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 Ramadan Awareness Campaign is an initiative designed to educate both Muslims and Non Muslims about the month of Ramadan, the most significant month in the Islamic calendar. This year, the RAC campaign is targeting health. Through our presentations to school students across NSW, we endeavor to provide information and greater insight into the implications of making healthy food and lifestyle choices, and how these choices can ultimately affect long term health and well-being. Note: This site will be continually updated throughout Ramadan, please come back to check out new content!
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Ramadan Fights Smoking in US |
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Friday, 28 September 2007 |
Leading US Muslims organizations are seizing on the self-restraint and sense of discipline the holy fasting month of Ramadan instills in the faithful by launching an anti-smoking campaign with passionate pleas on Muslim smokers to kick the bad habit for good, The Daily Herald reported.
"We want to capitalize on (Ramadan) where everyone is more motivated to be more disciplined and more faithful," said Tariq Cheema, executive director of the Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America (APPNA).
"This is just one way of extending the blessings of Ramadan throughout the year," Cheema said.
The campaign is organized by the APPNA, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Islamic Medical Association of North America (IMANA).
Organizers say that that because smokers must already abstain during daylight hours during Ramadan, there is an opportunity to quit the habit entirely.
"The idea is that addiction is broken a little bit through their willpower during that month," said Shiraz Malik, IMANA Executive Director.
"It's halfway on the road to where we want them to be. We want to basically take them down the other half of the road, which is quitting cold turkey."
Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Chicago Council on American-Islamic Relations, says religion works like magic in combating bad habits like smoking.
"Smoking in general is antithetical to the Islamic ideal of respect and care for one's body," said Rehab.
The World Health Organization has in the past made a faith-based push to tackle smoking in the Eastern Mediterranean region.
It consulted leading Islamic scholars on the dilemma and in 1988 published a ruling that "smoking is either completely prohibited or abhorrent to such a degree as to be prohibited."
Muslim scholars have come to the conclusion that smoking is prohibited in Islam because of its many serious health and life hazards amongst which is lung cancer. These hazards affect not only the smoker himself but those around him as well.
Ramadan is the month on the Islamic lunar calendar during which Muslims abstain from smoking, food, drink, and other sensual pleasures from break of dawn to sunset. Fasting (along with the declaration of faith, daily prayers, charity, and pilgrimage to Makkah) is one of the Five Pillars of Islam.
Spreading the Message
The groups are posting fliers and plan educational seminars about the health hazards of smoking and benefits of quitting at area mosques, Islamic schools and community centers.
Organizers believe that educating the kids about smoking hazards is the best way to have a generation of non-smokers and to convince parents and grandparents to quit smoking.
"I don't think there can be any better and powerful ambassadors for the parents than their children," Cheema said.
"It's like the watchdogs at home kind of thing."
Mosques will also play a role in spreading that message through sermons and forums.
"It is a cause worth supporting," said Vaseem Iftekhar, an ex-smoker and president of Islamic Foundation North mosque in Libertyville.
"It is actually an obligation," Iftekhar said. "Society ills are our ills."
Iftekhar said the mosque conducts Sunday seminars on health topics, and smoking would be an issue to tackle in that forum.
"Most people realize that smoking is not a good thing," he said. "It's a matter of addiction. If (the campaign) encourages will power and provides a support mechanism to quit, it will be helpful to them. You can't force them, but the message has to be clear," he noted.
The anti-smoking campaign will continue after Ramadan.
"In the United States there are a lot of anti-smoking initiatives, but we would be remiss if we don't admit that this is a problem within our own communities," said Malik, the IMANA Executive Director.
The Ramadan message helped 49-year-old Tariq Khawaja to convert from a 14-year smoking habit. He gave up cigarettes the second day of this Ramadan.
"The whole day when I was fasting, I did not feel any craving for smoking," said Khawaja, publisher of the Urdu Times weekly newspaper.
"And then I thought that if I can stay a whole day, let's quit for the whole life then."
Source: IslamOnline.net & Newspapers |
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