VALPARAÍSO, Chile – As Ramadan approaches, a Sufi community in Chile is grappling with the challenges of preparing for fasting in a non-Muslim country. Catholic-majority Chile knows little about Ramadan, the holy month in the Islamic lunar calendar in which Muslims fast just before sunrise until the setting of the sun. They also abstain from sexual relations during the fast and avoid cursing, fighting or arguing.  

This year, Ramadan is expected to begin on Friday evening and concludes on the night of March 30.

“The challenge is to make it a party for children,” said Mumina Píriz, 42, a mother of four.

Sufi families living in the commune of Limache, an hour east of the port city of Valparaíso, have to compete with Christmas, a holiday characterized by gift-giving. These families created the Ramadan Cloth, a fabric that contains pockets, where they put gifts for the children for each day of fasting. On the last day of Ramadan, they receive a special gift, Píriz said, similar a Christmas present.     

One of the five pillars of Islam, the obligation to fast during daylight hours in Ramadan means not eating or drinking, an act of discipline that brings Muslims closer to God. It is also a reminder of the sufferings of the poor. In Chile, the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency, through the Turkish embassy, delivers boxes of food that Sufis distribute to people in need at the beginning of Ramadan, said Abdul Matin Vicente, 53, one of the first Sufis in Chile along with his wife.

Sufism, a branch of Islam that seeks inner spiritual development, has been present in the South American country since the late 1990s. Many Sufi orders took root in Turkey. In Chile, they have had a relationship with the Turkish embassy since 2014.

Vicente and his family moved to Limache from Santiago in 2019, along with other Sufi families. Today, they form a community of 20 to 25 people. Near their homes they have a community center where they gather to pray and have dinner together on Thursdays and Sundays. Living in a community helps them observe Muslim rules, such as praying five times a day or fasting in Ramadan.

“It is recommended to spend Ramadan in a community. It is boring to spend it alone,” Vicente said.

In Turkey, families gather in mosques after sunset to break fasting during Ramadan. Vicente said Sufi families in Chile invite one another every day to their homes, so breaking the fast becomes part of a community event as it would be in Muslim countries. The Muslim population in Chile represents 0.02% of the country’s 17 million inhabitants. Vicente estimated that there are between 200 and 300 Sufis in the country. They follow Sheikh Muhammad, spiritual teacher and head of a branch of the Naqshbandi order of Sunni Islamic Sufism.

Sheikh Muhammad lives in the neighborhood of Akbaba in the district of Beykoz, in Istanbul. This Ramadan, the Vicente family plan to travel to Istanbul to spend half of the month with him. Then they will follow him to Lefke, in Cyprus, where his father, Sheikh Nazim, the previous head of the branch, lived.

“Some 3,000 people can arrive in Cyprus during Ramadan,” Vicente said.

Sufi orders are built around a living spiritual teacher, whose development as a guide determines the number of followers. Sheikh Nazim had followers in more than 30 countries, from Chile to Japan, according to an obituary published by The Guardian in 2014. Since his death at the age of 92, the Sufi population in Chile has seen a decline.  

“He was a charismatic teacher who attracted many people,” Vicente said.

Muslims prepare for Ramadan two months ahead of time. They also fast on some days, in addition to offering prayers.

“We have voluntary fasting on Mondays and Thursdays,” Vicente said.

When it’s summer in the Southern Hemisphere, with 13 or more hours of sunlight, has made not eating solid food and liquids more difficult than in winter.

“We did only a few of the voluntary fasting periods. Summer makes it harder,” Vicente said.

Before Ramadan, families assemble food to cook for the two meals they share during that month, one early in the morning before dawn, called suhur, and one after sundown, which is known as iftar. The idea is to make the least effort possible during Ramadan since body energy diminishes.

A real estate developer, Vicente organizes his work schedule so he can conduct meetings after Ramadan. Some Sufis even request to go on vacation, he added.

The preparations also include certain foods that were once hard to find in Chile. Breaking fast with dates is a Ramadan tradition. Before superfoods became popular, “it was a challenge to find dates at a reasonable price,” Píriz said.

Exempted from fasting are adults who are sick or traveling, pregnant or breastfeeding women and children, some of whom fast anyway. Then, there’s home decorations. Before Amazon, families used to look on Pinterest for decoration ideas they could make themselves.

“We used to make the decorations for Ramadan by hand,” Píriz recalled. “Amazon has only recently existed in our lives.”

You can read the article in Spanish here.

Graciela Ibáñez is a journalist with a Master of Arts from Columbia Journalism School, where she graduated in 2008. She works as a professor of journalism at Universidad Gabriela Mistral and at Universidad Viña del Mar in Chile. She covers Chile for foreign media outlets, including TRT World. She worked as a reporter for Dow Jones Newswires in Santiago and for the Financial Times Group in New York City. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Viña del Mar, where she lives.