The Ithaca College Muslim Student Association (MSA) organized its first-ever Eid Bazaar on March 23 in Emerson Suites. About 30 to 40 students attended the Bazaar, where they enjoyed Mediterranean and Jamaican food, bought jewelry and got free henna tattoos done by a professional artist.
Ramadan is a month of fasting observed in Islam. Fasting typically begins and ends whenever the moon appears. The meal after sundown is called Iftar, while the one before sunrise is called Suhoor. The end of Ramadan is marked by Eid-Al-Fitr, which is predicted to be on April 9 or 10 this year.
Senior Sarake Dembele, president of the MSA, said the club came up with the idea of hosting an Eid Bazaar to expand outreach and involve more people with MSA.
“This is our first one, and hopefully it’ll be an annual event,” Dembele said. “This is kind of our initiative to get the larger Ithaca campus involved with MSA so that we can get recognition and grow the community for Muslim students and also people that are interested in the club.”
The Bazaar featured a “Try a Hijab” station that allowed attendees to know what it feels like to wear a hijab. Dembele said programming like this allows the campus community to learn more about Muslim and Islamic culture from a non-Western perspective, but at the same time does not allow them to appropriate this culture.
“People think we’re forced to put this [hijab] on and it’s depressing to cover,” Dembele said. “Our intentions are to just show how easy it is to just put on the scarf and like how it might make you feel. … [It should feel] like a learning experience just to break down those stigmas and barriers.”
The henna station was the most popular station at the Eid Bazaar, where people lined up and waited patiently from 20 to 30 minutes. Henna is a paste obtained from the henna plant and is used as a temporary body art dye, most commonly applied on the hands. It is a significant art form in Arab and South Asian cultures.
Alexandria Sheridan said she has been a henna artist for over a decade and she loves studying henna because of the different styles that are unique to each region.
“So many things for me to study and it doesn’t stop, so I really love it,” Sheridan said. “For example, United Arab Emirates styles’ [henna] almost looks like you’re doing like a Chinese pottery design on somebody, and it’s very uniform but very floral. … And then if you look at South Asian ones … [are] usually more ornamental.”
Sheridan is based in Syracuse and said she looked forward to seeing all students come together during Ramadan.
“I’m excited to see everyone break for Iftar together,” Sheridan said. “I think it’s exciting to see the campus do that for students so that they feel like there’s a community here, especially since some might be really far from home here.”
First-year student Kendall Curley was excited to get glitter henna at the event. Curley said she is fasting for Ramadan and was excited to engage with other members of the community who know what it feels like to observe Ramadan.
“It’s been really good to come to these events because I haven’t talked to a lot of people that are Muslim around here,” Curley said “It’s been a good experience for me to learn more and just be surrounded by people that understand.”
Fabiha Khan, vice president of the MSA, said that providing a community is important because fasting for Ramadan alone can be quite challenging for students.
“Ramadan is the time when we are closest to our families,” Khan said. “We wake up together, we eat every meal together, we pray together. … And when a student is here at college, isolated, not having a community … having proper, nutritious Iftar meals is the basics of how we can help students feel more accepted or valued, more seen.”
For the month of Ramadan, the college has been providing halal proteins Sunday through Thursday at both the Campus Center and Terraces Dining Hall from 5 to 7 p.m. Specific coolers at the dining halls also contain items for Suhoor.
However, both Dembele and Khan said they wished Iftar meals were made more easily accessible.
“In terms of the daily Iftar pick up and support, I wish that they had foreseen that Ramadan was going to be around this time of the year and scheduled staff so that Kosher Korner could have stayed open like it did previous years,” Dembele said. “[I know that students on meal plans] prefer that they have Iftar at the Kosher Korner where it used to stay open later versus having to go to the refrigerator.”
The Office of Religious and Spiritual Life (ORSL) has also been collaborating with the MSA to host community Iftars every Sunday that are open to everyone. The ORSL provided support to host the Eid Bazaar by placing and funding orders for items that could not be sourced locally.
Khan said the MSA also received funding from the Office of the President, the BIPOC Unity Center and the Student Activities Board to host the Eid Bazaar. Khan said that as a club, the MSA has no funding allotted to it from the Student Governance Council because of unforeseen issues it ran into during the re-recognition process.
Khan said past events of the MSA have been made possible through funding from the Department of Philosophy and Religion as well. Khan said the club is running on donations and collaborations with other offices on campus for funding.
“Some very generous individuals on this campus have been supporting us,” Khan said. “Of course, it took a lot of advocacy and a lot of fighting. … We had no money active in the beginning of this year.”
Austin Reid, interim director of the ORSL, said he enjoyed collaborating with students and providing them with any support that he could.
“This seemed certainly like an idea to me that the students were very interested in seeing happen, and our office was happy to support with some of the logistics of it to help make it possible,” Reid said. “Folks who are curious about what these events are like, it’s a really cool opportunity this month to engage with several of the different programs that are going on.”
