Ramadan Resources

Five or so days into the month of Qur'an and I wanted to index some links to vitalising resources, primarily regarding the Qur'an, but also practices around Ramadan.

I found myself in a room confronted with Islam Channel just before iftari time a few days ago and it dawned on me that people might get the wrong idea. Every year it feels like the very announcement of this becomes weirder and weirder, and the channels are hogged with materialistic hair splitting talk of markets, dates and times which resemble the Bani Israel calf issue quite closely.

As ever colonial powers continue to try and territorialise this time with 'Ramadan Greetings' to their Muslim denizens (Cameron, Natanyahu).  Last year I wrote about this as Ramadamentia, this year the fashion sector and high end hotels have also entered the fray. Neoliberalistan is as neoliberalistan does.

I have nothing against trade or creativity, in many societies Ramadan and the Eids are when creative works are published. Creative socio-spiritual fervour is indeed a flame to stoke, and thats what fasting and diving into revelation intends to.

Fasting not Feasting is a tendency to counter consumerism and gluttony, in order to socially enable piety and transfromation during these times.  Starting some years back as public flashmob iftars, the reality of midsummer, and a wider cooption from the establishment invite different, deeper and perhaps more intimate forms of collectivity to express themselves.

Quranica is a Youtube channel that is providing neat Ten Minute Taraweeh videos from Sohaib Saeed, a hermeneutically grounded Scot.

Meanwhile,  an attempted Muslim by the identity of Field Muslim shares written reflections on his Qur'an readings which are nourished by an Akbarian decoloniality.

Back out of cyberspace and in the real world, the ever intrepid Mehfil Ali have an interesting looking TEDStyle talk approach to their Ramadan programming.

Online Quran tools are quite developed too, if you can stand looking at a screen.

Kais Duke's Quranic Arabic Corpus Project, is a linguistic tool that brings together the power of training artificial intelligence algorithms in league with a community of Quranic scholars who know their stuff,

Tanzil is very good for its sheer breadth of reciters and translations, while I find Quran Explorer 's interface easier for simultaneity of sound and Arabic and English text. These are all developing fast with user financing.