A few hours before dawn, when most New Yorkers are fast asleep, a middle-aged man rolls out of bed in Brooklyn, dons a billowy red outfit and matching turban, climbs into his Lincoln Town Car, drives 15 minutes, pulls out a big drum and ”” there on the sidewalk of a residential neighborhood ”” starts to play.
The man, Mohammad Boota, is a Ramadan drummer. Every morning during the holy month, which ends on Sept. 21, drummers stroll the streets of Muslim communities around the world, waking worshipers so they can eat a meal before the day’s fasting begins.
But New York City, renowned for welcoming all manner of cultural traditions, has limits to its hospitality. And so Mr. Boota, a Pakistani immigrant, has spent the past several years learning uncomfortable lessons about noise-complaint hot lines, American profanity and the particular crankiness of non-Muslims rousted from sleep at 3:30 a.m.
“Everywhere they complain,” he said. “People go, like, ”˜What the hell? What you doing, man?’ They never know it’s Ramadan.”
The article states that he began this drumming in NYC during Ramadan 2002. He’s a brave man, since a lot of New Yorkers were not too keen on Muslims that year (probably even fewer the year before, right after 9/11 — though to be honest I’m not up on the dates of Ramadan that year).
Hursley’s wife
Ramadan was in the late fall/winter in 2001; it moves about ten days every year.
He’s a Pakistani, it says. I haven’t heard this drumming in Egypt, although I don’t live in the crowded sections of Cairo. This business of noise is going to be a major issue in the adaptation of Islam to Western places. No way is an American city going to let them set up the loudspeakers which blast the call to prayer out five times daily, from early dawn to evening. And drumming at 3:30 a.m.? Nope. The mosque can provide people with little wind-up alarm clocks if it’s concerned.
I heard that they were doing the loudspeaker thing in Dearborn, Michigan. ??