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Thursday 4 December 2008

An evening with the Muslim Facebook crew

Sarfraz Manzoor celebrates an iftar meal with homeless people and his fellow Muslims, a web-generated ‘flashmob’ observing an Islamic tradition of generosity to the needy

It is sundown in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, a large outdoor square behind London’s Holborn Underground station. I am here to meet a man called Miqdad Asaria who had invited me to attend what he had described as a ‘flashmob iftar’. During the month of Ramadan, which ended last week, an iftar is the evening meal that marks the end of the fast and it is traditional to celebrate it with family and friends. Asaria had a more ambitious proposal.

‘During Ramadan Muslims get a glimpse of what it is like to be hungry,’ he had told me earlier in the day, ‘and I thought, what better time to share our food with those who are hungry all year round?’ He wanted to find a way to help the homeless but make it fun and not involve any of the usual Muslim organisations. ‘I didn’t want to do some PR exercise,’ he explained. ‘I just wanted to make the point that Muslims shouldn’t only be looking overseas when they think about problems — there are plenty of problems in this country.’ He set up a Facebook page where he advertised the flashmob iftar along with instructions to ‘bring food for you and one homeless person to eat together’. The Facebook page also included the flashmob iftar mission statement: ‘No agenda, no organisation, no rules, just normal Muslims doing their thing.’

It sounded promising, but would anyone turn up? The only way to find out was to see for myself, which was why I was in Lincoln’s Inn Fields that Tuesday evening. What I saw surprised and delighted me: more than 150 young British Muslims, men and women, sharing biryani, samosas and cakes with the startled but grateful homeless. In one part of the fields 30 men were kneeling on the grass in prayer, their heads bowing in the direction of Mecca as a group of young women in headscarves chatted to an elderly homeless woman who stood propped by a walking stick. Among them were Farah and Fatima. ‘My mother made the biryani especially,’ explained 20-year-old Farah. ‘Why are you here?’ I asked. ‘Ramadan is about understanding those who don’t have as much as we have,’ said Farah. ‘It’s about building bridges between communities.’ ‘For me it’s about reaching out to people who are not necessarily from the same background or faith,’ added Fatima, ‘but who are also in need.’

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