This year’s observance of Islam’s holy month of Ramadan has been a particularly somber time for Muslims at the Hillside Islamic Center in North New Hyde Park due to violence against Muslims in Myanmar over the last three months.
“They gave them a choice to put them in neighboring countries or kill them,” Abdul Aziz Bhuiyan, president of the Hillside Islamic Center said of the violence. “There are innocent people being slaughtered and it’s a comment on world politics.”
Bhuiyan’s own native country of Bangladesh has refused to accept Muslim refugees from Myanmar – also know as Burma – and he said at least 20,000 Muslims have been killed in a Burmese backlash that he compared to the “ethnic cleansing” in the former Yugoslavia.
“The media has been largely silent on this. Can you imagine if this was a Muslim country doing this somewhere?” Bhuiyan said.
Human Rights Watch said on Aug. 1 that the Rohingya Muslims had suffered mass arrests, killings and rapes at the hands of Myanmar security forces, according to a recent Reuters. The minority had borne the brunt of a crackdown after days of arson and machete attacks in June by both Buddhists and Rohingyas in Rakhine state, the monitoring group said.
Reuters recently reported that Myanmar, where at least 800,000 Rohingya Muslims are not recognized as one of the country’s many ethnic and religious groups, has said it exercised “maximum restraint” in quelling the riots.
During Ramadan, Bhiuyan said, Muslims are expected to do good deeds by helping others and making charitable contributions. Muslims spend the month in prayer and contemplation, fasting daily from sunrise until sunset. The practice of fasting is intended as an act of self-discipline that also aims at bringing the plight of the poor to mind.
Bhuiyan said that in observing Ramadam members of the Hillside Islamic Center have been makeing contributions to aid Muslim refugees from Myanmar. He said people wishing to contribute can go to Islamic relief online through Justice for All. Anyone making contributions should indicate the money is speifically for aid to the Burmese Muslims, Bhuiyan said.
Muslims believe that any good works done during Ramadan will bring a 10-fold reward from Allah. Muslims believe that during the month of Ramadan in 610 A.D., Allah revealed the first verses of the Koran, the holy book of Islam, to the prophet Muhammed when he was working as a caravan trader near Mecca.
Bhuiyan said Muslims in the U.S. have been talking to the U.S. State Department about forming a Muslim task force through the United Nations to call for an end to the violence.
He said in their five daily periods of prayer, congregants at the Hillside Islamic Center have been making special supplications for all those in areas of political and military upheaval.
“Burma, Afghanistan, wherever there is trouble, we ask for justice and humanity among human beings,” Bhuiyan said.
