. elections in November.
He says America is a pure democratic country, so if there is a Democratic Party and Republican Party involved, it is all about politics.
While the dispute is big news in the United States, it has drawn little attention in Indonesia. There have been no media campaigns or political speeches, and for most people, like those at this service, it does not seem to affect their image of Americans.
U.S. President Barack Obama says he has "no regrets" about comments he made supporting Muslims' right to build a mosque near the site of the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City.
Mr. Obama was asked about the remarks Wednesday while concluding an economic talk with residents in Ohio.
The president's comments on the mosque proposal have drawn fierce criticism from Republicans and others who say an Islamic center should not be built near the site where more than 2,600 people were killed by al-Qaida.
President Obama later clarified that though he supports the "right" to build a mosque near the site, he would not comment on the "wisdom" of doing so.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that where the mosque is located is a "local decision." She echoed President Obama's comment that freedom of religion is a constitutional right. Pelosi also called for transparency about who is funding the effort to build the Islamic center and who is funding the attacks against its construction.
A statewide poll indicates nearly two-thirds of New York voters also believe the project is protected by the Constitution, even though a majority oppose the plan.
Sixty-three percent of voters surveyed in the Siena College poll are against the project, while 27 percent support it. The remaining 10 percent expressed no opinion.
An opinion poll released last week by CNN/Opinion Research found nearly 70 percent of all Americans do not agree with the mosque proposal. The mosque and cultural center would be erected less than one kilometer from the site known as "Ground Zero," where al-Qaida hijackers crashed two passenger planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center
A group dedicated since the 2001 attacks to opposing what it describes as "radical mosques," jihad and "harsh sharia law" is planning a rally this Sunday to protest construction of the mosque.
The Coalition to Honor Ground Zero says firefighters, victims' families and construction workers vowing not to build the mosque will also take part in the event.
Tuesday, a group called the Muslim American Society Freedom warned of what it called a "growing pattern" of opposition to mosque construction across the country. Many estimates put the current number of mosques in the United States at about 2,000.
Supporters of the 'Ground Zero' mosque say it will help bridge divisions between the West and the Muslim world, and say the terrorists who carried out the attacks do not represent Islam.
The prayer room would be part of a $100 million Islamic center featuring a 500-seat auditorium, sports facilities, theater and restaurant, and would be open to all visitors.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
Officials in Saudi Arabia say the number of Ramadan visas issued for foreign pilgrims has jumped by 16 percent.
Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Hajj said it initially planned to issue 792,000 visas during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
But it says that number was raised to 911,000 due to high demand from abroad and more space being available at hotels in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
Thousands of Muslims from around the world make pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia's holy cities during Ramadan.
The month of Ramadan marks the time more than 1,400 years ago when Muslims believe the words of Islam's holy book, the Koran, were revealed to the Prophet Muhammad
Muslims celebrate the month with family visits and invitations to iftars, shared meals that break the fast. Ramadan will conclude in September with a celebration called Eid al-Fitr.
Plans to build a mosque near the site of the destroyed World Trade Center in New York cleared an obstacle Tuesday when a city committee denied landmark status to a nearby building.
The New York Landmarks Preservation Committee voted unanimously against giving protected status to a building constructed in the 1850s, that developers want to tear down to build an Islamic community center and mosque.
The World Trade Center site in downtown New York has been known as ground zero since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 destroyed the twin towers that once stood there.
The plan to build a mosque a few blocks from the ground zero has drawn criticism from those who say it is disrespectful to victims who were killed in an attack by Islamist extremists.
Supporters of the project say it will help bridge divisions between the West and the Muslim world.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
Pope Benedict has criticized what he called the "surprising and deplorable" way that Belgian police raided church offices last week as part of a child sex abuse probe.
The pope sent a message of support Sunday to the head of the Belgian bishops' conference, expressing solidarity with the Belgian clerics in what Pope Benedict called "this sad moment."
The June 24 raids included the home and offices of a retired archbishop, as well as the gravesite of at least one other former prelate. Church officials say authorities detained Belgium's nine current bishops for nine hours, seizing their cell phones as the raids unfolded.
Belgian authorities say the bishops were treated normally during the raids.
The Belgian church was rocked earlier this year, when the bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, admitted to sexually abusing boys before and after becoming a bishop.
He was the first European prelate to step down in a pedophile scandal that has implicated numerous church officials, either for abusing children or for failing to take appropriate action against alleged perpetrators.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.