Mideast Enmities Outlast Muslims’ Month to Purify

Businessman Asraf Shenaway stood outside his red-and-gold draped pavilion, its colored lights beckoning along the sidewalk of a busy thoroughfare in this frenetic city near the Great Pyramids. Well-dressed retainers quietly bid passersby to step inside for a few minutes and break their Ramadan fast at sunset.

Inside, two long wooden tables were laden with a simple meal--bread, beans, chicken and syrupy pastries--donated by Shenaway and prepared in his home by his chef.

In the spirit of generosity meant to mark the season, the food was free to anyone who wanted it. Thousands of such pavilions are set up by wealthy individuals all over Egypt.

Ramadan, the holy month of fasting for Muslims--a time of abstention and purification during which the faithful are forbidden to eat, drink, smoke or have sexual intercourse between sunrise and sunset--ended this week with such selfless acts of alms-giving.

But the fast and the three-day celebration that follows it, concluding today, have not managed to cleanse the Middle East of all its enmities.

In fact, Ramadan was marred by violence in Egypt as well as in the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain.

Divisions that have riven the Muslim world for the past two decades, pitting radical Islamic revolutionaries against moderate regimes, continued to bubble and flare across the region.

In Egypt, the outlawed Gamaa al Islamiya, or Islamic Group, announced that it will keep up its nearly four-year campaign of violence aimed at toppling the secular government and creating an Islamic state. Nearly 900 people have died in the campaign, including at least nine killed within the last few days.

In Bahrain, anti-government groups allegedly supported by Iran called on the majority Shiite Muslim population to wear black mourning clothes during the post-Ramadan feast to protest the recent arrest of several hundred people in clashes with the government of Sheik Isa ibn Salman Khalifa, a Sunni Muslim.

On Tuesday, the first day of the feast, sobbing people gathered at the graves of relatives killed during 15 months of street violence.

The island sheikdom, site of a key U.S. naval installation, has seen seven weeks of sporadic unrest by dissidents demanding greater democracy. The latest violence included two bombings during Ramadan at luxury hotels catering to foreigners.

In Saudi Arabia, where the ruling family has been under pressure from dissidents abroad, Crown Prince Abdullah used the customary Ramadan message to issue a stern warning to the monarchy’s foes.

These strains, however, seemed remote from Giza, just outside Cairo, as dusk fell and the fast ended Monday night. Believers immediately launched into the feast, known as the Eid el Fitr.

Shenaway’s canopied pavilion, or suwan, illustrated the usual experience of Ramadan for the estimated 1 billion Muslims around the world. It showed a gentle side of Islam that is sometimes overlooked in the non-Muslim world, where the images of extremists and hard-liners are better known.

As dusk fell, taxi and bus drivers pulled up to the tent and ducked inside to exchange courteous words with fellow guests before digging into the brief repast. The serene moment drew together people from different walks of life--workers, beggars, even two modestly dressed women identified as prostitutes--to share food and faith.

“If only this could become a contagion to spread on to the rest of the world,” said Kamal Rosdy, an engineer.

During Ramadan, “your system becomes clean and you have a spiritual high, which should be enough to give you patience and tolerance for other people,” said Ghallab Mostafa, a telephone company worker delightedly sucking on a cigarette. “And that feeling should not stop on the last day of the fast.”

Ramadan celebrates the month in which God revealed the Koran, Islam’s holy book, to the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims believe that God requires them to fast to learn patience and overcome bodily needs.

Life slows to a crawl while the sun is up. But at night, when people are free to eat, cities come boisterously alive. At the end of the holy month, the feast is a time for family and relaxation.

In Cairo, thousands of schoolchildren exuberantly showed off new clothing in the zoo and parks, their pockets filled with holiday spending money received as gifts from relatives. Tourist boats plied the Nile, and shops displayed traditional multicolored lanterns.

A 29-year-old government worker, Nasser Ahmed Abdallah, simultaneously savored the mood and expressed anger at what he regards as the religion’s misinterpretation by non-Muslims.

“Ramadan means a month when peace is made between people,” he said. “My question is: Why is Islam being repressed by other religions? How can others not see us as being like them?”