Muslim Youth Movement: ‘Challenging time for the world’

This Ramadan comes at a challenging time for our country and the world. In South Africa, there is an awakening and a realisation that all is not well with our socio-economic conditions.

Evidence of this not-so-well rainbow nation is the widening and unsustainable gap between the rich and poor, the high levels of unemployment, the grinding and humiliating poverty that is increasingly being criminalised and most menacingly, the general loss of hope by those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder that things will ever get better.

In the world, the Zionist noose around the necks of the Palestinians shows no signs of ever breaking. The Egyptian people who moved a few steps forward with the democratic election of Muhammad Morsi, have now moved many steps backward with the capture of power by undemocratic forces. Libya is falling apart. The strife in the Central African Republic and the menace of Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria all make for a world in turmoil and in need of renewal.

Ramadan presents a chance for that renewal. It is an opportunity for individual and collective reflection and renewal. We should spend it reflecting on how best we can live our lives the way Allah intended us to. We should reflect on how best we can contribute towards the struggle against injustice, inequality, poverty and hopelessness.

We should reflect on how we support the workers’ struggle for a just wage, the people’s struggles for clean drinking water, dignified living conditions and a quality education. We should also reflect on how best we can live our lives in order to attain righteousness, the objective of fasting as stated in the Qur’an chapter 2, verse 183.

On behalf of the Muslim Youth Movement of South Africa, I wish all a blessed holy month of Ramadan. May we all make the best of it. Ramadan Mubarak!

Thandile Kona
President
Muslim Youth Movement