'We're All Hurting': For Bay Area Muslim Leaders, Gaza Is Ever-Present During Ramadan 2024

For many Muslims in the Bay Area, Ramadan this year will feel very different — especially those with family in the Middle East.

With over 30,000 people killed in Gaza in the past five months, according to the latest figures from the Gaza health ministry, the suffering of Palestinians in the region will be at the top of people’s minds during this holy month — in which followers abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset, and partake in special prayers and charitable efforts. (Ninety-nine percent of Gaza’s population are Muslim.)

“I love Ramadan. It’s when you see the entire community from all different ages and backgrounds coming together,” said Samer Darwish, president of Bay Area’s Muslim Community Association (MCA Bay Area) in Santa Clara. Darwish has been involved in the county’s community for over 30 years.

Darwish, who is Palestinian and originally from Jerusalem, moved to the Bay Area in the 1980s to pursue his studies in electrical engineering and then a career in the semiconductor industry. “I’ve been engaging with the communities [in the Bay Area] since university,” Darwish said.

Darwish’s parents and grandparents fled their home in the Palestinian town of Al-’Abbasiyya to the West Bank in 1948. His grandparents had been landowning farmers, but “they lost all that during the 1948 Nakba,” Darwish said, referring to the Palestinian commemoration of the mass displacement they faced during the establishment of Israel.

In Arabic, Nakba means “‘catastrophe.” Last May, the United Nations formally commemorated the Nakba for the first time, in part to “serve as a reminder of the historic injustice suffered by the Palestinian people,” organizers said.

Darwish said that so far, 20 members of his extended family have been killed during the war in Gaza since Oct. 7. “It’s very sad. We lost so many people during [this] war,” he said.

At MCA Bay Area, Darwish said there are programs supporting refugees and community members who have been affected by the war or have family members in war zones, including services like financial assistance, social services, counseling, and mental health services for local Muslims. The goal, he said, is to get people back on their feet and empower them to become self-sustainable after periods of hardship.

During Ramadan, MCA Bay Area will be hosting Iftars at sunset for the community to break their fast from Monday to Thursday. People of all faiths are welcome to join in, Darwish said.

But with the devastation in Gaza happening thousands of miles away, these gatherings will take on a somber tone, he said — and that the suffering in Gaza will now be felt even more keenly during Ramadan.

One big reason for that, Darwish said: As people in the Bay Area fast throughout this month, they are still able to eat at the end of the day but will do so in the knowledge that many in Gaza are suffering from starvation.

“This Ramadan, in light of the situation in the Middle East, the community is very emotional,” Darwish said. “Palestine is on their minds every day, every minute.”

‘The entire Muslim community is hurting’

Attacks on Palestinian Muslims during Ramadan are not new — for example when Israeli forces attacked worshippers at Al-Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem during Ramadan in 2023. But the scale of the death toll and destruction in Gaza since Oct. 7 has been the worst in recent history.

Attacks on Palestinians have also been perpetrated by Israeli settlers in other parts of the region, including the West Bank.

“Our heart bleeds for our brothers and sisters in Gaza and other parts of Palestine that are suffering and being attacked,” said Athar Siddiqee, chairman of the board of South Bay Islamic Association (SBIA). A Silicon Valley executive, Siddiqee has lived in the Bay Area since the 1970s.

While Ramadan is a time for physical and spiritual cleansing, Siddiqee said a big part of the spirit of the holy month is community and charity work. And for Muslims, he said, it’s a requirement to donate a percentage of our earnings to charity every year during Ramadan, as the spiritual reward is believed to be multiplied immensely during this month.

SBIA, along with many other Muslim community associations in the Bay Area, has been helping to raise funds for both international and local causes. In addition to sponsored daily Iftars for the community during Ramadan, SBIA also offers hot meals to unhoused people on certain days during Ramadan.

More recently, a big part of that charity effort has been through fundraising for Gaza relief funds.

“In Islam, there’s a feeling that if one part of the global Muslim community is hurting, the entire Muslim community is hurting and should share that pain,” Siddiqee said.

“So right now, we’re all hurting.”