Christiana CP #5

Date/Time: May 29, 2017; 7:15-8:30 P.M.
Location: Campus Circle study rooms 
Topic: Religion & Law 
Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned: Learned more about Ramadan and the Muslim religion, shared some information about Catholicism and then we chatted about the Law here vs. in Kuwait. 

For our fifth conversation partner meeting Nasar and I met in the Campus Circle study rooms and conversation immediately went to Ramadan, something I've been very interested in talking about since it is a very prominent part of the lives of both Nasar, and my tutee Saeed who I meet with weekly. I learned that you may not even drink water during the daylight hours during this time of fasting, that it is about a month long, and that most muslims participate in it very strictly throughout the world. I'm very interested in different world religions and really enjoy learning about them so being able to speak with Nasar and ask questions about Islam is really a treat. I asked him if it would be okay for me to ask him a few questions about other traditions and after he replied "of course" I asked him about prayers, how he knows which way to turn to face Mecca, and what time each prayer is. He showed me an app that he uses with a compass that points you to mecca, which I thought was such an interesting tool that is so simple conceptually, yet useful to so many people around the world. I also learned that the times of prayer change slightly with the sunset/sunrise throughout the year, and that there is music that does play around the cities as a "call to prayer" which is one of the things Nasar misses the most about home. I really enjoyed learning about these and tried to share a bit of knowledge about catholicism with him which he seemed to enjoy as well. We then started chatting about laws and how there are many laws in Kuwait overlap with religious laws, such as the prohibition of consumption and sale of alcohol and pork products. We discussed that this is very common in middle eastern countries and very different from here in the U.S where there is a separation of church and state. Just before 8:30 Nasar told me he would be meeting a few friends from CIES to eat dinner and we parted ways, deciding we would meet at some time next week depending on our schedules.