31. The Riddle of Ramadan:Media, Consumer Culture,and the “Christmasization”of a Muslim Holiday

Walter Armbrust

Religious ritual is often accompanied by much secular activity.For instance, the pilgrimage to Mecca occurs in the context of atraveling group, and prayers at the mosque may often be followedby a chat about the day’s events. So also, fasting during Ramadanis framed by secular activities such as visiting and watching tele-vision. Walter Armbrust discusses the media quiz shows airedduring Ramadan in Egypt and points to the consumerism whichaccompanies secular accoutrements of fasting. —Eds.

The basic outlines of the Ramadan fast are familiar to all practicing Mus-lims. During the month of Ramadan Muslims are to refrain during day-light hours from eating, drinking, and sex (indeed, all activities that in-volve introducing a substance into the body, including smoking, snuf¤ngtobacco or other substances, and injection). Certain categories of people arelegitimately excused from the fast, such as pregnant women, young chil-dren, and the physically in¤rm, whose health would be harmed by not eat-ing; travelers; and combatants in a war. Of course the observance of Rama-dan does not always adhere strictly to an unchanging and abstract ideal. Just as American celebrations of Christmas have changed enormously, sotoo have practices associated with the observance of Ramadan evolved inresponse to new cultural and material realities. For many people the quietcontemplation during Ramadan of values such as piety and humility con-stitute the meaning of the ritual. Virtually nobody opposes the contempla-tive character of Ramadan in the abstract. Nonetheless Ramadan has, incertain times and places, become associated with a wide range of valuesand practices. Among these local Ramadan practices are new habits of con-sumption and consumerism.

It is this new consumerism and forms of mass media which concernme here. The centerpiece of this essay is a description and analysis of atelevision program called

Fawazir Ramadan

(

fawazir

means “riddles”; thesingular is

fazzura

). The program tells a riddle each night of the month ofRamadan. The riddle is not just stated, but is enacted in lavish song-and-dance routines broadcast roughly an hour after the

iftar,

the breaking ofthe fast just after sundown. Currently there are many other fawazir pro-grams on the air; the original

Fawazir Ramadan

is Egyptian, and for at leastthe past two decades it has been a post-iftar dance extravaganza.I hypothesize that the fawazir program promotes a “Christmas-like” as-sociation of materialist mass consumption with cultural value.

FawazirRamadan

has been increasingly tied to the promotion of the interests ofmultinational corporations, as well as those of the state. The most obviousmanifestation of these interests is the lucrative prizes given to those whoguess the correct answers to all the riddles. In 1990 the prize for

FawazirRamadan

was LE 30,000 (then approximately $10,000), offered by the pro-gram’s main sponsors, Noritake China and the Fitihi Center (a shoppingmall) in Jidda. A 1994 riddle program broadcast from the United ArabEmirates paid as much as 30,000 dirhams (also about $10,000) per ques-tion. In both cases commercial and political sponsorship have transformedwhat began as entertainment for children to something considerably morecomplex.

a non-islamic ramadan program

Fawazir Ramadan

is not an “Islamic” program in terms of its content. It isnot, and does not pretend to be, “Islam on television.” It is, however, a pro-gram geared to the Islamic calendar, and therefore has relevance to thepractice of religion in the contemporary Middle East. Although much me-dia attention in Egypt and elsewhere is given to the “lighter side” of Rama-dan (riddle shows, electronic greeting cards, etc.), many books and Websites on Ramadan take the form of a quite sober discourse on the meaningof fasting. These sites consider not only the rules of fasting but also suchvalues as piety, humility, uniformity of the Islamic community, sincerity,and struggle in the Way of God. Here is an example of one such explicationof the meaning of fasting:

The prescribed fast . . . make[s] people realize the hardships which othersendure for lack of sustenance for their life. Only those who themselves un-dergo the hardship of hunger and thirst can understand the miseries ofthose who, in spite of labor, are not able even to meet their basic needs. Thisnaturally induces people to help others in need and to abstain from hoard-ing wealth. (Ali 1995, 7)

336

Performance and Entertainment

A Pakistani scholar made this statement, but it conforms to widespreadIslamic understandings of the signi¤cance of fasting. The fast is not meantto be an extreme form of asceticism, nor is it a mere reversal of normalactivities. One is not supposed to simply sleep during the day (which ofcourse would greatly ease the discomfort of fasting) and stay awake atnight.In practice, of course, peoples’ daily routines are often interrupted. Inthe days leading up to the 1999–2000 Ramadan fast one person posted toan Internet newsgroup an announcement published in the Egyptian paper

al-Ahram:

“The working hours for all governmental agencies during themonth of Ramadan will be from 9

a.m.

to 2

p.m.

¤ve days a week, Thursdayand Friday holiday. The Cabinet will con¤rm the decision tomorrow” (

al- Ahram,

December 12, 1999). The poster of this message followed it with aplan for what he described as a “realistic” work day: 9:00–9:30 arrival; 9:30–10:00 chat; 10:00–12:00 “work”; 1:30–2:00 leave. His intent in posting sucha “schedule” was obviously ironic, but such jokes point to the gap betweenreal-life behavior and the “meaning of Ramadan.” Certainly, for manyMuslims, anything that could be considered excess during the month ofRamadan, even during the non-fasting hours, is to some degree reprehen-sible. One can, with very little effort, ¤nd Internet sites about Ramadanthat clearly disapprove of eating to excess during the night. Here is oneexample:

Excessive intake of food is avoided (this regulates the stomach from beingpot-bellied and distinguishes Muslims from kaa¤r whom Qur

an describesas those who eat like cattle (47:12)); etc. All these good things which Rama-dan fast teaches Muslims are the means to attain piety. This is why theverse on Ramadan fast says: “O ye who believe, fasting is prescribed for you. . . so that you will (learn how to attain) piety” (2:183). (As-Sunna Founda-tion 2001)

Despite such injunctions against overconsumption (which are readilyavailable in print form, as well as on the Internet, throughout the Muslimworld), the description of the

Fawazir Ramadan

television program that ap-pears below suggests that it takes very little imagination to class such pro-ductions as excess. The social setting in which the television sequence de-scribed below occurs is a middle-class home just after the iftar. After themeal is over, the dishes are cleaned, and everyone usually sits in some com-mon room, chatting. Typically everybody is stuffed from having consumedan abnormally large meal on an empty stomach. Most people have not yetleft the home to visit friends and relatives, a practice widely observed inEgypt and elsewhere. In my videotaped sample, before the main riddleprogram is broadcast comes a “pre–

Fawazir Ramadan

fazzura,” a kind of awarm-up before the main event. After that comes a commercial interlude,

The Riddle of Ramadan

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