The year 2014 marked a critical turning point for Ahmed. During the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims are obliged to abstain from food and water from sunrise to sundown, Ahmed found himself spending more time in the mosque. He would make the short walk over when he found time between classes and his work shifts, and he became a fixture at the mosque in the early morning, when brothers and sisters convened to make taraweeh, the special Ramadan prayers. Like many young people of faith, whether Christian or Jew, Hindu or Buddhist, Ahmed was drawn to Islam at the crossroads of his teenage and adult years, smitten by the beauty of the Qur’an he finally picked up to read closely, and drawn in by the tight-knit community that surrounded him. Ramadan drew him closer to Islam and closer to the community, and he found himself drawn to maintaining a more pious lifestyle beyond the Holy Month. Faith changed Ahmed from the inside, and gradually his enhanced spirituality would become more manifest on the outside. Ahmed always knew Islam and was always around the mosque, but months before his nineteenth birthday, he fully embraced it as a way of life.

Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Unde…, loc. 357